Psalm 118:6 “The Lord is with me, I will not be afraid. What can people do to me?”
Many of us experience times of feeling afraid, out of control, in danger, or under threat. Promises like the above verse can help us handle such situations better. If you feed those fears, your faith will starve; but if you feed your faith, your fears will starve instead.
Max Lucado writes insightfully on the effects of living in fear:
“Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia. It dulls our miracle memory. It makes us forget what Jesus has done and how good God is. And fear feels dreadful. It sucks the life out of the soul, curls us into an embryonic state, and drains us dry of contentment. We become abandoned barns, rickety and tilting from the winds, a place where humanity used to eat, thrive, and find warmth. No longer. When fear shapes our lives, safety becomes our god. When safety becomes our god, we worship the risk-free life. Can the safety lover do anything great? Can the risk-averse accomplish noble deeds? For God? For others? No. The fear-filled cannot love deeply. Love is risky. They cannot give to the poor. Benevolence has no guarantee of return. The fear-filled cannot dream wildly. What if their dreams sputter and fall from the sky? The worship of safety emasculates greatness. No wonder Jesus wages such a war against fear.
His most common command emerges from the ‘fear not’ genre. The Gospels list some 125 Christ-issued imperatives. Of these, 21 urge us to ‘not be afraid’ or ‘not fear’ or ‘have courage’ or ‘take heart’ or ‘be of good cheer’. The second most common command, to love God and neighbor, appears on only eight occasions. If quantity is any indicator, Jesus takes our fears seriously. The one statement he made more than any other was this: don’t be afraid.”
Lord, I resolve to feed my faith, not my fears, today. Thank you for all your promises. Thank you that I don’t need to live in fear. Help me live full of faith. Amen!
Leave a Reply