Fear – Part 1

Last updated on January 19, 2023

Is this risk worth it? What if it doesn’t turn out the way I feel like it needs to? What if He asks me to do something I just can’t do? What if I fail?

A quick search of “don’t be afraid” on biblestudytools.com finds ninety-three occurrences in the Common English Bible translation. I find this both interesting and telling of the type of creatures we are.

Perhaps it is easier for us to fear, worry, or be anxious than to have faith. A default for us, even, when we encounter things beyond our understanding or felt ability to cope.

What else I find interesting is that God uses His Word to tell us over and over NOT to be afraid. When He does, He often follows that with why we don’t NEED to be afraid.

If we understood why we don’t need to be afraid, would we be better equipped to encounter our fear as a means of growing more intimate with Him? It is this idea I hope to explore in a bit more depth in this series of posts.

If you’ve ever been afraid, or you’re afraid of something right now. Come, sit with me in the clearing.

Why We Fear and Its Effects

Let’s face it, fear is a part of life. And it’s not all bad. It helps us to get away or defend ourselves from danger. If we had no fear, what would stop us from running in front of cars on the highway, jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, or placing our bare hand on a hot stove? Fear is a useful sort of alarm within us that lets us know we are not safe here.

In this, fear is good.

But as we grow to understand more about the world we live in, this healthy fear can be too easily corrupted and influenced as we assimilate into our home and societal cultures. We begin to perceive dangers that are not only physical, but also emotional and even spiritual.

As we build our own fortresses to protect ourselves from that pain, fear can become a prison. The prison of fear inhibits, and even prohibits, our growth as whole people.

Instead, fear breeds anxiety, social isolation, confused thoughts, damaged relationships, loneliness, and the like. We find ourselves trapped without even realizing how we’ve gotten there.

The fear impulse that was meant to preserve us ends up as our god, the thing we most spend our energies and thoughts on, eating away at our life bit by bit until we are left as just a mangled shell of our true selves rather than embracing a full life as the brilliant creations God made us to be.

What about simply fear of the unknown? We like to think that we are the boss of our lives. We like to know what’s coming. What can we plan for? What can we avoid? We want to have some semblance of control of it, to be sure that it’s going to be okay according to our personal standards and comfort level.

Rather than imprisoning us, this sort of fear can move us to unwise action and we find ourselves manipulating and formulating and designing a life that leaves others in crumbles by the wayside as we bulldoze over them or through them to get the life we think we should have.

“Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Sounds pretty dire doesn’t it?

However, if we are alert to fear, and seek to be its master rather than its slave, we have the opportunity to encounter it in a way that builds up rather than tears down.

Next post, we will discuss how fear can be our teacher as we desire to grow.

Share Your Story

Does fear have a stronghold in your life? Share with us in the comments how that impacts your experience of abundant life. Would you change anything about how you respond to your fear?