itsawonderfilledlife

For many it rolls off their tongues as if they have been saying it since they uttered their first words, for others is only spoken in the safe confines of their minds … it’s the still voice … that is not so small.

Above all other words against humanity, I would rate this four-letter F-word the worst of them all … spoken verbally out loud, or (perhaps worst of all) lived, as though it’s four letters are the prison walls that surround the individual.

Fear

Fear is an emotion, caused by a threat … the thing is we can feel fear over what will occur, what may occur or even something that isn’t likely to occur. So, though fear is an emotion that can cause us to avoid danger, it can also cause us to avoid living.

We all have fears. For some it is creepy (or slithery) crawlies. For others it might be speaking in public, enclosed spaces (caves, elevators), needles, boating, flying or broccoli (or maybe that is just a preference … not mentioning any names).

Some of us have fears that are so debilitating that our fears have become phobias, meaning that our fears are so great that anxiety accompanies the fear, preventing us from doing things and going places that we would otherwise love.

Fear

Fear is sneaky too, for it disguises itself in other words … anxiety, uneasy, uncomfortable, overwhelming, weakness … words that send us to our knees.

… can that be so bad?

It is said that there are three hundred and sixty-five times in the Bible when the message,

do not fear

is delivered. I haven’t counted, but I do know that is a common biblical communication to us. It is a message that God has incorporated into his Word, from the Old Testament to the New, from cover to cover.

God knew that fear would come to us when sin entered the world, so he has been whispering, ever since Eden,

… do not fear, for I am with you

What if we acknowledged that whisper when the hairs on the back of our necks start to stand at attention? What if, we reach for a verse in the Bible (see below) and read it, memorize it, read it in the context of the chapter it is written. What if we give out energies over to the opposite of fear … God … instead of giving our full attention to that thing that has our knickers in a knot …

We are not alone in our fears.

May we all be encouraged (as in full of courage) to look for solutions to our fears … there is one and he is always with us, even to the end of the world.