Tackling Fear

Every day I talk to someone who is frazzled by fear.  We live in a world that seems driven by fear.  People use fear to manipulate us in so many ways.  We avoid events for fear that something may go wrong.  We overspend for fear that we might never get a chance like this again.  We overthink for fear that we might have missed something.  We rearrange our lives to avoid the smallest things. Our relationships suffer for fear that we might get hurt.  We stay in unhealthy situations because fear makes it seem too difficult to leave.

Fear changes our focus.  It makes us focus on the problem and not the solution.  It focuses us almost exclusively on negative things which rarely happen anyway.  Sometimes fear even makes negative things happen as we “live down” to the situation we have predicted. It eats away at our self-confidence until we are immobilized.

Fear wastes our energy. It drains us so that our positive efforts are sabotaged. We spend extreme amounts of energy on “backup plans” just in case. Think of what we could accomplish if we took the energy that we put into fear, worry, and backup plans and spent it on our goals and values.

Fear of making the wrong decision cripples us when it comes to decision making.  It locks us up or we take the “safe” option. The “safest” thing to do is often nothing.  But so often doing nothing might be the worst thing we can do.

Fear of failure robs us of achievements. It makes us afraid to try.  Avoidance then makes this fear stronger.  Sometimes we even fear being successful because we are afraid it would be more than we could handle;  So we stay safe.  Really?

Fear is deceptive. We think that all of our overthinking and “what-ifing” actually helps us. We think it somehow inoculates us against bad things because we have been diligent and worried about it. It deceives our mind and undermines our rational thinking. It destroys our health and wastes so much of our time.  I point these things out because fear deceives us into thinking that it is harmless. But it is not. It robs us every day.  It costs us more than we’ll ever know.

So how do we tackle it? First, fear is overcome by compelling conviction. When God puts something in our heart, fear melts. Love overcomes fear. When the depth of God’s love for us sinks in, fear vanishes. When we really love others, fear is irrelevant. Trust that God is sovereign and in complete control destroys fear at its roots. God wants to rescue us from this enemy. His word to us is fear not. Imagine what your life would be like without fear. Pray and ask God for his healing from the trauma that brought fear in the first place. Rest in him and say to fear, “No more. You have already taken enough.” Join me in defeating this foe in our lives and remember:

2 Tim. 1:7 (KJV) For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound mind.

Blessings, Pastor Ed