Trusting God in the Face of Fear 2

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.  Proverbs 3:5,6

I love the fact that the word "fear" is not found in these verses.  Fear is too often the focal point.  I have found that by making "trust" the focal point, "fear" fades into the background.  By learning to trust God and others, the power of fear is diminished in my life.

Not quite ten years ago, I woke up one morning and was still fuzzy headed and walking to the kitchen in my bathrobe.  I heard the question in my head, "What would it be like to live without fear?"  I now know that this was the Holy Spirit, but honestly, at that time I thought of myself as brave and wouldn't have thought I was hindered all that much by fear.  I knew I was afraid of a few things like flying and I knew that that was something I needed to pray through, but I had no idea the thickness of the chains that fear had slowly wrapped me in.

That is one thing about fear: give fear and inch and fear takes a mile or probably two miles.  Fear is greedy.  Fear thinks it is in charge.  Fear wants to rule!  Fear doesn't want to just bother you, fear wants to rule you!

I pondered that question, "what would it be like to live without fear?" for a long time and eventually realized that the Lord, Himself was trying to point out some things to me.

Yes, He wanted me to overcome my fear of flying, and by God's grace, I can honestly say that I'm ok with flying now.  I don't love it, but I'm not terrified.  I praise God for this because He has places for me to go and some of those places involve getting on an airplane.  He is the one who helped me and I am greatly encouraged because I know that if He cares enough about me to help me overcome the fear of flying, then He cares enough to help me with any other fear or challenge that may come along and threaten to limit my life and calling.

Are there limits on your life and calling?  Are you willing to overcome those limits if God helps you?

Over the course of the next few years (after I heard the question, "what would it be like to live without fear?") my family seemed to encounter one trial after another.  Some annoying trials and some pretty severe trials.  I watched the ones I love the most go through intense troubles.  (Did you know that wherever your dreams are, that is where fear will try to hang out?  I've had some pretty big and wonderful dreams for my loved ones!)

I noticed that the more afraid I became for the ones I loved, the more in control I wanted to be.  The more in control I tried to be, the more problems multiplied.  I had never thought of myself as one of those "controlling people," but here I was, one of "those people."  I thought I could keep myself and my loved ones from pain and suffering if I just did this, or just got them to do that...

I soon realized that I was not in control of things as much as I had thought, but I didn't know what to do as fear continued to push me into this false sense of control. Fear grew and grew and took over more ground in my life.  I learned that control was a lie and worked hand in hand with fear to tie me up.

Eventually, I learned that if I was to truly TRUST in God, I had to be willing to give up control.