Curse-ed FEAR!

Not too long ago I literally shouted these words out in tears fist raised to the sky! I had been tossed about in waves of circumstance facilitated by others choices that were absolutely driven from fear.

Its one thing to battle my own fear and I have done so and with great help from the Lord found much victory. But its a totally different animal being caught up in situations that completely and totally fall to another person and the crippling decisions they make handicapped by fear.

Fear is a loose canon and a fickle friend. It can come in many forms. It can appear to be safe preaching the word "caution," it can pretend to be wisdom with it's cohort "worldly advice" and it presumes justice with the falsehood of "community validation." But all of these misguided practices can be dispelled fairly easily when taken to the Word to match against truth.

Many preach that the opposite of fear is faith. But I have come to really believe the opposite of fear is wisdom. As we have studied through the Proverbs as a church this year and seeing wisdom personified my eyes were opened differently to the alternative choices we make that are clearly not wise and surmised that a great deal of those choices are driven by fear. Ignorance at times sure, foolishness at times, a lack of love possibly. But not necessarily a lack of faith. Because we can be fooled to have complete faith in something that is not wisdom at all driven completely out of our own fears and be ruled by it unknowingly.

The question is, what is the source of our wisdom, what is compelling our actions?

As a young believer I had the best intentions serving the Lord. We were young and zealous and evangelizing the world. I was however a very wounded young adult, though I really did not know it and I was driven, absolutely driven to performance based serving. Though I could not have recognized it I was actually driven by fear. I had a heart to serve the Lord sure, but I also had a deep underlying fear that if I did not show up, I may be forgotten, I may not look the part, people may see right through me. My actions were not based in truth though they were even righteous actions.

I had right thinking in serving the Lord, but I had the wrong approach for making the decisions for how and what to serve the Lord in. And at the core of my being I was actually trying to fill some other desperate needs other than a pure love for the God I serve. Oh so convoluted are the ways I operate as a human. Ah!

Yet God has been so kind and gentle in breaking these motives down and bringing truth to my wounded soul. He showed me that my constant need to be "needed" was false and not from Him and was being fed by other deeper hurts of rejection, abuse, abandonment. He reassured me that He would never do all of those things to me even if I never worked at the church or in ministry another day of my life. For what He had given me, I did not have to keep earning. He brought such freedom and peace. He began to teach me to make choices from a healthy knowledge of who He is and who I am in Him. Not driven from any un-health or FEAR.

As far as other people's fears that so effect our lives, well that we can only take to the Lord. But there are times when I am hurt or my children are hurt and it is completely the doing of someones fear and it SO frustrates me not for the person, they need healing, but for the weapon of our enemy that fear is.

Fear is the most subtlety destructive tool our enemy yields against us and is one of the most difficult to detect. FEAR is personified - fear is our enemy! And he wants you to believe that your fears are justified, but please let me tell you unless you are talking about the reverent respect of our Lord, fear is not righteous or just.

The bible tells 365 times NOT to fear. I have heard it said that is one for each day of the year. That's a lot of commanding us not to fear. Do you think God knew it would be such a struggle?

When we radically pursuit intimacy with God, He alone dispels fear. His word and truth are like beautiful fear erasers in the ARTIST hands of God, and He wants to paint in our lives vivid healthy colorful patterns that come from His love and from true and right thinking about Him.

Lionel has always asked the question "what would you do if you were not afraid." God gave me a new question, "what things are you doing right now because you are afraid?" It's something to ponder.

Lord, help me not to be motivated by fear and to quickly see through fear and not be ruled by it or act on it. Amen.