Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on
January 8, 2015 as I Will Not Be Afraid ~ Long.
Fear. "This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. It is an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it. It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. But did not we, ourselves, set the ball rolling? Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble."
- p. 67 Alcoholics Anonymous
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
After selfishness and self-centeredness, fear may be one of the most damaging and dangerous enemies we have. Fear that God didn't really have their best interest at heart and was holding out on them spurred Adam and Eve into the decision to listen to lies and look to the fruit for their answers rather than God. Those same two fears, and under both for me was the fear that God didn't, couldn't. really and truly love me the way He loves "good" people, drove me to the same choices the first couple made, only my "fruit" was alcohol and drugs and sex and approval of others and...
Well, the list goes on. We may put ourselves into bondage with different things, but dig deep enough, and it's all the same wormy fruit. Fear is part of the human condition in the fallen world we live in. There's not anything that can be done to completely eradicate it from our lives.
Sooner or later, something or someone will cause the spirit of fear to rise up within us and scream for our attention. It's like sour milk. If you drink milk on a regular basis, sooner or later, you're going to get a mouthful that you wish you hadn't. If you doubt that, ask 10 people what sour milk is like. If you don't get answers about the awfulness of it from all 10, you have most likely found one or two people who haven't drunk milk since infancy and simply don't remember. But how it affects us depends on what happens next. The natural human reaction to spoiled milk is to spit it out, and quickly. If we ignore that instinct we may find ourselves with a wonderful case of food poison that will insure that we never ignore that instinct again.
Sadly, the opposite is true with fear. It seems our natural instinct is to gulp it down and guzzle more. When we begin feeling the effects of the spiritual food poisoning, we look for a solution, and human nature is to wash the answer we try down with another dose of fear, fear that it won't work, fear that it will get worse, fear that blah blah. We try to push it away, cover it up, or distract ourselves from it, without doing anything to purge it from our system before it poisons us further, and perhaps even causes our death, since quite often our cure for fear is as deadly or more so than the disease itself.
But there is a better way to handle fear. Spit it out. It's not that we ever escape tasting fear, but we can learn not to swallow, not to bring it into the core of our being and let it rot there. We spit fear out by trusting God. We run to Him and His will when afraid rather than solutions we come up with ourselves or that are offered by the world.
God created us to be able to feel fear. Fear has a purpose. Fear keeps me from driving at night without my lights on at 80 mph. Some might call this type of fear wisdom. But other fears aren't so clearly for our safety, and even they have a purpose. They determine who we are and how we live by how we react to them. We can respond by running to our Heavenly Daddy, where we find a refuge (a shelter and place of strength) and an ever present (always available) Helper, or we can turn to other sources for security and find, instead, only the fruit of destruction.
With the first choice, fear becomes a momentary feeling that pushes us closer to God and this is replaced with His peace, regardless of the circumstances. With the second, fear becomes a part of us, altering us, until our spirit is filled with and consumed by it. If worry and fear rule our lives, we can be assured that we have been spiritually food poisoned and have responded to a bite, or many bites, of fear the wrong way, because turning to God never produces an increase in fear, never makes our core, our spirit, fearful. Our Daddy gives us power, love and a sound mind, the exact opposite of fear.
There is hope for those sick with worry and fear. Step one, step away from the fruit. Stop eating and run to your Daddy. Step two, get out of the way and let the Great Physician do the work. You can't fix your fear problem anymore than you can operate on your own eyes, Step three, well, if there is a step three or more, God will direct you to it and through it as you do the second one.
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