What the fear?

These are troubled times we live in. Uncertainties are at every juncture of our lives, I’m speaking of Americans here. We turn on the news to see political unrest and violence in our streets. Just outside of our doors is world-wide pandemic, the ever-present reminder stares back at us behind the masks of those we use to greet with a smile. Yes, there’s a lot to fear these days, a lot of unknowns. It could easily consume all of us, but is that how Christians should live?

Let me throw out a blanket statement, offend you, and then walk it back a little. Fear is sinful. There, I said it. It’s out there and I’m not saying it as a judgement, but as a reminder, an urging, to purge your life of all the sin that your flesh pulls you into, inasmuch as God’s grace will allow, of course. And I didn’t say that to mean that all fear is sin. You misunderstood me. Someone getting startled by a prankster rounding a corner isn’t sinning. The man walking through the woods who jumps back from a venomous snake isn’t sinning, I don’t care if he has to change his underwear or not. That’s not the fear I mean, I’m talking about the fear that consumes you, the fear that takes over your day or lingers in your head long after you’ve wanted it to go away. I know that fear, I’ve experienced it and that is why I want to explain to you, with an abundance of grace, why I know this type of fear is sinful in nature.

To live in fear, being consumed by the anxious energy is not pleasing to God. For one, it’s as if you have made whatever you’re fearful about bigger than the God you serve. You’ve treated it as if God doesn’t have control over it and it is up to you to deal with, and I think we both know that isn’t working. At the very simplest way of putting it, it’s a misplacement of faith. Either you don’t believe God can handle it or you think that he won’t. Again, I say this with grace, being well aware that it is not as simple as my words make it out to be, but it really is. If you believed that God, creator of the universe and atoms and molecules, could take care of whatever was making you fearful, you wouldn’t be consumed by it. Although, for most of us, it is probably some version of the latter point that gets us. This is a problem.

Saying, thinking, believing that God won’t take care of your problem is akin to calling God a liar. I know that sounds harsh, but I believe there’s plenty of Scripture to back me up on this, Romans 8:28 comes to mind right now: Paul writes, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who were called according to his purpose.” (ESV). And if Paul wasn’t a reasonable enough source, let’s look at just one of the many times Jesus spoke about this, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (ESV). That’s Jesus, the Son of God, God in human flesh telling us, encouraging us, to believe in what we are praying to God for. So by not believing that God won’t listen to you is doing exactly what Jesus tells you not to do.

Our God is an amazing God, a grace-giving God, the one who we call Father. By writing this I am not saying that God will eliminate this virus, or take away the violence of the world, or even remove the thing that you are so fearful of. He is God, not a genie-in-a-bottle for our every whim. But He is a loving God, full of mercy, constantly seeking for ways to pour himself into our lives. He answers prayers in better ways than we can conceive at the point of praying them, because he is a faithful God. We are required to pray in that faith, trusting that He is who he says he is and believe!