What is fear? There are essentially two types of fear: Fear of God, and all other fear (which we’ll term natural fear). Proverbs 1:7 says that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Sounds a little strange, really, that being afraid is the beginning of wisdom. But the word translated ‘fear’ in this verse is taken from the Hebrew yir-aw’ which can translate two ways. When used to talk about fear of the Lord it’s speaking of reverence – specifically moral reverence. This is not the kind of fear we’re talking about today. We’re going to address natural fear.
What do we fear? We fear all sorts of things and the list is a little different for everybody. We fear emotional vulnerability, long-term commitment, change, seeking a new job, relocating to a new city, making a new start, spiders. (That last one might be mine). Each of these, and most others you can think of, ultimately come from a fear of the unknown. What will happen if I open up emotionally to my spouse? Will she see it as weakness? What if that new job doesn’t work out? What if the schools in that city end up not being up to par? What if I leave this good job to go into ministry and I can’t pay my bills?
But here’s the thing: God dwells in the unknown. (More on that later).
What does fear do? 1) Fear opposes faith. I heard it said once that fear is the absence of faith. I think this is more accurate. Faith and fear can be active in the same heart at the same time, but not peacefully. They do battle – and one will win out. We get to decide the winner.
2) Fear divides our hearts. We need to have a heart for God but fear wants us to have a heart for ourselves. It wants us to give into our concerns and not follow God into that new realm.
3) Fear keeps the joy of living for God hidden from view. The story of the faithless Israelite spies sums up all three of these things. When the spies came back they brought with them some of the fruit of the land. This fruit proved that what God had told them about the land was true. In essence it proved that his promises were true and that they could take Him at his word. They also brought back a faithless report full of fear and doubt concerning whether they could actually take the land. Faith and fear were active in the same place, each trying to win the same hearts. Fear won, and the Israelites took a detour. The joys of the Promised Land remained hidden from the view of God’s people for another 40 years.
Fear itself does not negate our faith Fear may oppose faith, but it is not the absence of it. We may have questions, concerns, trepidations, even a little skepticism; but that doesn’t mean we are not operating in faith. We fail to operate in faith when we chose to give in to those fears. When we choose to stand on fear rather than to stand on faith. Abraham and Sarah had a lot of skepticism and doubt about having a child in their old age, but they chose to stand on faith. As a result they saw the joy of following after God in the face of their baby boy, Isaac. Jesus agonized in the garden over his call to the cross. But faith won out, and a world was redeemed.
Scripture should relieve our fears We often wait around for a clear sign from God that our leadings are correct. We want God to show us the end of the thing before we agree to start. We want to know the unknown. But God wants us to know Him. Those last to words are significant. We all know someone that we wouldn’t lend so much as a pencil to. We know them better than to trust them. We also know that person who we’d trust with our car, our house, our children. Someone we’d follow into any situation just because they asked us to, without requiring an explanation. All because we know them well enough from past experiences to know we can trust them. God asks us to trust Him so that we can get to know Him; so that we can get to know His character. Why? So we trust Him more the next time, and are quicker to follow him.
We usually hesitate because what He’s asking seems outlandish or illogical. Yet, consider these things: a 90 year old woman gets pregnant, a burning bush that speaks, huge rivers that part, trumpets causing walls to crumble, a girl told she’ll conceive while still a virgin. Is God asking of us anything more outlandish than these things? Scripture is full of stories of people who followed God into the unknown. Those stories don’t seem so outlandish to us as readers because we know what’s on the other side of those rivers and walls. We get to dwell in their unknown with God. The challenge, then, is will we turn around and face our own unknowns with faith? Will we take that first step into a raging river trusting God to divide the rushing waters around us? In part two of this blog we’ll take about letting our fears give way to our faith.
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