Faith Over Fear

If I am being honest, I am a fearful person. I do not live my day to day life overcome with fear but to say I am not afraid of anything would be a lie. Do I want to go swimming in a lake where I cannot see anything around me and a swamp monster could bite my toes off? Nope. When there is a thud in the middle of the night and my wife wants me to go check it out; would I rather hide under the covers and close my eyes real tight? Yep! And especially as I have gotten older and become a husband and father, my opportunities to fear have grown. I now have the blessing to fear for both my wife and kids safety, well being, and so on. We are all truly fearful at times but we can take comfort in knowing we are not alone in this feeling. The bible talks directly about being afraid and what to do about it. 

Psalm 56:3 reads, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” This is a very simplistic verse but I would like to peel back the onion a little bit and highlight who is saying this. It is none other than King David. The very David that defeated the giant Goliath, that killed a lion and a bear to protect his sheep, that led an entire army into battles, and even this man was afraid. If someone who faced these giant obstacles was afraid then we all can take comfort in knowing that fear is a normal feeling. We can not allow our fear to stop there, we cannot stop at being afraid. Verse 4 says “In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh to do me?” Spurgeon sums up these two verses nicely by saying, “He feared, but the fear did not fill the whole area of his mind, for he adds, ‘I will trust in thee.’ It is possible, then, for fear and faith to occupy the mind at the same time.”

While fear in and of itself is not necessarily a bad feeling, it needs to be handled in a healthy way where faith is the focus. Because truly, “What can flesh do to me?”, what can this world take from me, what can this life throw at me that our faith in God cannot defeat, that our God is not bigger than? So while most of us will not have to protect our sheep from bears and lions or go to war and defeat a giant; God is bigger than the monsters hiding under your bed. He is bigger then the thud in the middle of the night. And he is bigger than the fear you are keeping inside that you cannot speak about out loud. We just have to trust in Him and keep faith as our focus.

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