Living Without Fear

A fog has rolled in over me.  Not the kind that gently settles in over a meadow on a bright, sunshiny morning.  Dense, intense, against the backdrop of ever clouding thoughts and feelings, the shades of blues and grays streak across my soul in a gradient color of dullness. The not so distant view of life stares back at me, silhouetted and unclear, an outline without substance.  I see without really seeing anything.  With no beginning or ending, I can’t find the center of my being.

I’m lost.  Rather engulfed.  I don’t know which way leads to light and which to darkness.  Surrounded by a mixture of not quite white and not dark enough black, I feel lukewarm.  Ordinarily dismissive thoughts, I grab on to, long enough to violently stir my emotions. What I’m thinking and feeling seems all wrong.  The words I hear sound like my words, but don’t sound like me.  I’ve never felt this intense uncertainty before.  Blinded to the truth, and no longer on solid enough ground to distinguish the lies, I slip into another reality.  I fall into blackness.

Now, I’m no longer alone, and quite aware of it.  Fear has joined me.  I want to run, but where can I go?  Fear sees through the darkness.  Fear is the darkness.  A person can’t hide from fear.  Thoughts I had while in the midst of the fog, ambiguous and inconclusive as they were, now speak in more authoritative tones.  Fear has overwhelmed me.  Fear has become me.  I’m afraid.

Have you ever been afraid, living in fear?

Fear takes the turbulent events of today, extrapolates them out to their worst possible conclusions and then calls it a destiny.  Or, in good times of happiness, waits around for the other shoe to drop.  In either case, fear looks into the future without seeing God.

Fear sits just outside your life, looking for an opening into your soul, disguised as thoughts and concerns about the future.  No area of your life—family, friends, future, work, health, retirement—goes untouched.  Once inside of you, fear uses lying thoughts to create lying emotions.  You begin to feel anxious and worried about the future.

But it’s all make-believe.

Any attempts on your part to beat back fear, at best lead to just temporary relief.  Poised, waiting for just the moment to re-enter your life, fear never allows you to experience long-term satisfaction.  You can battle fear in your own effort, quote bible verses at it if you will, but mere human effort and self-will cannot remove it from your life.  Fear is the most violent of storms the enemy sends your way.  Even when the deluge momentarily stops, the clouds never break.  Soon, the vicious attacks upon your soul will begin again.

To overcome fear, you need more than desire.  You need desperation.  Only in desperation, will you call out to Jesus.  In the earthly time of Jesus, a few of His closest friends, men well adept at dealing with the storms of the sea, found themselves desperate.  Men who prided themselves as seaworthy became undone by overpowering wind and turbulent waters.  Their boat was about to sink.  Fearful of losing their lives, they went down below and woke up a sleeping Jesus.

The story serves as a metaphor for fear.  As the storms roll into our lives, we first look inwardly, relying on our own abilities to withstand the fear that the storms bring.  We believe we can win by calling on our most recent spiritual teaching to help us.  But fear can withstand any teaching you might offer against it.  Fear withstands the onslaught of spiritual words and beliefs you throw its way.  Fear respects and retreats only when confronted by Jesus.

Jesus awoke, gave a hearty rebuke to the wind, and told the waves to quiet down.  The storm immediately went away.  That’s exactly how fear behaves when confronted with Jesus. It goes away.

But don’t expect rebuking fear in the name of Jesus to give you any long lasting victories.  Yes, confronted with Jesus, fear makes a hasty retreat, but never so far away as to allow your life to go out of sight.  Fear watches from a distance, and the moment you place something other than Jesus at the center of your life, it begins advancing toward you.

To defeat fear for good takes more than a rebuke in the name of Christ.  Once you sweep your life clean of fear, you must allow it to fill up with Jesus.  Otherwise, unoccupied by the life of Christ flowing through yours, fear will return.  And with a vengeance.

A long-term strategy to defeat fear requires that you live desperately for Jesus in the short-term, as in moment-by-moment.

A moment-by-moment, desperate reliance on Jesus keeps fear away from your life.

Fear cannot remain in the presence of Jesus.  There’s no fear in love, because perfect love casts out fear. 

Fear can never co-mingle with the blood of Jesus.

So the moment you begin to sense fear filling up your life, receive this as a warning that you’ve lost your desperation for Jesus.  Somehow, something other than Christ lives on the leading edge of your life.  By turning your back on Jesus, fear has seized on the opening.

Yet to win against fear requires that you simply put Jesus back in your moment.  Standing in Jesus in the moment clears up your future.  Don’t wait until fear overwhelms you.  At the first sign of its arrival, cry out to Jesus.  The moment the wind and waters grow turbulent, go down into your spirit and wake Him up.  Tell Jesus your soul is under siege, and that you need Him now.

Do you want fear out of your life for good?  Then string one moment focused on Christ with the next, and then the next, and so on.  You’ll never swallow victory whole, but you can eat at it one bite at a time.  You can experience victory over fear with a moment-by-moment dependency in Jesus. You have nothing to fear.  The certainty of Jesus awaits you now and in your future.

Never forget that Jesus lives within you.

You’re boat isn’t going down with Him on board.

Live like you have a God.

You do have one, you know.

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