The Thing: How Our Understanding of God Shapes Our Fight With Fear

Every mama, whether you have one kiddo or a fifteen passenger van full of them, has plenty on her plate. Sometimes fear fighting can seem like one more thing on the heaped tall plate of our life.

But what if it wasn't one more thing? What if it was the thing?

When fear creeps up we can be tempted to tell ourselves to "Be brave" or "Be strong", but what if fearless isn't something we can be?

Fearlessness is an overflow from a life that knows exactly who God is, what Jesus has done and who we are because of that. It isn't something we conjure or create. It is a way of life because of a deep and abiding understanding of God.

If we aren't grounded in the truth of God's character, the Gospel and our identity that is the result of those truths then we will be tossed by fear and uncertainty.

Yesterday, I dropped my husband off at the airport for a three week trip to East Africa. Three weeks with little communication and wrangling a toddler girl without the help and companionship of my husband and best friend. It hit me harder than I thought it would. After all this is what we signed up for as part of the ministry that my family serves with. It is the work we love and it brings me immense joy to send my husband off half way around the world.

I choked back tears and said goodbye and loaded the sleepy baby girl in the car to head for home. As I drove I began to declare the goodness of God. I began to say the things that are true of God.

He is good. He is a gentle shepherd. He supplies for our needs abundantly. 

{Oh and God is about a million other things that can change and rearrange the way that we view Him, our lives and the struggles of this life. Here is one of my favorite books on the attributes of God.}

I preached the Gospel to myself. I allowed the Spirit to remind me that in Christ I am whole and complete and free from fear and guess what? The fear fled. The fear fled because Jesus drives out fear. Perfect love casts out fear and Jesus is the purest most perfect love.

The bottom line is that the very worst could happen in a broken world. Those dark fears, the ones you bury deep and utter to no one, could happen. A car accident could take your babies. Your husband could have an affair and leave. Bankruptcy. Foreclosure. Rape. Incest. All the ugly could happen. 

We are not a people of the "what ifs" we are a people of the "what is".  If all the ugly broke open and spilled all over your life your life would change, but God would not. That is another one of His amazing attributes; He never changes. He sent Jesus to a broken world and the reality of our fears are the result of a broken world not the result of a broken God.

All this talk about bravery and fear free living is just another way of admitting that we are broken and seeing God's amazing knack for putting broken things back together.

Our fear is small compared to our great God. Embrace that. Live in that knowledge and you will see fear flee.

{How do you preach the Gospel to yourself? How does your personal walk with Christ (quiet time, personal worship, spiritual disciplines, etc...) shape the way you approach the struggle with fear?}