Most would probably answer, if being honest, that they hide or run away. It’s a natural instinct to flee when fear arises. But I don’t mean your fear of spiders or creepy things, in fact, I would encourage fleeing if a giant spider would land on your shoulder! I mean those deeply routed fears, they may be generational, passed down from family members, or they may be something your own past has developed within you.
I have had many fears, enough to say there was a time that I lived most days of my life in fear. Fear of many things, some generational, some my own past created, and some…well some I’m not sure where I came up with them. I felt like I was always living “one step ahead” to prevent what I feared most from happening. It was exhausting living in such a way. Over a year ago, God and I dealt with most of those fearful feelings. He had changed my perspective and I began to look at things differently.
Most recently, fear wasn’t something that was on my radar. I do have those feelings well up inside of me occasionally, but I now know what to do to stop them. The other day God brought something to my attention in a dramatic way. He laid something on my heart that scared me to death. I was rendered speechless by His request. Then I began physically and spiritually crying out to God. I remember thinking to Him “have you lost your mind?!!!”…He’s GOD! What a mess we can become in an emotional moment!
Through a lot of prayer, I found that the request God laid on my heart was not because it was actually to come to pass. Rather, He knew how I would react and He knew I needed to see that instead of trusting Him, I was stopped in my tracks by fear. It was a lesson He knew I had to learn about trusting Him and moving forward.
My sweet baby girl has been pressing on through some fears of her own. She now has her own “big girl bed” and has done a wonderful job sleeping by herself through the night. She has a thing though that is ever so precious. When she does wake up, she cries for “Mommy” and when I come, she wraps her arms around my neck and pulls her head in next to my cheek, as close as she can get and falls fast asleep. It is just the sweetest thing! One night as she did this and as I thanked God for her sweet little self, a small voice seemed to whisper “your Father is there in this same way when you are afraid”. I love just thinking of that for a moment. Just imagine that when we are afraid, we can cry out for our Father and then wrap our arms around Him and get as close as we can get! How easily we could begin to cry and want to go back to what we knew before. We could refuse to get rest until we are back to the familiar place we rested for so long.
I pray that when afraid, you choose to cling to your Father, who is calling you forward. We can find rest in His familiar arms even when walking through unfamiliar territory.
“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” Hebrews 11:8
“They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”
Psalm 112:7
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