“Scaredy Cat”, by Carolyn Warvel, is a child’s story of a lion cub who meets Daniel in the lion’s den. God shut the mouths of the hungry lions when Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den in Daniel 6, the story says the lions ran away in terror, and all that was left was Daniel and the little cub. As Daniel befriended the fearful little lion, he asked why it was nicknamed Scaredy Cat? The little lion replied, “Because I’m scared of everything. I’m afraid of the dark, being alone, people, other lions, mice, spiders, dirt, the clouds falling on me, getting hurt, monsters, getting lost, snakes, and…” After a pause, the little lion, Scaredy Cat, asked Daniel why he wasn’t afraid of the big lions, wherewith Daniel said, “Because I know God is with me. He has helped me before and I knew He would help me now. You see, God is my special friend.” “Whenever I’m scared or confused, I just stop and pray and He comforts me. I have learned to trust Him over the years.”
Considering fear is so prevalent and paralyzing for us, it would seem to be a good thing to find out more about it. Most fears, it seems to me, are about not living in life, but more living in our minds, it’s always about “what’s going to happen next”. And seeing as how “what might happen next” is not here yet, “next” does not actually exist, and if the fear is about what does not exist, the fear is 100% imaginary. AND….if we fear what does not exist, our psychological medical community calls that insanity.
Let’s talk about our Being In The Grip of Fear and why are we such Scaredy Cats when God is such a sure foundation to us and all our tomorrows. i’ll be right back.
Fear! Dread! Terror! The things that go “bump” in the night in our dreams; dark hallways, floating specters of faceless, nameless, unsubstantiated evil hovering around us in our minds and imagination in seemingly looming unconquerable fear. In the back of people’s minds there seems to hover, what i call, the “dread of tomorrow”. All good counseling has a standard reply to people who are “afraid”: give your fear a handle and don’t just let it loom, unknown, nameless, faceless and without substance…give it a handle, and i don’t mean the name of a spirit, but what is it we are afraid of. Be honest, and name your fear.
The less important trusting God becomes, the more fear and suspicion (suspicion being the Ishmael of discernment) begin to take over, and we know fear and suspicion are ALWAYS close allies! Fearful people are far more rooted in their mind than in reality, in fact, suspicion is largely responsible for prejudice. Prejudice is when we make judgments or decisions on someone else’s behalf without having all the facts or truth. We make value judgments based on personal prejudices all the time, and it’s all rooted in fear and not having all the facts or truth.
How often do we not have enough information, and as a result we tend to “fill in the blank” with “negative assumptions”? Rather than tell ourselves we don’t have enough information, in our impatience, we “fill in the blank” with what we “think” MIGHT be in our future. If we do that often enough, we’ll begin finding our footing rooted in fear and not faith. What “MIGHT” be is imaginary, it does not exist yet. In our dreams when there comes things which go “bump in the night”, we “fill in the blank” about what it “could be”, and we project our fears of monsters, spiders, or something terrible into that blank place of identity. Sometimes i wonder if “fear” is one facet of what is alluded to in Psalm 91:6 in mentioning “…the pestilence that walks in darkness…”
Fear is an intolerant, demanding, iron fisted task master, driving us to behaviors and actions we would never choose if we were free from its relentless call lulling us into it’s grasp, woefully declaring “not enough”….not enough love, not enough money, not enough power, not enough faith…just not enough of anything for anyone or any situation. Without trust in God we easily become subject to believing we are unloved, unwanted, and unneeded…hard driven by a life thrust upon us, like slaves on a slave ship, starved, abused, and trapped in the dark.
Do you spend your time being “Led By God” –OR- “Driven By Fear”?
Mark4:37-41, “And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so much so, it was already filling. But He was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they woke Him up and said, “Teacher, do You not care we are perishing?” We are going to die here, don’t you even care!!?? Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful? How is it you have no faith?” And verse 41, “And they feared exceedingly, saying to one another, “Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!”
The fear Jesus rebuked was one projected by the disciples who had visions of sinking into the deep and drowning. It had not happened therefore it was a fear of something imaginary. True, it was a potential, still though, it was a fear of what “MIGHT” happen. The other “fear” as spoken of in vs. 41, was different yet was translated as “feared”. It is the Greek word we got our English “phobia” from, and a “phobia” is an “irrational fear, horror, aversion, as in panic-type fear, or terror. It became the common word for “fear” through the notion of “panic coupled with fright”.
We as a society in America today are largely, hugely driven by fear. The Lord doesn’t suggest we not be afraid, He commands it, “Be Not Afraid! Fear Not”. 68 times, “fear not for I AM with you”, “fear not, peace unto you”, “fear not for I have heard your prayers”, “fear not for I AM in this place”, “fear not, nor be discouraged”, etc, etc. But yet we are so terribly driven by fear.
i have 21 pages, over 500 legitimate, documented… exaggerated, illogical, and inexplicable fears that Americans, today, right now, are riddled with … they are called phobias. Top ten, fear of the dark, fear of heights, fear of open spaces, fear of closed spaces, fear of spiders, fear of pointed objects, fear of germs, fear of disease, fear of snakes, and here is the most incredible …
Fear of the number 13. Triskaidekaphobia … this phobia is so pervasive in Western practice it has actually influenced an entire modern culture. Typically no 13th floor on high rises, no 13th row on many airplanes, many times people won’t buy a house which has the number 13 in the address, we don’t often see 13th avenue or 13th street, and rarely is there “Road” or Hwy 13.
Not in the top ten, but certainly in the top 20 are 4 in particular, Atychiphobia, fear of failure or of being wrong … absolutely pervasive in our society. Socialphobia, fear of being evaluated negatively in social situations. Sedatephobia, fear of silence. And Ymophobia, fear of being contrary or being in opposition, just going along to get along, fearful others won’t like or accept us.
If we will trust God and cast our cares upon Him, hope will spring fresh in our hearts, and in hope we will step into faith. In the silence of the righteous, as we wait upon the Lord, there is hope! Hope & Faith!
Faith is the opposite of fear. Hope is the forerunner of faith. When we find faith we can believe hope was there first. Our fears are largely about what might happen tomorrow, yet from somewhere way, way back in our mind, fear drives us to have this perpetual nagging that something is wrong. We can’t put our finger exactly on what it is, but we feel like, something, just something is wrong…. but we don’t know what it is.
Hope generates a vision of transformation, and we need more “trans” in our “formation”. Hope, the expectation of becoming and overcoming, and every believer in Christ has an expectation, in one fashion or another, of being a “becomer” and an “overcomer”! Hope must have an object to act on, and the object of Hope is Expectation. Hope is a character trait of the righteous, they have an attitude of anticipation with expectation that something will happen to further fulfill the vision of transformation. Our hope is based on God’s faithfulness, and is a result of trusting God, remembering what He has done. Hope lifts our face, and opposingly, despair causes the face to drop.
i’m addressing the fear of tomorrow, or next week, month, or year, and the trust we need to put in God today concerning tomorrow. Tomorrow looks like looming doom to many people, although tomorrow doesn’t exist and is imaginary. People seem to, so easily, forget about all the good things which might happen. The Lord says trust in Him, not in tomorrow.
Matthew 6:34, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” 2Timothy1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
Genesis32:11-12, “Please deliver me from the hand of Esau, my brother, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me and the mother with the children. But You said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.”
Jacob feared what Esau “MIGHT” do to him, in saying “…just in case he comes and attacks me…”. He also recounts the promise of what God “WILL” do with him. Both the fear and the promise are about the future. Jacob was driven to run for a long time based on “MIGHT” instead of “WILL”. Fear driven vs. God driven. There’s another Good discussion.
The circumstances caused fear about what “MIGHT” happen, God spoke a promise about what “WILL” happen. Both are about future circumstances. !BUT!, God’s promise had already happened in His heart, and because God doesn’t lie, His promise was a reality, not a potential. God’s promise was more sure than tomorrow! In the place where things are truly non-existent, God’s promise still stands!
When we doubt God, we are projecting the potential of our history on to His promises. Example: In the past people have let us down and all the viscous circumstances which followed are in our mental data base of possibilities for the future. People break their promises, God does not. When God promises us things of our future, our fear influences us to project our experience with men onto God, and unsurprisingly, we find our fear very believable. We are unsure of tomorrow, because tomorrow isn’t here, so tomorrow is a giant “fill in the blank”. There is nothing wrong with carefully and wisely “filling in the blank” unless we… “fill in the blank” about God according to our history with men. As a result, fear and anxiety often drive us to silence.
What drives our silence, even to the point of consciously, but passively participating in things we know are wrong? Silence may be golden, but it isn’t always the right choice.
We are silent when the enemy threatens to expose our past. We are silent for fear of rejection, persecution, being marginalized or minimized. We are silent many times to justify our own behavior while citing someone else’s. We are silent when words are about to be spoken and shouldn’t.
There are times when “filling in the blank” is a good idea, and i believe it’s a process the Lord gave us as part of our decision-making mechanism. We test out “what if” scenario’s to decide the best path to follow, and we decide the future of how we do business based on history… it is wise.
!BUT!, and there is a giant “But God…” in the middle… when God steps into the middle of our circumstance and makes a statement and a promise, His Word trumps all our experience and circumstance……and that just blows my mind because my decision-making machine is so used to doing business as it has been trained, according to the world. We can be trained by the world, or trained by grace….so i have to ask, who’s your trainer?
i’ve never met anyone who fears the past, except those who fear the deeds of their past will catch them and determine their future, so it’s STILL all about the future which has not happened yet…. Here are three facts about tomorrow: 1) it does not exist yet, 2) tomorrow will come, 3) God’s promise today is tomorrow’s truth, even though tomorrow doesn’t exist yet. Nothing about tomorrow exists except God’s promise which is more sure than tomorrow. Even if you don’t know where you’re going, the Lord is already up ahead waiting for you.
Friends, fear does not need to control our lives. It has many faces, but with the Lord’s help, we can learn to trust Him and break the grip. i’d bet most of us haven’t begun to fathom how many of our thoughts, opinions, and choices are controlled by anxious feelings or imagined scenarios that keep us from trusting God. Suspicion, dread, and doubt can plague our lives to the point that we feel continually anxious over our well-being, our career and finances, or even the remaining years of our lives. By continuously living in fear and anxiety, we eventually become resigned to life under a long, dismal, stream of lukewarm gray water with high percentages of over concern, and trepidacious worry. Think! Are the fears which knock you off your feet, are they real? We don’t have to be afraid, as in paralyzing dismay. How about we practice being brave in small steps creating a pattern of success, stretching the envelope to expand our territory of courage, driving our binding fears and distrust of God backwards.
Many times our fears are born of carrying burdens which are not ours to carry, living under a yoke that is not ours to own. Jesus said His burden was light and His yoke was easy, and i believe the inverse of that is also true in that ALL other yokes are hard, and all other burdens are too heavy. Actually, fearfully responding to circumstances can be a habit, and only when we reach the panic stage do we realize we have succumbed, again, to our foreboding uneasiness.
Deuteronomy 3:22, “You must not fear them, for the LORD your God Himself fights for you.'” God makes them a promise about their future, and His promise is as good as accomplished in the things which are not yet. Joshua 1:9, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” Did you know that in Hebrew, “nor be dismayed” means “don’t fall to pieces in the face of your circumstances, and throw yourself on the ground screaming and crying.” God’s promise of “WILL BE” trumps the fear of “MIGHT BE”… The Lord promises He will be with us in all our tomorrow’s. Think about it.
In the middle of fear, the Lord gives us a “But God…” which trumps all possibilities of the terror of tomorrow. i love it when the Bible says, “But God”.
“But”, meaning on the contrary, or “except for the fact”. The world tells us one thing, then there is “But God” that is to the contrary. The devil persuades us one way, then there is “But God”, which tells us the truth which is on the other hand from the world or the devil.
Let us not fear imagined pursuers who might do us harm, nor contrived creeping things which hunt us in the night. Matthew28:18-20, “Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. I am commissioning you to go out, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: live by example in word and deed, instructing them to do, with all their breathing, thinking, and feeling, everything whatsoever I have commanded you: and, take this to heart, hear this, I am with you always, all the way to the end of the world. Amen.”
There is nothing to fear but fear itself, and if God is for us, who can be against us. i’m no scaredy cat, How about you?
i’m Social Porter and thank you for joining us here at Outposts, a semi-live broadcast from the late evening banks of the Ockluhwahhah River. This production was brought to you by Living In His Name Ministries, Sisters Coffee in Sisters, Oregon, Lee Arwood of the Druid Hills Grocery on Asheville Hwy, Mr. Fine, you know who you are, the Mebane Freedom League, and Dot Cleveland at Nettie’s Beauty Shop. When you’re down town, stop in and see Jeff and Karen, the makers of fine confectionaries, at Trinity Bakers, where there’s always something good in the oven, and it’s oh so good!
Fear not friends! If you know Jesus, you have a “But God” in your midst and God’s promise is more sure than tomorrow!
Eph2:3-4 says we were once children of wrath, “but God” made us alive in Christ. In Psalms 73:26 “My flesh and my heart fail; “But God” is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Many wander in despair, “But God has called us to peace”.
Remember the words of Jesus in Luke12:32 as you go your way this week, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Until next time, be strong and courageous!