Since I’ve been given the opportunity to drop everything for a short get-away with my hubby, I decided to re-post a timely blog about being afraid. Hope it blesses you.
A repost from 10-1-13
When Mark and I were engaged, I lived in an apartment on Mary Ann Drive that we would both call home once we were married. Mark was finishing up school and lived in a dorm on campus. One night I asked him to pick up a scary movie. Granted, I was a chicken as a kid when a scary movie came on but now that I was a woman of 26 I knew it would be a different story. Isn’t it fun to get a little scared?
Mark rented the movie and when he arrived, I popped up some popcorn and we put the movie in the VCR. (Yes, I said VCR.) I honestly don’t even remember the movie title but once the opening scene began, fear struck me. I held my eyes. I held my ears. Finally, I turned to him and said, “We’re gonna have to turn this off.”
“What?”
“I can’t watch this. It’s freaking me out.”
“But this was your idea! You wanted a scary movie.”
Turns out…No, I didn’t.
My daughter Sophie is a lot like me. If she even hears intense music coming from my room, she will ask me to turn it down. It could be Dateline or some mystery on the History Channel but if the music is scary, you can be sure she we will come in to ask that I turn the volume way down. She doesn’t like to be scared. In scary situations, she draws very close to me. If she could climb into my clothing and disappear, she would. She sees Mark and I as her safe place. When she comes to us afraid, we speak words of comfort to her and assure her she is safe with us.
At this time of year, with haunted house attractions and scary things, I often wonder what it is about being scared that we think is fun – what we find appealing. Maybe the fact that it’s the only time that being scared is safe…when it’s just pretend.
But the reality is…Scary things in real life aren’t fun at all.
They are often paralyzing. They steal our joy and peace.
Recently, I received an e-mail from a friend whose son has been fighting a serious health condition for 2 years now. They’ve had many many ups and downs. So many, I’m sure she’s felt often that it’s all just too much. Questions. Waiting. They have tried treatment after treatment and found no relief. She was updating me on the most recent treatment that has seemed to be working. Watching him go through this suffering has been a scary thing.
She wrote to me,
“I am holding my breath, scared and hopeful at the same time. After being in bed for two years, it will take a while to regain his strength and completely heal. We beg God every day to allow it.”
“I am holding my breath, scared and hopeful at the same time.”
As I read her words, they ministered to a fear I’ve been struggling against and have even blogged about in the past. In a culture that seems to be more and more about elevating mankind to the place where God should sit, it’s as though when fears come, there’s no place to turn. I’ve struggled with fears that my children will be drawn away into the vanity fair that surrounds them. My prayer has been that they would set their face like a flint on pursuing God.
Because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame. Psalm 50:7
It’s a slow process, and at times I become afraid of the choices they might make. Just like in the movies, I feel as though, often, my children don’t see the danger lurking. They don’t understand that Satan is on the prowl right outside the door.
But I do.
And I struggle with fears that the dangers of this world are trying to swallow them up. I struggle with irrational fears that maybe God doesn’t plan to act, or that, somehow, poor parenting choices will bring about just deserts for me and my children.
It’s no fun being afraid.
My only escape from my fears, real and imagined, is to run to Jesus. And, as my friend said in her e-mail, I often go to Him, “Holding my breath, scared and hopeful at the same time.”
Have you ever gone to God like that?
Well, here’s what I’m learning as I run to Him to escape my fears.
…God IS the hope I am hoping in! God silences my fears. God is my Abba Father.
When I run to Him and hide under His arm, He speaks His truths to me from His word.
The LORD will work out his plans for my life — for your faithful love, O LORD, endures forever. Don’t abandon me, for you made me. Psalm 138:8
What time I am afraid I will trust in you. Psalm 56:3
You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Isaiah 26:3
The fear of man brings a snare: but whoso puts his trust in the LORD shall be safe. Proverbs 29:25
Blessed is the man that trusts in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat comes, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. Jeremiah 17:7-8
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation. Isaiah 12:2
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. John 14:27
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. Romans 8:15
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies. Romans 8:28-33
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7
The name of the LORD is a strong fortress; the godly run to him and are safe. Prov. 18:10
And there are so many more verses from God that comfort us in our time of fear.
God knows we “hold our breath in fear”. God knows we struggle with the challenges we face in this life. He beckons us to come and promises to give us rest. (Matt 11:28-29)
If, right now, you are finding no fun in being afraid, run to Him. He is faithful. He is good.
His message, and mine today is “Do not be afraid.”
