Living in Fear or Finding Courage (part 1)

While attending the recent “Strong Men’s Conferences”, one of the first messages brought forth was about men needing to see themselves differently. I believe women have the same problem, although it may affect them in a different areas. The area we all seem to struggle in from time to time, to different degrees, is FEAR. We all seem to struggle with this area in different ways, but the end result is still the same. We live less than God designed us to live, which leads to less than we hoped for in life.

So, why this issue of fear? I’m sure there are lots of reasons, and maybe different combinations for different people, but the bottom line is fear hinders us greatly and all too often we take care of the symptoms rather than the root cause.  It seems much easier to medicate than to operate so people search for short or long term fixes.

As a Christian, I have learned that fear can be traced back to a spiritual source, which lays much of the cause at the feet of Satan and his demons. Don’t shut down now on me and write it off now.  What I’m saying is just because you don’t see the cause or because you tend to think people over simplify the cause to the spiritual doesn’t mean it’s not the cause. You can’t attribute all negative issues to spiritual causes, but many are. I wrote a previous post on the age-old practice of “Blood Letting”.  I discussed how it was practiced for over 2,000 years before we understood how the human body worked, and in particular, how the blood system worked. Doctors, through ignorance, practiced the wrong procedure trying to make people healthier. Jesus spoke so much about the root cause of our problem being a “Heart” issue and the people thought he was nuts. They even accused him of having demons himself because he contradicted the current religious mindset. How easy for us today to do the same thing instead of reasoning out the scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 15:16-18

Jesus said, “Are you still lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated? But the things that precede out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.”

In fact, King Solomon wrote about the heart being the most prized possession we have and that we should protect it at all cost. The problem often is that we can’t seem to discern our own hearts, let alone someone else’s heart. If that’s the case, how do people know if their heart has problems? Read the scripture.

Proverbs 4:23          Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flowthe springs of life.

A number of years ago I was having chest pains and told my doctor. They sent me to a cardiologist who specializes in the heart and they ran all kinds of tests. When I got the results back, with alarm on his face, the doctor said out of 10 markers of someone ready to have a heart attack I had 9! They scheduled me for a hospital procedure called a catheterization where they run a camera up a large vain to your heart to see what’s wrong before they cut you open. All the machines and tests before said I was ready for a heart attack. When they could “See” my heart working they said the heart wasn’t the problem. The point is we can speculate about all kinds of things as to why we have fear in our lives, but only God can “See” the heart up front and personally to know what’s up.

Going to scripture we can discover the beginning of fear in the heart of man in Genesis.

Genesis 3:8-10

They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

When our first father violated his relationship with God, fear entered his heart. That fear was developed by Satan’s trickery and deception. From that first act of rebellion, Adam’s heart became cold towards God and influenced his mind not to trust God. What was the result? He hid from God when just the day before he walked freely with God in the cool of the day.  That sounds a lot like us when we sin.

The apostle Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy not to allow fear to captivate his heart, but rather expect God to equip him and others with gifting for every task ahead of them.

2 Timothy 1:7      For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Fear has a way of putting a freeze on our courage and causing us to retreat rather than move forward. Fear has a way of causing our mind to lock up tighter than a bank vault rather than working like a well oiled machine that God created. Do you remember when you went for that job interview and you let fear rule your heart so your mind went to mush? Do you remember the movie Back to the Future when Marty’s father was too afraid to act with courage against Biff? We have all been there under different circumstances, but it all goes back to the first act of rebellion against a loving God. The fear type may be different, but the pattern is the same.

Now just to be clear, not all things we are afraid of are wrong. Jumping off a cliff without a parachute is plain stupid. Driving 100 mph in a 25 mph zone is stupid especially when there is a cop car sitting at the same spot we want to drive through. There is a healthy form of fear called healthy respect, but in this article we are dealing with the fear the holds us back, and keeps us from God’s best.

In the following article I want to take this subject further to show a solution for dealing effectively with fear. Keep your eyes open for the same title “Part 2”.

Questions:

Have you ever thought Satan might be involved in the kind of fear you are dealing with? The Holy Spirit can help.

Are you willing to trade in your fear for some real courage? The Holy Spirit will help anyone who calls for help.

Love seeing answers in God’s word!

Pastor Dale