The reason Jesus told us not to fear is because life is scary. We fear the loss of life with a frightening health diagnosis. Or, at least life as we know it. We fear the loss of relationship during a conflict. We fear losing our reputation as others see our sins or mistakes. We fear for a wayward child (where loss of relationship, reputation, and life are all lurking in the background). There is a loss behind every one of those fears, and we grieve those potential losses in advance. How can we trust God when life feels scary?
The Panic of Existing in the “What If”
The common sense (and true) statement when life feels out of control is that there is no sense wasting energy fearing something that may never happen. The theological answer is that God works all this out for our good and his glory (Romans 8:28). The promise is that he will give us exactly what we need when and if our worst fears come to pass (Hebrews 13:5).
When I am stuck in a negative thought loop, though, I tend to repeat these to myself as some sort of magical mantra without really letting them penetrate my heart. I think if I can speak Romans 8:28 over myself enough times, I will start to feel better so I can go on with my day.
What Our Fears Reveal About Our Hearts
In the book The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God, authors Allender and Longman say, “Our emotions connect our inner world to the ups and downs of life.”
When fear grips us, what are some things that fear is telling us about our inner world? What does fear reveal about our idols and identity?
The Work of Repentance
We cause ourselves so much pain by not doing the things we should. A farmer who doesn’t plant would be foolish to grieve a lack of harvest. We may have “fields to plow or weeding to do,” and sitting around moaning about it isn’t going to get it done. We may need to have the hard conversation. We may have to repent of the sin that contributed to the problem we are facing. It may not fix it, but it will restore our fellowship with God, which is our only true source of comfort and safety.
The Rest of Release
It’s easy to let our jobs, our ministries, or even the house we live in become our identity. And sometimes hard providences may require us to surrender those things. God entrusts them to us for a time, but they ultimately belong to Him. We fight and claw to cling to something that wasn’t ours to begin with. They are so much a part of who we are, that we aren’t sure who we will be without them. As Jerry Bridges says in his book Who Am I?: Identity in Christ:
Our answer to the question, “Who am I?”, is to be found in neither our achievements, nor our failures, nor the evaluations of others, but in Christ alone. It is he who, as our representative before God, lived the perfect life we could never live, died the death we deserve to die, and now sits at the right hand of God, interceding for us—and I suspect, cheering us on.
Our lives, our possessions, and our circumstances all belong to God. We may plan to steward them for a lifetime, but God may just call us to that for a season. That doesn’t mean we can’t be honest about our pain, but we should go to God with open hearts, knowing that we can trust him in the uncertainty and the hurt. We can trust God when life is scary.
The God of Both Our Struggle and Surrender
Sometimes we have to step into the hard tasks that are required of us. He promises to give us the strength to endure. Other times we must entrust swirling circumstances we cannot control to a God who knows and sees “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). In the struggle and surrender, we can trust God—even when life feels scary.
What about you? Are you in a season of struggle or surrender? How are you learning to trust God in this?
This post contains affiliate links.
