FEAR

I know everyone fears something. I happen to fear a lot of things. I have been thinking about my fears more and more as we do our life group on Wednesdays. Here are some fears I have, not in any particular order.

1.Spiders - They are ugly, creepy, crawly, sometimes poisonous, and can make me cry if they are within 10 feet of me.

2. Darkness - In more ways than one. Darkness is what I would live in if I were to turn away from my religion, such as a separation from God and my relationship with Jesus (which is a very healthy fear to have). I also have a fear of literal darkness. This might stem from when my Dad had no filter on what we could watch as I was a child. I would watch "It" and "the leprechaun" many of times. I had thoughts at night that the leprechaun was coming to get me in my room and he was waiting for me under my bed. I would cry when I heard the littlest noise and couldn't see where it was coming from and just knew deep down inside that the leprechaun was coming to kill me. To this day I still cannot sleep without a nightlight. It was pretty embarrassing when I had to tell James that I needed a night light to go to sleep.  Let's just say James has been a very good sport about it.

3. Shots/blood drawn - Don't know why.... I seriously cry every time this has to happen. I think I psych myself out. And trust me, I have heard it 100 times "How can you be so afraid when you have so many tattoos?" Ask any one who has ever gotten a tattoo, it's totally different.

4. Crowded paces - I don't know if it is necessarily a fear or if I just get really really annoyed. Either way, I hate it.

5. Heights- Many people have this fear, I happen to be one of them. I can't look over an edge, climb a latter, look down from a tall building. No matter how secure the rail is, I won't do it. It is just the fear that I can possibly fall and I am so clumsy in the first place that I probably would fall. And I will never be able to go skydiving like I always wanted to. This fear goes hand in hand with my next fear.

 6. Stairs - I always have a death grip on the railings. If the stairs are against a wall, I am usually pretty okay with it. It is the free standing stairs that I can't handle.  I feel that many are unstable and that I will slip and fall. The stairs that have no backing (you can see below under each step) terrify me. I imagine my foot slipping under the step, through the opening and somehow cracking my head open.  I especially can't handle stairs that switch back and forth and go up many flights and barely have any railing support. I mean, common, someone is bound to get hurt. And that person is more than likely to be me. (maybe this one is more about my crazy imagination getting the best of me)

7. God - The most important fear of all. We are currently doing a video study from Francis Chan called Basic - Who Is God? Seriously amazing study, you should definitely check it out. The topic for the last two meetings was on the FEAR of the lord.
We talked about how some of the more modern Christian churches substitute the term "fear the Lord" for something much less than it really is. Usually we hear that it means reverence, respect, or awe. However, if you look back into passages such as when Isaiah met God that he was terrified. And when John met Jesus again in Revelations 1, he was so scared that he "fell at his feet as though dead." He essentially fainted from the fear he felt. God is the almighty. The most powerful thing you can ever imagine times a million. We can't even comprehend how great He is. Of course we should be scared. He can do the unimaginable. He brought us into this world and He can take us out.
However, Jesus tells us to not be afraid. He wants us to comprehend His power is more great than ever we will or have ever known, however, He loves us so much and He is on our side. He's got our back.  

Francis Chan explains it much better than I can,

"Until we come to a point of fearing God, our relationship with Him will be superficial and distorted. But once we come to that place of fear, we will find that there is nothing else to fear. Seeing God in all of His power and glory allows us to see beyond ourselves, to see that this life is all about Him. And when we understand that this fear-inducing God loves us unconditionally, all other fears subside." {found in the book Basic: Who is God – Follower’s guide by Francis Chan}

Psalm 111:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Proverbs 19:23 “The fear of the Lord leads to life, so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil.”

So I encourage you to take a second and really think about how you view God. Sometimes it is easy to make our God  a more manageable so that we can go on living the way we want to live rather than the way He wants us to live. 

I for one will be taking a new look at these other fears of mine and seriously giving them up to Him to heal me. I mean seriously, none of the other fears can take a stance against God. As Paul says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

♥ Michelle