Fear Has
Devastating Effects
Fear, being in close association with sin, especially sinful
pride and selfishness, makes people tell lies or hide themselves or the truth. They
do so, for example, in order to maintain the status quo of a relationship or
opportunity or an advantage. They fear to offend or upset somebody, or fear to
lose someone or something. God asks, ‘Whom did
you dread and fear, so that you lied?’ Isa 57:11. You know what I am talking about. You tell lies
perhaps because you are afraid that your dark/bad side/deeds or past will be
discovered and exposed. Thankfully we have examples of this all around us and
in God’s Word, the Bible, which I will try to pick or cite from so we can learn
and be different. From Adam
and Eve, there are many things that we fear because sin brought and still brings
much misery, and fear often debilitates us from doing much good and what is
right. Talk of the fear
of death or of the unknown, fear of inconvenience, of failure and loss. Fear
cripples and will keep us from serving God and one another, and from using and
perfecting or increasing our capacities or talents and gifts. We will better bury our talents like
that servant in the parable of the talents in Math 25:18.
Some people may assert that a
bit of fear is OK or good if or because it motivates them to do something good.
For example, fear of failure causing/motivating somebody to study or work
“hard”. That is most simplistic and dismissible logic! If you want or need to
work hard, you simply do it because you know it leads to or brings good results
or success. But if or where there is fear, failure may be too. A student or pupil who fears to be laughed at will not ask
any question(s) and remains in ignorance and fails the test or exam. I
don’t think there is anything good about fear in itself, just like sin;
although God may use it, for His glory, to work for good to those who love Him
and are called according to His purpose. People who want to use fear as
motivation to avoid something they are afraid of, like failure, have perhaps
not considered that fear and failure could be two sides of the same coin and
that fear could be on every one side of all the coins (hearts)!
Many people have courage to do
wrong/evil things especially in the dark but fear and fail to do right and good
things in the light. Some people fear shame and yet fear uses them shamefully
when no one is watching/seeing. And fear is infectious, mostly in the night or
dark. Fear will make you to eat, or imagine, say and/or do things that you
would otherwise not.
Fear is so terrible that it
will make you hate and avoid even a little inconvenience; any little trouble
and can turn you into a “cabbage” and a fine-weather friend of nature, reality
and God. The sad thing is that fear does not take these away. Adam and Eve’s
case and David’s in 1Sam 27:1 onwards Psalm 55:5 should suffice. Fear makes you hide and run away from reality as
long as you can, but the very thing that you dread finds you or comes upon you,
Job 3:25. Remember Peter denying
Jesus three times over and he remembers and weeps bitterly like a child after
the rooster crowed Mathew 26:69-74.
Fear breeds laziness/slothfulness – intellectual/mental and
physical laziness. It wants you to keep the status quo or possibly make it
worse. It even gives you vain comfort by introducing suicidal thought or
tendencies and it has such power as to drive you insane or
kill you if you allow it! That is why sin and the Devil like to use it. Fear
will take or drive us to a point where we fail to see or think clearly and
rationally, no wonder it is a close associate of many vices or evils such as
deception, cowardice, failure, self-pity and so on. It will also make us give
lame excuses for anything, damn! You recall the man in Proverbs 22:13 who for some reason
feared to go out of the house to be useful or productive, referred to as the
sluggard, saying "There is a lion outside! I
shall be killed in the streets!" Again in 26:13 the sluggard says, "There is a lion in the road! There
is a lion in the streets!" Verse 14
concludes saying, “As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his
bed.” And for admission of his fear, oh my, was the servant in the
parable of the talents called names: evil, lazy and useless! Math 25:26-30 See also the recount
of the patriarch Abraham, and later his son Isaac in Genesis 26, letting in fear by what he saw or perceived in Genesis 20. Fear can make us see an
anthill as a mountain.
Some time towards
the end of 2012, fear made me give lame excuse, drove me near self-centeredness
and I was blind to the blessing of courageous, sacrificial and humble service
of God. It was Love that rescued. How swiftly, can come tragedy when we forget
God or His promises or not believe in His Son Jesus, and let what we see and
hear be the basis of our decisions and actions. This feeds fear or connects
powerfully with it; or is it the other way round that fear engineers the
forgetting of God or His promise and tragically clouds our faith, our vision
and decision-making? In Isaiah 57:11
the Lord is asking, ‘Whom did you dread and fear, so that you lied, and did not
remember me, did not lay it to heart? Have I not held my peace, even for a long
time, and you do not fear me?’
Fear Can Be
Conquered
Although
fear will always be there with us until our final
redemption when the world comes under the perfect reign and civility of Jesus,
God gives
power for a leash around it. First, take perfect example of courage from the
Lord Jesus concerning fear. He did not fear coming to earth, knowing He would
have to contend with sinful people and the devil himself, and eventually die on
a cross. You have been given a green light to
conquer it, yeah! Like sin, it shall not have mastery over the
Christian. Look at where you are and ask yourself if that is where you really
ought to be, but for fear. It can make you ineffective or useless if you don’t
face and address it, or still harass you if poorly tackled. Squeeze it by the
neck however little it may be, kill it and let it not deceive you when it
subtly pleads though it makes no scream.
It
is important that each of us honestly, humbly and thoroughly search ourselves, and
face and fight our fear(s) continually, day-by-day and moment by moment if we
are to conquer. We must do so especially in the light of God’s Word because God
recognizes that we are prone to fear and miss out on blessings of being
courageous, obedient, faithful and rational beings whom He created in His own
image as an action relationship God.
Fight fear with the humble
and yearning realization of who you could be or really are or ought to be in
Jesus Christ. Ultimately conquer fear with the love of God in you if you
believe in His son Jesus and his covenant work of redemption. Nothing short of
this will definitely do! Learn from
Abraham, a humble but courageous friend of God,
"I am nothing more than the dust (and ash) of the earth. Please forgive
me, LORD, for daring to speak to you like this.” Gen 18:27. He was earlier told not to fear
because God was his exceeding great reward, thus he was bold to speak with the Lord
Gen 15:1.
By
the working of His Spirit, we love Him because He first loved us. 1John
4:18 says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear
has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” In
God’s love, we have the precious blood of the Land with which we overcome.
Remember always, that he who fights with the precious blood of Jesus
fights with a weapon which cannot know defeat; at whose presence sin dies,
death ceases to be death: heaven’s gates are opened!
Even more why Christians
should not fear
Only
God’s enemies should fear in this world. In Joshua 1:9 the
Lord God says, ‘Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be
afraid, neither be dismayed. For Jehovah your God is
with you in all places where you go.’ God intervenes whenever fear rears it ugly head
in and among his people. He commands and exhorts, and we trust and obey!
Some Things that We should not Fear
We should not fear death because
it is slavery from which Jesus Christ delivered us, Heb 2:15, Psalm 23:4.
We ought
not to fear man (what can man do to
me?) Heb 13:6: the fear of man
only lays a snare Prov 29:25; nor
fear what man
fears – anything that frightens (storm,
darkness, earthquakes, beasts, drought/famine,
thunder and lightning etc) 1Pet 3:6. Old age is feared by some people but
God says, “Listen to me … even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I
will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” Isa 46:3-4 The Lord exhorts us neither to fear any suffering, danger, sword Rom 8:35, Rev 2:10
nor the reproach of man Isa 51:7.
Nothing will be able to separate us from God’s love
which in Jesus Christ. In all the things that would frighten or come against
us, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, Rom 8:37. Fear Not!
