A little about fear ....

Its been quite some time since I last wrote here on the Thrive blog.  It seems once again life caught up with me - 2 teenagers in high school, one in sports, one with a job (and driving no less) and well all the other stuff that makes up life  here.  I was looking through some creative writing I did a few years ago and found this essay I wrote on Fear .... I think its just as applicable today as it was when I wrote it.  Take from it what you will.


Have you ever been afraid? Paralyzed by an emotion that caused your heart to race, and your feet to freeze? Have you ever been so overwhelmed by fear that although you wanted to fight, you took flight instead?

Well, you’re not alone.

I remember when I was a kid – growing up, children have no fear. Well most kids, anyway. But not me. I was afraid of heights… deathly afraid of heights. Still am, although I’ve learned to cope with it.

I still vividly recall one day when I had to face that fear. We were at a softball game. I wasn’t playing, although I played extensively in my younger years. We were at one of the local junior high schools. The ball diamonds were out back, the school was near the street. The fire escape ran up the side of the school like a staircase.

I remember it like it was yesterday. My palms are sweaty just thinking about it … the fire escape. Other kids were playing on it, running up and down. It was built of the metal grid you can see through … strong and durable, but full of holes for the water to run through during storms.

Kids were scampering up and down the stairs, everyone except me. It was like a normal staircase, probably 5 feet wide, 8 or 10 risers between landings, 3 landings. It was the path to the treasure (or so we imagined). It was the hill for the king. It was a gold mine for the imagination of 8 year olds.

It was also really, really high.

After all the kids had left I decided I wasn’t staying down on the ground any more. I was going to climb to the top and touch the escape door. I could do it. It was only three stories. I’d run up stairs in buildings higher than that. The only difference was those were inside … and made of concrete … and you couldn’t see through them all the way to the bottom!

I stood at the lowest riser for what seemed like an eternity. I remember telling my feet to go. Up I went. That first flight wasn’t so bad. I made it to the landing … wiping my brow I turned to face the next set of risers.

It was then that my feet mutinied.

You know how they talk about the Body of Christ, and how all the parts need to work together? Well my feet weren’t having any of that! They decided all on their own to stop, and stay. It really was a nice view from that landing. Who wanted to go higher? Not the feet. And if the feet weren’t going, wasn’t anybody going.

I stood there and argued with my feet … one hand on the railing, one clenched at my side, holding tightly to all the emotions I wasn’t going to let loose.

Finally I forced my right foot up to the riser. The left slowly dragged its sorry self up to the same riser … it certainly wasn’t going to be leading anywhere.

And the scene repeated.

Holding on to the railing for dear life, and forcing my feet one riser at a time to go up to the 2nd landing. I was not going to be defeated by fear.

Or so I thought.

At the next landing, I faced still another set of risers, going even higher. My fatal mistake was when I paused to collect my thoughts, I looked down. I looked to where I’d come from instead of looking to where I was going. You see when I looked down, it seemed like I was pretty high up. And I could see the ground through the landing … remember all those holes in the metal? I know they were there intentionally, but to my 8-yr old mind, they were the stupidest idea since the dawn of time!

Ok so there I am on the landing … pleading with my feet to just go up one more step. We didn’t have to go all the way to the top. We could do that another time. My feet wouldn’t budge. I tried to make my legs just lift my feet. I could make my feet go where I wanted by brute force alone … I WAS MASTER OF MY LIMBS.

But it seemed that since we’d left the grass behind, my legs had joined the mutiny. They weren’t lifting feet anywhere. In fact they took control and walked me back down to the ground. If I had a tail, it would have been tucked neatly between my legs.

That day the fear had won.

That was a long time ago. I still feel fear, over different things now.

Meeting new people.

Paying my bills.

Surviving on my own in a world that sometimes seems heartless and cold.

That fear is there; sometimes it’s a constant companion.

Some days I even succumb. I hide out from the world. I throw a pity party that is a grand affair, and I am the guest of honor. I rarely decorate or dress up, but its all for me, just the same.

But you know most days it doesn’t win.

You see, I’ve got another companion, one who holds the fear at bay. My other companion is always available, whenever I need an ear to listen, or a shoulder to cry on. This other companion doesn’t mind if I call at 3 in the morning. This companion is a true friend in every sense of the word. This companion will listen with compassion, and correct with gentleness and kindness. This companion doesn’t want me to be a slave to fear. This other companion is bigger and stronger than the world.

This other companion, of course, is Jesus.

In the book of Joshua when the Israelites were going up against the great powers of the Promised Land, do you know what the Lord told Joshua? Joshua 8:1 says, "Do not be afraid." This wasn’t a statement or a suggestion. It was a COMMAND!

DO NOT BE AFRAID!!

And again in Joshua 10 the Lord tells Joshua “Fear them not”. Once again this is a command. This command appears 4 times in the book of Joshua.

Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid.

I wanted to see if the book of Joshua was an isolated instance, a curious anomaly, as we like to call it in the engineering profession.

So, I did a quick search on the Internet. The word “afraid” was found 207 times in the NIV translation of the Bible. This doesn’t include forms of “afraid” like fear. Simply the word “afraid”. Of those 207 appearances, 90 of the occurrences I found are in the phrase “Do not be afraid”. Hmmm. There’s that command again.

Do Not Be Afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. No I’m not going to write it 90 times.

67 of the 90 are in the Old Testament. 67.

Do Not Be Afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. You seeing a pattern?  I am.

Seems like something that is repeated that often might just be worth taking note of.

The remaining 23 occurrences of this command are in the New Testament.

Do Not Be Afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. You get the picture.

Of the 23 NT occurrences, 8 are in the Gospel of Matthew, 1 is in Mark, 7 are in Luke, and 3 are in John. These instances were Jesus talking to his disciples and telling them not to be afraid.

Not to fear what they were currerntly experiencing. Not to fear what Jesus alone knew was coming next.

2 are in Acts and 2 are in Revelation. To me these seem like the apostles telling us from that long ago time to follow that same command.

God does not want us to live in fear.

2 Timothy 1:7 (Amplified) states “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.”

Craven … cringing … is that what fear does to us … to me. When I think of the phrase craven and cringing, I think of Igor ...the perpetual assistant in every B horror movie every made. He was fawning. He was cowardly. He was craven. Craven means contemptible, timid or cowardly.

I’m thinking I don’t like the sound of that, but when we are mastered by fear, that is how we appear. But when we master fear … well that’s another story entirely.

It seems pretty clear to me from scripture.

God does not want us to fear.

God does not want us timid.

God wants us BOLD.

God wants us to rely on His power.

God wants us to rely on Him.

There is no place for fear in the world where God rules.

That’s the kind of world I want to live in. Because I think in that world, fire escapes might be kind of fun to play on.