I used to think worry was an inevitable part of my days—and my sleepless nights. I wondered if God’s Word does not promise us that our worst fears will not come true, then how are we supposed to not fear? But as I journeyed through a great loss, God showed me his battle plan against fear. You don’t have to live in fear either. Walk with me this week on a road toward peace.
Baker Publishing
Day 1
Scripture: Exodus 14:14
Facing Your Greatest Fear
What is your greatest fear? If you are anything like me, you don’t even want to take the chance of naming your fear out loud. A tiny voice inside of you tells you if you say it out loud, you just might jinx yourself. God fearing, God trusting, and God believing though you are, you will not take any chances when it comes to your greatest fear. Your fear just is. It’s part of you, and you have come to accept it.
I lived there once too. I lived so entrenched in fear that it became a driving force in my life without me even realizing it. Fear seeped into my relationships, my parenting, my marriage, and my home.
And so I searched Scripture for a verse saying that nothing bad would ever happen to me or my loved ones. But it’s not there! God’s Word is good. It is holy, reliable, powerful, mysterious, and righteous, and there are no promises that tell me my worst fears will not come true. God does not promise us a pain-free existence.
How, then, I wondered, can I convince my brain not to fear the utter destruction of everyone and everything I hold near and dear?
And then one of my greatest fears came true. When I was eighteen-weeks pregnant with my fourth child, I learned that he wouldn’t live more than a few hours after birth. I wish I could say that what came next was easy, but fears assaulted me with a new intensity. I embarked on a four-month daily battle with terrifying thoughts. Then gently, day by day, God revealed to me his battle plan over fear. My fear was redeemed through the life and death of my baby boy Gideon.
With God at my side, I fought fear and I fought it hard, and God taught me a battle plan that works. May it work for you too. May you embark with confidence on this journey, knowing that if God can heal a fearful soul like mine, he can heal yours too.
Make a list of your greatest fears. What would it look like to give those fears to God, not because they will never happen but because he can give you a battle plan to fight the fear that grips you?
Day 2
Scripture: John 14:27
A Journey God Understands
My assurance to you begins with this: Jesus is not a liar. If Jesus knew that the command “do not be afraid” was unattainable, he would not have asked us to do it—yet this is exactly what he commanded.
In John 14, Jesus was at the precipice of torture. The night before he died, hours before he was about to sweat blood from anguish, he spoke these words to his disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (v. 27, emphasis added).
Jesus does not give to us as the world gives to us! Not the world that constantly reminds us that we have much to fear. Not the world that teaches us that we are not good enough, we don’t make enough, we are not worth enough, and we can’t control enough. We cannot look to Jesus to solve our fears with percentages, facts, and reassurances. But we can look to him to solve them well.
Do not let your hearts be troubled.
My friend, our hearts are troubled, aren’t they? But take it from Jesus. Take it from a man who spoke these very words before he was about to surrender his life for us. Our hearts do not have to stay troubled.
Do not be afraid.
Can we really not be afraid? I say it can be true. I say through God’s help we can make it true in our lives. Jesus loves us, does not lie to us, and would not call us to something we cannot achieve.
God has answers for us—good answers, reliable answers—and there is a way to live in peaceful freedom from our fears. It is not an easy journey, but it is a journey in which God draws nearer than he has ever been before. When we turn to him, when we are in the midst of our fears and we still choose to stay put at the foot of the cross until God lifts us up, then we will find the everlasting peace and hope that our souls so desperately desire.
Do you believe it is possible to live free of fear? Why or why not?
Day 3
Scripture: Joshua 1:9
Letting Fear In Is a Choice
Since Jesus does not give to us as the world gives, our reaction to fear must not be of this world either.
Jesus told his disciples not to let their hearts be troubled. But how can this be, Jesus? I don’t “let” my heart fear, I don’t “let” my mind worry, I don’t “let” my spirit doubt. They just do!
We have given in to the lie that our fearful and anxious thoughts are more powerful than we are. We have bought into the falsity that what the world has to give is more reliable and trustworthy than what God has to give. Our thoughts do not need to rule us. We have a Savior, a holy Counselor, and a good Father who wants to do the job of being our most reliable and trustworthy source.
May you allow God to whisper to you the sweet words he whispered to me as I studied these verses: “No, child, you cannot stop fear from coming, but it is your choice whether you are going to let it in.” A choice? It’s never felt like a choice, so how is that at all possible?
It is a part of being human (not of God) that our bodies fear the unknown, the painful, and the scary things of this world. But it is our choice how much dominion we allow fear to have over our lives. It is our choice whether we will rule over our fear or we will let our fear rule over us.
God frequently tells his children in the Bible not to be afraid. To instead be strong and courageous, for the Lord your God will be with you. But what does this look like? What does this mean for our everyday lives and the choices we face? I believe God gives us examples, glimpses that reveal that, yes, it is possible to be strong and courageous in the face of our fears. He uses his Word and his people to show us what it looks like when his commands are lived out and believed in. He does this to encourage and remind us that we are never alone.
What are some times in your life when you made decisions based on your fears?
What were the results of those decisions?
Day 4
Scripture: Job 42:1-3
God Does His Job Better Than We Can
Every time I give in to a fearful thought, I am once again taking a bite from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I am deciding, like Adam and Eve, that God’s reign over my future is not good enough for me; no, I need to tackle it myself. Trouble is, my brain was not created for such a thing. In our finite minds, we cannot comprehend the complexities of our futures. We can calculate all the what-ifs, and so we fear. We fear because ultimately we wonder if we can trust God to do his job well.
Would you be willing, with me, to give God his job back? Would you be willing to try to take one brave and faithful step toward fearless living by taking captive any and all thoughts that fabricate a future we do not yet know will come true?
This is no small thing. I know this because I lived it. When I was pregnant with Gideon, I woke up every morning and waged war against my fears of the future. To have any hope of real change, I had to have a battle plan. Here are the steps I found helpful:
Step 1: Identify a fear the second it pops into your mind. Ask yourself, Is this thought about something I know to be true right now, or am I trying to tell the future?
Step 2: Talk to yourself. State the fear out loud, write it down, do whatever you need to do to get your brain back into the present moment.
Step 3: Ask yourself, What do I know to be true right now? Sometimes our fears feel so real, we forget they haven’t happened. We need to remind ourselves of reality.
Step 4: Focus on blessings. List all the blessings, big and small, you have in your life at this moment.
Step 5: Name God’s truths. Say God’s promises over and over. Put up verses on your bathroom mirror and kitchen cabinets. There is power in God’s Word.
Overcoming fear is not one of those “yeah, I’ll try to get better at that” things. You have to have a plan of what to do when your brain starts worrying about the future.
What is one fear on your mind today? Take it through the five steps above. How did your perspective change?
Day 5
Scripture: Lamentations 3:19-25
When the Worst Happens
The Jews who experienced the destruction of Israel during the time of the prophet Jeremiah were living out their worst fears. They faced loss, death, sickness, murder, poverty, and national turmoil. They had no ways to protect their loved ones and there was no end to their pain in sight.
Yet in Lamentations we read Jeremiah’s words not of fear but of hope:
• Because the Lord loves us, we will not be consumed.
• God’s compassions will never fail us.
• Every single morning we awake with new hope.
• God’s faithfulness is great.
• The Lord is our portion, and he will provide.
• When we wait for him, he will come.
• The Lord is good to those who hope in him.
The truth is that we have no promise that what we fear the most won’t happen. The sooner we allow ourselves to address the truth about our fears, the sooner we can allow God in to redeem them.
If you are like me, you don’t trust that God will be there if your fears come true because you can’t comprehend how he could help in that situation. After all, your child would still be sick or dying, your spouse would still have left, your job would still be gone, the house would still be taken, your children would still be running away from you. The actual circumstance of the fear wouldn’t change, and so what then could God possibly do for you?
This is where the miracle comes in. We know and can be assured that even if our worst fears come true, we have hope, compassion, faithfulness, newness, and provision from a God who does not lie to us. This is where faith is defined, where we ask ourselves if we really believe in the things unseen. Do we believe that there is something greater than what our fingers can touch and what our eyes can see?
May we take hope in the survival of those who have gone before us. May we believe their testimony, their story, to be true, and may we take heart in the knowledge that God comes alive in new ways to those in the midst of the worst.
Because from the worst of the pits, we hear sweet promises.
When have you experienced God’s presence and good gifts in the midst of a fear coming true?
Day 6
Scripture: Psalms 139:5-6
Letting Go of the Control You Never Had
Why is it that we pour our energy into the things that are not in our control and neglect the one thing that is? Our hearts.
God’s Word never offers us control over our families, our circumstances, our lives, or our hours. But he does offer us control over ourselves. We have got to give up the idea of controlling anything else in our lives. Not give it up kind of, sort of, or just for one day. No, we need to give it up entirely. We need to come to the utter end of ourselves and finally submit to the fact that God is better at being in control than we are.
That’s when God catches us as we collapse into his arms. He is waiting once more to be our Savior. That collapse—at the end, when you acknowledge and accept his control over all things—feels so good. For the first time, you allow yourself the freedom to admit that your fears are not in your hands. And it is well with your soul.
Do you see, then, what happens to your fears? They are disarmed. They are calmed. They go from causing raging pain to being a side thought. They get demoted.
You see, our fears are not trustworthy. They are not based on truth, they do not know facts, and they are guilty of vast exaggeration. Our fears do not love us and they take no account of our pain or our sorrow. Our fears are unworthy of our attention. They do not deserve the deepest parts of us, nor do they deserve our allegiance.
Instead, we offer our attention and our allegiance to God, who is trustworthy, who is truth, and whose promises are real. We turn to look at our fears. In this process of facing them and sizing them up, we realize how small they are in comparison to the greatness that is ours through Christ. Once we gaze upon our fears with honest indignation, we can see that, yes, God is even bigger than the worst thing we can imagine. And he is in control.
What is something you are trying to control today? Is it something that is possible to control? Why or why not?
Day 7
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 10:5
A Different Life
How would life look different if we no longer held on to fears about the future? We would live more fully, more freely, and more joyfully in whatever now brings. We would take captive thoughts that bind us to a tomorrow we cannot control and instead focus on the today we have to live. We would savor our tasks big and small and let go of the minor stresses of life. We would be less controlling, less manipulative, and less opinionated. We would dream gently and trust fully.
In all of these things we will never be perfect. We will still fail, we will still fear, and we will still worry. But we will not remain there like we used to! We have a way paved out in Scripture, breathed out in our souls. What used to be weeks, months, or years of intense fretting will now become minutes, hours, or days. When we are slammed with all the fear that used to overtake us, we will brace ourselves and turn boldly back to the truths we have learned. We will still hurt, still have pain, and still mourn loss, but we will stand strong with hope and find comfort in peace. We will remember what God has promised us and know how to get there.
When you are lost in the dark, when things happen, when fears come, and when you don’t know what to do, may you simply take one step of faith at a time. May you reach back into these truths with courage, and may God’s Word wash over you anew every time.
I pray that you will take heart. I pray that as you take time to reflect on what you fear and why you fear it, you will remember that God does not leave us nor forsake us. I know it is not fun to stare your fears in the face, but my prayer for you is that it might be less scary than you imagine. I pray that as you go forward, you will see how marvelously God makes up for our weaknesses. Though we may cower in fear and trembling, God is there in all his glory to lift us up.
How has this week of devotions changed how you think about fear? The next time a fear creeps into your mind, how will you respond?