I have this confidence because I’ve seen the faithfulness of God. The still inside the storm, the power of the shore. I trust the power of Your word enough to seek your kingdom first: beyond the barren place, beyond the ocean waves. (“Not Afraid”)
Fear strikes us in the night, when darkness obscures the light. It comes when we are alone. It sneaks into our thinking when we are idle. It relies on the words “but what if” and tangles our imagination.
Often our fears are valid, alerting us to danger. To ignore these signs would be fool-hearty. But unbridled fear can undermine our faith. It plays on the weaknesses within our character, rallying around the things we possess. It assigns earthly reasoning to issues that require heavenly explanation, confusing and redefining what we believe. Like Eve in the Garden, in our humanness, we allow ourselves to be engulfed with questions and suggestions. And in the uncertainty, fear flourishes.
The answer, of course, is to recognize what we know as truth and use it as a measuring stick against the allegations of our fears. Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, has promised never to leave us. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, we are given assurance that He is with us. With this knowledge comes the ability to come into the presence of God with our prayers and our petitions. Perhaps the greatest defense against fear lies in our dependence on prayer. It is the key to our connection with God. And, as Paul reminds us in His letter to the church at Rome, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
And so we face our fears, armed with the understanding that our faith is placed in the One who has promised the victory. “God loved the world so much,” Jesus explained to Nicodemus, "that He gave His only Son so that no one need to perish.” And nothing – "neither death nor life, neither messenger from heaven or monarch from earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything in God’s whole world has the power to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Our God has made a way and this is the reason we are not afraid.
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