Overcoming Fear

Every good parent is concerned that their children overcome their fears. Our youngest son, Ryan, developed a fear of dogs when he was very small. That happened because a neighbor’s dog got loose and terribly frightened him. After that he didn’t want anything to do with dogs. It seemed like nothing we could do could help him overcome his fear. Later on when he was a little bigger, we bought a Collie pup. At first he was afraid of the pup, but as he watched his brother and sister and all of us play with it, he gradually overcame his fear of dogs.

Some people never overcome their fears, and consequently, they carry them throughout their lives. These fears are the source of so many anxieties and negative emotions. What is more, these fears often are passed on to the next generation, beginning a cycle of generational fear.

God wants us to fully trust him and fear nothing. This is what Jesus says, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). How is this possible? How do we get to a place where we no longer fear people, disasters, the devil or even death? The answer is in that simple word trust.

Abraham was having trouble trusting God with the fulfillment of his promise. It was a promise that had been given many years before, but nothing had happened. God promised Abraham that he would have a son, but he and Sarah were much older, and it was hard to believe God would actually keep his word.

Abraham, in a conversation with God, said that since he remained childless, he figured that Eliezer would have to be his heir. God took Abraham outside and asked him to look up at the heavens and count the stars. God said, “So shall your offspring be” (Gen. 15:5). The next verse is an incredible compliment to Abraham’s faith and trust in God, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6).

Later that day God revealed to Abraham that his posterity would suffer for hundreds of years in a strange land, but after four hundred years he would bring them back to this very land. God told Abraham that he could “Know for certain” (Gen 15:13). It is hard for us to know anything for certain, but with a firm trust in God, we can experience certainty. We may not be able to see though the darkness of our lives, but he can. David wrote about God’s ability to see through the darkness like this:

Psalms 139:11-12

11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,"

12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

The greater our trust in God, the less we fear. The more we believe as Abraham did, the greater our certainty that he will keep his word. Through our faith in God, we can overcome our fears.

Accommodation

Life has a way of throwing undesirable events into our lives. If a person suffers a traumatic event, they will suffer intrusive and painful thoughts about the event until they are able to accommodate for what happened. In other words, they are able to make some kind of meaning out of the meaningless occurrence. Unfortunately, some people are never able to make meaning out of some of the tragedies of their lives. Even though years have passed, they still experience distress from their memories of traumatic events. For others, these intrusive memories work with a dominion effect and trigger other feelings of loss or shame. For some, these memories may be so overwhelming that they cause self-destructive acts.

The Bible gives us a wonderful picture of accommodation in the word redemption. When God redeems us, he accommodates the tragic, shameful and meaningless events of our lives. Only God has the ultimate power to take whatever we give him and make something meaningful out of it. When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he said this: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace” (Eph. 1:7).

Nowhere do we see the price of our redemption clearer than in the sufferings of Jesus. His suffering was colossal and incomparable, but it was to help us accommodate the meaningless transgressions of our lives. Jesus not only suffered for us, but also showed us how to suffer. He never lost control, never became resentful or vengeful of those who hurt him.

Jesus showed such power and restraint during his suffering. When he was arrested, Peter tried to defend him by cutting off the high priest’s servant’s ear. Jesus had at his disposal infinite power, but declined to fight back. His response to Peter was, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53).

Peter never forgot that, and when he wrote his letters to the church so many years later, he wrote:

“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).

How quick we are to defend ourselves when we are attacked. How fast we return insults to those who insult us. Never was there a man who suffered such injustice and yet bore no revenge. This is the man who can teach us how to live and how to suffer and how to accommodate the tragedies of our lives.

Jesus suffered to redeem us from our sins, but more that, Jesus takes everything in our lives and remakes it in a way that has meaning and depth. In other words, he takes the meaningless tragic events of our lives and accommodates them so that they no longer control us. There is nothing in your life that Jesus cannot make sense of. Paul said it this way, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8).