Heart Tracks - Facing Fear

"Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10......"God loves to bring us to the place of facing what we fear because He knows this will make us fearless." Lisa Bevere

I don't think that there is anything that holds us in greater captivity than our fears. They paralyze us. They make us easy prey for the enemy of our souls. Indeed, it is the devil's greatest and most favorite weapon to use against us. He knows that as long as our heart and spirit are held in the grip of fear, he need never fear anything from us. So the question for each of us is, where in our lives has fear placed us in its vice-like grip.

So many times in my life I have been paralyzed, incapacitated, by fear. Fear comes in so many forms, but I think its greatest power over us is in the fear of what we think could be the worst possible scenario in our lives actually coming to pass. Job, in the midst of his life wreckage, said in effect, "That which I most feared has happened to me." Most of us have as our goal avoiding the presence of that which we most fear ever taking place in our lives. We think victory is found in having all of our outward circumstances be absent of danger and peril. All of us have, like Job, something, perhaps much, that we dread might ever take place in our lives. We are committed to avoiding these, and seek His assistance in it. The idea that the Father would not share that commitment with us is beyond the realm of possibility. We think victory is found in the absence of fearful circumstances. He says it is found in the midst of them. We seek to run from our fears. He seeks to bring us face to face with them.

If you are one who truly yearns to grow in His grace, to step out into the abundance of His Life, than you must know that a real part of the pathway will come in your coming face to face with those things you most fear. As Bevere says, it will be the only way He can make us fearless. When we come to the place of standing face to face with that most dreaded place, our choice will be to see only that which we fear, or to see Him in Who there is no fear. When we can see Him alone in that place, it is there we become fearless. It is there that true victory is secured. He knows this is our only path to victory, to fearlessness. Our flesh shrinks from it, but His Spirit calls us to it. In the realization of his worst fears, Job discovered how real his God was and is. So will we. It's the only way we will. We'll never learn this by avoidance of fearful places, but by confronting them, overcoming them. It's what will make us fearless. It's what makes us "more than conquerors."

All of us have our "worst possible end" scenario. That something that we can't imagine anything being more terrible than. I've had those, and so have you. I remember well the immobilizing fear in that place. Every fiber of my being wanted to flee, but every part of Him called me to stand with Him and face it. In that place of the "worst" I found His best. And another fear was conquered. It will be so for all of us. There are yet more fears to be faced for me, and for you too. If we face them with Him, we will know the reality of His promise that "No weapon formed against you will prosper." He stands with us and in us as we face the fear.....and in doing so, we become more than conquerors.

Blessings,
Pastor O