Fearless

March 20, 2015 is a day that I will never forget. It was the day I got the call from my brother that my father had passed away. You see, he had been fighting the battle of MSA for 4 years prior to the call. We knew what was imminent. There wasn’t a cure for this disease, and we knew and trusted that if God wanted my Dad home, he would take him at the right time. But you know, no matter how much you think you are prepared for something like that, you aren’t. The call was just as heartbreaking as it would have been had my dad not had a terminal illness. 

One of the hardest parts of my Dad having MSA was, for me,was the fact that I lived in Virginia and my parents lived in Colorado at the time. Because of that I was trying to book frequent flights home to visit my Dad because we knew his time was short. My flight was booked for the Tuesday AFTER he passed away.  Four days before my flight was scheduled, on a Friday, my Dad went home to be with the Lord.

I was devastated. “I was coming to see him, I was coming to see him,” was all that I could get out between my cries and grief as I was talking to my brother.

Losing a loved one is something I have never experience up until this point I life. I had no context for grief or sadness like this; until that day. What I didn’t expect to happen in the days and weeks to follow was, again, something I didn’t have much of a context for in my life; fear. 

C. S. Lewis says: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

And boy was he right. Through this process of grief, fear grabbed ahold of me. I have never grieved the loss of someone close to me so I didn’t know what to expect when it came to the grieving process, and I certainly didn’t know that fear could or would be a part of it. 

For the next few months I found myself fearing death. Fearing the unknown…fearing the questions that, “Ok if I’m a follower of Christ and I KNOW there is a God, and my Dad knew Him…so that means he is WITH God…..so what is my Dad doing!?!? Like RIGHT NOW what is he doing??”  Those questions rolled around in my head over and over creating a snowball effect of anxiety at the fear of the unknown.

I know that the Bible describes heaven as this amazing place, but my human mind could not wrap my head around it. As I wrestled through those questions; God in all his loving kindness revealed, yet again to me, that He is trustworthy. If He can be trusted in this life, which I 100% do trust Him, then why can’t He be trusted in death too? There was no answer other than, “You can be Lord.”

So with that wrestling behind me, the fear of death subsided some, but manifested itself in other areas. You name it, I feared it. From being robbed, jumped,  shot to death, to being in a terrorist attack, attack on my kids, my husband, friends, fear of large gatherings of people, looking for the exits, what do if this, what to do if that….on and on went my mind as it was crippled by fear. There were days I was staying in my house avoiding going to events in fear that an attack would happen when I was there! When I say I was crippled by fear, that is exactly what I was; crippled. 

Our goal as followers of Jesus is: to follow Jesus example and strive to be just like Him. 

It is important to remember, and often times I think we forget, that Jesus came to earth in human form. He had all the same feelings, emotions, trials, temptations as us, yet he did not sin. Jesus is the founder and the author of our faith and this man was extraordinarily bold! He was so brave. Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest friends, he was wrongly accused, he was flogged, and on top of all of that he WILLINGLY walked to the cross. For me, for you, for all of humanity—so that, we could have a way to be in eternity with God; A sacrifice had to be made and he, in his perfection, was that sacrifice. 

I’m sorry, but that is a man who is braver that brave, and stronger than strong, and he more than proved that fear is optional. 

Can you put yourself in his shoes just for a minute…just because he was God in human form, does not mean that he didn’t feel the same things we would be feeling! Don’t think for one moment he didn’t feel the physical pain of it all too. Yet, he still willingly laid down his life as a sacrifice. Was he afraid? You bet he was, but fear was not an option for him. 

There are times when fear is going to overwhelm us so much that it cripples us, it will render us useless at times, but the key is to remember that it is optional. 

I don’t know about you, but my thoughts can go from zero to death within seconds! I will be driving along and all of a sudden I realize I am in a day dream. The day dream most times would look like this: I am standing over the casket of one of my loved ones, and I will come to and realize where my mind has wondered off to, and then I finally realized that I have played out this whole wild scenario of how this loved one passed. Sometimes I don’t like how the day dream is going so I will stop and change it around in my mind before I get out of thought.

Its crazy. My mind can get out of control. 

2 Corinthians 10:5 says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 

So in those moments when your mind is getting out of control, we have to say NO to ourselves and NO to our thoughts, and say YES to Jesus instead. We have to take our thoughts captive and make it obedient to Christ. 

What this means is, just like in your relationship with Jesus there are going to be times when you have to actively deny yourself and what you are feeling in order to follow Jesus well. 

Fear has no authority over you. You allow it the space to control you or not control you. In these moments when fear is taking over and the walls are starting to close in on you, you have a choice. You can choose to submit yourself to the fear and allow it to take over and control you. OR you can choose to respond to submit Jesus’ authority and stand on His truth. 

Hebrews 11:1-2 says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.”

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Peter, and Paul all understood this verse in a deep way. They all gave their lives to the mission of spreading the gospel! They believed what God said, because they had confidence in what they hope for, and they had assurance of what they didn’t see. 

Were there times they were filled with fear? Oh! I guarantee it! But they didn’t love their lives so much that they shrunk from death (Rev. 12:11). They faced it head on, they stood up to it, they pressed on, and they made a choice to respond to God and his authority rather than submit themselves to their fears. 

When you no longer dread fear, you become fearless….Jesus is our example of that and he made a choice to crush fear. He made a choice to stand firm in what he knew. Same with Paul, Peter, Timothy….in the New Testament they fixed their eyes on Jesus and they advanced the gospel with confidence. 

So to you, fellow sojourner, I submit to you that, this is our chance to take a stand advanced the gospel with confidence. We are the stewards of our faith in this generation! The gospel continues on because of our generation. As we recognize fear is not an option, and we are no longer our consumed by it….we become fearless and allow the Spirit the space to move! As we look to scripture and consider our examples that went before us; we will not grow weary or loose heart.

For me and where I currently am…has fear left totally? No it hasn’t. It is very present in the back of my mind. I have to make a conscious choice to not allow the temptation to submit to fear control me. I have to make the choice to shut thoughts of fear down daily. I have to make the choice to not entertain these run away scenarios that are conjured up in my head, and I have to allow God the space to move in my heart; which makes me become fearless.