Fear and faith are incompatible

Fear can so easily hold us back. I remember an occasion in my late teens when I went to a charismatic meeting where people were singing joyfully with their hands raised. Now I was brought up in a church where they didn’t do that sort of thing. So my hands stayed firmly at my side.

Afterwards, I tried to analyse why I found it so hard to raise my hands. As I recalled the scene, in my mind’s eye I saw two big weights tied to my wrists, one on the left and one on the right, holding them down. Then I saw that there was a name on each of the weights. One was marked Pride. The other was labelled Fear. Pride and Fear were holding my hands down.

Pride was saying, ‘I am a respectable Protestant, not one of those crazy charismatics.’ And Fear was looking around nervously and asking, ‘What if there is another person from my church here? What if somebody sees me?’ I was so hindered by my pride and my fear that I just couldn’t relax and worship the Lord.

Thank God that he broke the fear and he broke the pride. I can now lift my hands and enjoy it or I can choose not to lift them. I can make my choice. When we fixt our eyes on Jesus, those other things become trivial.

Fear is one of the things that more than anything else hold us back from serving God. What if it doesn’t work? What if people criticise me? What if I run out of money? What if I fail? What if no one supports me? What if I am persecuted? What if I miss out on getting married? What if I have to go overseas? Or live in the slums? Or give my possessions away? What if I make a fool of myself? What if my family disown me? And so it goes on.

Fear can prevent us from doing the will of God. Fear causes us to stay in a sinking boat rather than step out and trust God. It’s a dangerous thing.

What next?

Think of occasions when fear of embarrassment has held you back from doing something for God (for example, praying in public, witnessing, kneeling, helping a street person, peer pressure, declining to participate in an inappropriate activity and so on.) what could you have done about it?