Do Not Be Afraid

If you ask people what the main message is in the bible, they might tell you, "It's Love" or "Forgiveness," but what is the phrase that appears more times than any other message in the Bible?  DO NOT BE AFRAID.  Over and over through history, God's message to humanity has overwhelmingly been Do not be afraid.  This phrase appears more than one thousand times in the Bible.  WHY? Because God knows that we are in fact afraid -- afraid to trust Him.  Afraid to love others.  Afraid to love ourselves.  Afraid to embrace and celebrate the best-version-of- ourselves.  Afraid to ask the big questions and see where they might lead. AFRAID.  God wants to liberate us from these fears (from Decision Point).

 

"I sought the Lord, and He answered me; from all my fears, He delivered me."

 

"God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress. / Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.... (Ps. 46:1-2)

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It might be an interesting exercise to go through one of the Gospels just looking for the phrase "Do not be afraid," or "Fear not."  The second letter of St. Paul to the young pastor Timothy says this:  For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love, and of a sound (healthy) mind.

 

A sound mind is not one filled with fear, but with confidence.  Yet, "confidence" is hard to come by if we rely only on this world.  I see terrorists taking over Iraq, and I wonder how the population of ordinary citizens can have any hope at all.  It seems that terror is the keyword today all over the world.  In the U.S., we are under constant threat of terrorism, of storms, floods, fires, tornadoes, and hurricanes.  Jesus predicted that in the last days, "men's hearts would fail them because of fear" of what was coming upon the earth.  And it seems that we must be very close to the last days even now.

 

And yet, we are told, "Do not be afraid; in the world you will have many troubles, but I have overcome the world."  "Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."  "I have told you these things ahead of time so that when they happen you will believe."

 

We look at the early Christian martyrs and wonder where they got the courage to undergo being set on fire, devoured by wild beasts, or being beheaded.  During the French Revolution, the revolutionists closed all the churches and monasteries and appropriated all the properties and wealth of the church to pay for the revolution.  They guillotined all the priests and nuns they could find, along with anyone who might seem to oppose the revolution and its principles of "liberty, equality, and justice."  They removed all references to the "outmoded" Christian religion and set up their own "blood sacrifices" and "communion services," including public processions to "The Supreme Being," a construct of their own minds.  Sixteen Carmelite nuns offered their lives to God as a sacrifice to "quell the terror" of the revolution; they were all beheaded, and 17 days later, the revolution, with its "daily sacrifice" of 40 lives a day, ended.  The nuns all sang the Te Deum and the Salve Regina as they climbed the steps to the scaffold and bared their necks to the guillotine.  Where did they find the courage?

 

It is human nature to fear; there is not one of us who does not fear something.  But when the Psalmist says, "from all my fears, He delivered me," he means just that.  God is the only One who can accomplish this miracle in us.  And He wants to do it; He does not want us living in fear, despite what the world does to us or around us.

 

In January 2010, before I knew I had lung cancer, I was in my back yard surveying all the freeze damage and thinking about what I had to do to get my yard ready for spring.  Suddenly, a bubble of absolute peace descended around me, from head to toe, and I knew that I would not be doing that yard work.  At the time, I thought it meant I was going to die, so I said, "Okay, just give me time to de-clutter my house so that my kids won't have a mess to go through when I'm gone."  And I went inside and began cleaning out the attic that very day. 

 

Two weeks later, a doctor said to me, "I think this is cancer."  "Okay," I said, without a flutter of the heart.  I already knew I was going to die, so I thought he was just telling me how I was going to die. But "how" didn't matter to me; I still had the bubble of peace all around me.  A moment later, he said again, "I think this is cancer."  "Okay," I said again.  He looked at me strangely and said, "Aren't you upset about that?"  "No," I replied, "but my husband will be." 

 

That strange peace never left me for a moment throughout the coming days.  About 2 weeks after surgery, I thought, "I guess I'm not going to die; I'd better figure out what else I'm going to do." 

 

"Do not be afraid."  Here's the thing:  the Word of the Lord doesn't just command; it does what it says.  If I say to someone, "Don't be afraid," my words may not overcome the fear that is consuming the other person.  But if the Lord God says, "Do not be afraid," His words are as effective now as they were at the moment of creation when He said, "Light! Be!" and so it was.  When He speaks to our hearts, His words leap forth to create what they say.  He Himself overcomes our fear, and He delivers us from the power of Satan to threaten and overcome us through fear.

 

If we read the Scriptures and allow the word of God to penetrate our hearts, we will find ourselves delivered from all our fears.  God's Word cannot but accomplish all that it says, for His Word is His Son, who has all power over life and death, over this world and the world to come.