Freedom From Fear
You know how people ask you, “what is your biggest fear?”
I thought about this recently. In the past, I would say, “clowns.” Which was only mildly true. I was afraid of the original movie, “IT.” So in reality, I was actually afraid of Pennywise. Not all clowns. I used to even pretend I was afraid of clowns, just to get a reaction out of people. (Early signs of people pleasing!)
When I think about this now, I can honestly say that my biggest fear is being rejected. In my last post, I wrote about how I was rejected a lot by my peers when I was younger. I’ve also experienced rejection from my loved ones. This usually happened when I was vulnerable about my hurt feelings but was not given an apology or I was dismissed, as if my feelings didn’t matter. These various experiences of rejection have created a wound, a painful spot in me, that makes me afraid of it happening again.
The thing about the wounds of our hearts, or the wounds of our emotions, is that they start to dictate what we do and how we interact with others. Our wounds shape our behaviors and we start to behave in a way that is unnatural to us. We start to behave in a way that is outside of God’s plan for our lives. For me, my wound has led to my people pleasing behaviors. (I’ll get more into that later 😏) So what I’m learning is that a lot of our fears stem from painful experiences from our pasts.
But What Is Fear?
According to Oxford Languages, fear is “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or threat”. In the Bible, the Greek word for fear is phobos. According to Bible Hub (HELP Word Studies), “phobos (fear) means withdraw (separate from), i.e. flee (remove oneself) and hence to to avoid because of dread (fright).
I love definitions. They bring such clarity. (It’s the ELA teacher in me *winks*)
So to paraphrase, as I would encourage my students to do, fear is a yucky feeling, running away from someone or something because it scares us! So for me, I tend to run away from anything that may bring about rejection from others because rejection scares me because it was painful for me in the past. Makes sense.
What Are We Supposed to Fear?
Our society encourages us to fear nothing but fear itself and that has some validity to it. But God, the Creator of All things, has a different take on what (or rather, Who) we should fear.
In the Bible he says. “It is the LORD your God you shall fear.” Now, this was said to the Israelites, people who made a decision to follow God. (If you haven’t made a decision to follow God, I encourage you to ask yourself why–is it fear behind that decision? But again, we’ll get into that later. 😏 ) But why? Why should we fear God? Now this next scripture may scare you (lol! Talk about fear!) but I think that’s the purpose.
Jesus said to his followers, “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” The only being we should fear, yes all of us, is God. He created all things and has the ability to destroy all things.
Now that’s scary.
But doesn’t that put things into perspective? God, the Creator of All things, can destroy us at will, but He doesn’t. He has all the power in the world, but he doesn’t use it to abuse, to abandon, or to reject. I know sometimes it can feel that he wants to harm us, leave us behind, and reject us but those are all lies, my dear friend.
This same God also said, at the very beginning, “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible…”
- He made us (He could’ve left us uncreated)
- He shares His image and His nature (2 AMAAAZZZIINNNG THINGS) with us
- He gave us purpose
So yeah, he is scary, but only because he’s large and in charge! He’s the boss! But what’s more, he cares about us, even our fears. In the Bible, one of God’s main men (David) said, “I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears.”
I want to be freed from all my fears. I want to stop caring so much about what people think. How about you?
Let Go Of Fear
Friend, what are you running away from? What are you afraid of? Abandonment? Rejection? Heights? Spiders? I want to encourage you to pray to God about letting go of those fears. Instead of running away from people, things, and God because of fright run toward Him because of His love.
Cheering for your Growth and Hoping you exude God’s glory,
Kourtney Naomi <3
