By Emily Bansuelo
Tis the season to be scared. I’m sure we could all share our
scariest Halloween moments. The creepy neighbor down the street, who we all
thought did experiments on cats. Or perhaps the scary woods that your friends
dared you to walk through. I grew up with shows that freaked me out,
“Goosebumps” and “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” I was never allowed to watch
them, but come on, you know you all snuck around your parents to get freaked
out of your mind. Now we have movies that I’m sure I would pee my pants
watching. Growing up, being scared was a game, it was taken lightly. But in our
world right now there’s a whole new way of getting scared. And we can’t take it
lightly anymore.
There are phobias for practically everything. Everyone seems to be afraid of something. We have so many fears that are running around wildly in this generation, having their way with us. We have become people of worry and fear. All of a sudden a sickness that a few weeks ago few of us even knew existed is the most talked about sickness in the US; Ebola. I watched people around me talk about how we should start wearing masks, and shut down the airlines because the risk of us all contracting this disease. Allow me to give you a statistic, you have 1 in 13.3 million chance of contracting Ebola in the US. You have 1 in 2 million chance of falling out of your bed and dying. We have fed into the hysteria of what the world tells us rather than feeding into the peace God so readily has available to us. Yes, right now there is an epidemic of Ebola, in West Africa. But here in the United States, there is an epidemic of fear. And I have the antidote.
There are phobias for practically everything. Everyone seems to be afraid of something. We have so many fears that are running around wildly in this generation, having their way with us. We have become people of worry and fear. All of a sudden a sickness that a few weeks ago few of us even knew existed is the most talked about sickness in the US; Ebola. I watched people around me talk about how we should start wearing masks, and shut down the airlines because the risk of us all contracting this disease. Allow me to give you a statistic, you have 1 in 13.3 million chance of contracting Ebola in the US. You have 1 in 2 million chance of falling out of your bed and dying. We have fed into the hysteria of what the world tells us rather than feeding into the peace God so readily has available to us. Yes, right now there is an epidemic of Ebola, in West Africa. But here in the United States, there is an epidemic of fear. And I have the antidote.
1.
Perfect love. 1 John 4:18
God has not given us a spirit of fear but a sound mind. If
God isn’t giving us fear than who is? We have the choice to receive whatever is
being given to us. The enemy is dishing out fear in bucket fulls and we are
eating it right up. It’s time we spit out that cold dish, and dine on some
perfect love instead. Because this dish,
this love, has the ability to drive
out all fear. So how do we experience perfect love? By loving each other. When
we do this, God lives in us. And we are perfectly in Him. How unstoppable, how
powerful we become when we begin living with perfect love.
2.
Listen to wisdom. Proverbs 1:33
When we listen to wisdom, we will live in peace and remain
untroubled by fear of harm. Wisdom can come in many shapes and sizes. But the
best place I’ve found wisdom is smack dab in the Word of God. I’ve said this
before but it bears repeating, read a Proverb a day to begin. James even tells
us that if we need wisdom, to ask for it and our generous God will give it to
us! (James 1:5)
3.
Fear God... not man. Hebrews 13:6
This is the most important fear antidote I can give you. And
it may sound a bit ironic. But when we fear God first, we will have nothing
else to fear. Many have misunderstood and forgotten what it is like to “fear
God”. We think it’s all about just having an awe and respect for Him and while
that is in fact part of it, it goes much further than that. Whenever someone
encounters God, their reaction is literal and utter fear. Isaiah had a vision
of heaven, John saw Jesus after his resurrection, Mary encountered the angel of
the Lord, and after they are stricken with fear but almost immediately all of
them are told, “Do not fear”. It’s this
crazy concept that when we learn to fear God, we don’t have to fear anything
else.
The truth of the matter is that by fearing something we are
unknowingly empowering it. When we fear
spiders we walk around them no matter how far off course it takes us. When we fear people we become anxious around
them, our minds consumed with completely irrational and terrifying ideas of
what may happen. When we fear the future
we lose sleep and sometimes even our appetites trying to think of ways to
change or even fix it. Whenever we fear
something we change our behaviors, our attitudes, and our direction- but that
is the beauty of it. When we fear the
right thing- God- we are given a new behavior, a new attitude, and a new
direction. So go ahead and fear. Just fear the right thing. Because what you choose will be the difference
between living in bondage or in freedom.
1 John 4:18
"There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love."
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