Fears are something most of us struggle with. Some of our fears are irrational and we don’t understand where they came from or how to deal with them. It might be a fear of sudden death, heights, spiders, darkness, and mice as some people have mentioned in the forum. Others may have some root cause in childhood or past experiences e.g. a fear of water after nearly drowning.
The Bible tells us ‘perfect love casts out fear,’ 1 John 4:18. If we trust in the Lord then we should be able to seek His help in dealing with those fears that beset us. Sometimes, that may mean confronting them.
In my case I had to confront a deep-seated fear of flying. But when my daughter was overseas, nothing, not even the 9/11 terrorism that had occurred a couple of weeks earlier was enough to change my mind about flying overseas to see her. The first flight I ever took was 21 hours and across the other side of the world. The only possible way to deal with the fear was by prayer and trusting that God had me and my husband in his care. Since that time I’ve been on several shorter flights. But short or long, they are always approached in the same way – with a great deal of prayer.
Really, that’s the only way to deal with our fears – praying about them and then leaving them with God. Too often what we do is take them back and start to worry about them again. Some things like illness or death are going to happen whether we are afraid or not. But we can expend a lot of wasted energy fretting and worrying about them and being afraid, when we would do better to be enjoying the positives in our lives.
Think you don’t have any positives? Think again. I’m sure if you stop and think about it long enough, you’ll finds a while raft of things to be thankful for.
I’ve just finished reviewing a new picture book. What a joy to read and see the creative efforts as writer and illustrator team together to create a book what will delight children and those who read to them. It also reminded me of lots of hours spend reading to our children when they were young and these days reading to grandchildren. These are joys I’m glad to have shared and precious memories to be thankful for.
Bible verses from The New American Standard Version
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