What are you afraid of?
What holds you back?
Often times as Christians we know we are called to live a fearless life. Yet so often we walk in fear, we just cover it up. We mask it with insecurities, or doubt, and don't recognize it for the fear that it is. We fear that we will miss an opportunity that God has provided or we will take the wrong step so we don't. Or we fear we will miss it so we jump out of fear to take every step, sacred to stay. Does this sound familiar? I know I have lived a lot of my life fluctuating between a fear of not taking the right step, and a fear of missing the next step.
About a year ago my husband and I made a huge life change. We decided that we didn't want to live our lives in fear. We didn't want to make any decisions based on fear. We wanted to live lives based on truth, on what we know is true and never fear. This sounds great, it has been a long walk of seeing what it looks like to truly live like this and I am convinced it is a life long journey. We went from always saying " well I'm scared of..." Or "my fear is..." To basically eliminating the word from our vocabularies. This really made me stop and evaluate what I was really thinking and feeling about things that came up. I noticed that often fear was the root but the cause was usually something simple. How silly it seemed that I have been allowing that fear to control so much of my life. I can say that a year later, a year of retraining how I think, how I process things, and how I speak, I am less fearful than I have ever been, and God has been faithful to renew my mind in this area.
How have I allowed God to do this in my life? The key was focusing in on Him, on the promises from His scripture of a sound mind, of peace, and not of a spirit of fear. Of focusing on what I know from the bible is true about God. He isn't out to get me. He isn't trying to make me uncomfortable at every turn. He knows my heart, He knows me, He knows what I need, and what my family needs better than I do. He is where who I am comes from. He established my identity long before I formed my fake one. Understanding these truths changed everything for me. I'd always known these things, but to force myself to walk them out and live it out is an animal totally different for me. He has changed me through this process. He has expanded my perspective, my understanding and challenged me to take steps of faith I wouldn't have before. When you look fear in the face and see that compared to your God, compared to Jesus they are so small it makes it easier to let go of that fear and trust.
Sometimes the biggest step of faith is staying where you are doing what God has called you to for that season. Sometimes it's dropping everything for a new adventure. Whatever it is take that step of faith. Combat the fear with truth, and when you find yourself saying "I'm sacred of..." Or "I'm worried about" look at why. How do you really feel? What lie are you believing that feeds that fear you have? What do you not believe about who God is? What do you kneed to know? We are called to stand in truth, not fear. We are called to walk in truth. To know who we are in Christ. Our descisons that we make cannot be based on fear, they must be based on the truth of the gospel and who we are in Christ. The truth that he has never failed and He won't start now. The truth that God is good and He is trustworthy.
Walk in truth not fear, it has changed my perspective and life, and I cannot wait to see what God does as I continue to learn how to live my life in this way.
