Jesus, Grant Me Fierce Faith
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV
Living without fear is not believing that nothing fearful will happen but, rather, believing that nothing will happen apart from God’s intervening grace. Nothing will happen without the hand of God in control, filtering out what will destroy, softening the full force of the blow, and bringing a result that could not be accomplished any other way. His standard for weighing your situation in the balance before it reaches you is: the glory it will produce outweighs the pain it will cause.1
I didn’t want to go to prison.
Yet this thought ran repeatedly through my mind. Fear sprayed what felt like shards of glass into my soul. I felt prickly all over. The undertow of what-ifs about pulled me under. Where is this coming from?
I took inventory of my life and found no evidence that I’d be going to prison anytime soon. I followed the law. Paid my taxes. Loved my neighbor. Feared God. You get the idea. Yet this unreasonable fear about strangled me. Granted, it showed up after an intense eighteen-month battle with my health. But this thing seemed to be hitting me out of nowhere.
I fearfully imagined bringing utter shame to my family, friends, and co-workers. I second-guessed the speed limit while I drove. I feared sending an email too quickly to the wrong person. It’s crazy-making to think about it now. But fear created a hypersensitivity to my own capacity to mess up, trip up, and fall down (which only exacerbated the opportunity to do more of the same). Without realizing it, I had put more weight on my ability to fall down than on God’s ability to hold me up.
Here’s where the fear first presented itself in my current-day story: Over the course of a couple of months on my radio show, I’d interviewed several Christian men who’d gone to prison either because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because they’d committed a white-collar crime without realizing it.
With each interview I felt the prickles of anxiety and fear increasingly rise up within me, but I couldn’t figure out why. I asked God to speak to my heart and show me what I could not see. He seemed silent while my fears screamed loud. Peace felt like a wet water balloon. I’d have a hold on it, and the next moment—with the next fearful thought—it slipped out of my hands.
Around that same time, people (without knowing my struggle) randomly confessed to me that they were dealing with their own out-of-the-blue unreasonable fears. I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew that the enemy was on a tirade. But I had to know if I had given him access in some way.
This much was true: I’ve battled fear my whole life. It seemed my instinctive response to threat was fear. They say nerves that fire together, wire together. In other words, when we have certain traumatic experiences, we have thoughts and reactions to those experiences, making them one and the same. That’s why some of us are so triggerable. Traumatic Experience + Emotion = Perceived Reality and Fear Reaction.
But our God has not given us a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7). Fear is a spirit, and it’s not from God. And fear can become an actual habit in our lives. Jennifer Kennedy Dean writes
We have learned to default to fear. It didn’t just happen, but we learned it in such a way that we didn’t know we were developing a habit. To rescue us, God promises to do a new thing. To make a new road. The strongly entrenched neural pathway that leads us automatically to fear and worry will be laid waste and a new road (neural pathway) will be created—a road that leads automatically to faith.2
For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
Isaiah 43:19
Physician and author Dr. Timothy Jennings says,
Our brain has only two motivational fuels: Love and fear. Perfect love casts out fear. When we allow fear to run rampant in our lives, we open the door to a cascade of inflammation in our bodies. Fear significantly affects our health, decision-making ability, and our perspective.3
Knowing what I know about fear and its effect on my already challenged health, I went after it with God’s help. I couldn’t afford to let fear win the day. I wanted to be well. In every way. I quoted Scripture, prayed whole passages from the Bible, marched around my living room and took authority over the spirit of fear. I enlisted my friends to pray, and worshiped like I’d never worshiped before.
I cut out TV, Christian suspense novels (my favorite, but they stir me up), and unnecessary food (like excess sugar). I focused my heart and mind on the things of God. I leaned in and appealed to the Lord, What is going on with me, Lord? Why does it seem the enemy has such access to me?
Like a weed that sneakily surfaced in my yard, I realized that this fear had its roots in me. Though it felt like Satan had launched another new attack on my life, I realized that this current threat was indeed connected to an old fear. Though it seemed like God had done nothing to stop the enemy’s threats against me, I realized once again that He has a purpose for everything He does. God is 100 percent committed, 100 percent involved, and 100 percent purposeful in everything He allows into our lives. He only allowed me to be stirred up because He had determined that it was time for me to be free.
In my distress I prayed to the Lord,
and the Lord answered me and set me free.
Psalm 118:5
One morning during my prayer time, a dormant memory played through my mind. One I’d forgotten was there. I watched a movie in my late teens or early twenties that struck terror into my soul. It was a true story about a high school girl who by all accounts was the ideal daughter. She got good grades, followed the rules, respected her parents, and oozed potential. But one night, one of her wilder friends convinced her to sneak out and break curfew.
As I remember it, she hadn’t done anything wrong, but the police arrested her alongside her friend, who’d been using drugs and alcohol. Anyway, the girls were brought to the station, and the police officer suggested to the “good” girl’s parents that they allow her to spend a night in jail to teach her a lesson. At first the parents were vehemently opposed to the idea. But the officer convinced them that their daughter had too much potential to waste, and that this indeed would scare her into never straying from her path again.
So she spent a night in jail.
But when they came to get her the following day, they couldn’t get her out. Because of some fluke with the paperwork, she was stuck in jail for about a month, during which time she was raped and beaten.
I’d completely forgotten about this movie. But at that moment, I physically remembered how it made me feel. All those years ago, I watched that movie and fear got in me. If you know my story, though I grew up in a wonderful, large family, I experienced trauma at the hands of some teenage boys. They pinned me down. And another time, another group of teens beat me up.
That movie reflected my worst fears and gave me new things to fear. I was a rule-following girl. A people-pleaser. And yet it seemed that I’d lived much of my life without the protections that others enjoy. If this terrible thing could happen to her, it could very well happen to me. Satan, after all, had my number.
I watched that movie as an impressionable young woman and it struck terror into my soul—terror that I didn’t know how to uproot back then, so I stuffed it deeper into the recesses of my being.
And I wondered why fear had such a grip on me.
You see how these lies work? I mentioned in the last chapter that for most of my adult life, I believed that the enemy could get to me anytime, anywhere, and that God would never stop him.
But I don’t believe that lie anymore.
Layer-by-layer, God has faithfully unearthed and exposed old lies and helped me to replace them with the living, giving truth because He’s committed to seeing me free. And He’s just as committed to your freedom. Isn’t that just great news?
It’s easy for someone who’s not walked in your shoes to flippantly tell you not to fear. It sounds so easy coming from someone else. And many times throughout Scripture we’re charged not to fear. But it’s not so easy, is it?
Jesus knows the layers of your pain, hurts, and traumas. And He knows exactly how to unearth them without destroying you. He’s wonderfully careful with you. And He’s ruthless with your enemy. He will in due time heal and restore you. And make no mistake about it: He will also destroy the works of the enemy in your life.
Once I identified the root cause of my current fear, I could face it because it was accessible. It could no longer hide under the lie that God would not protect me. That lie had been exposed and uprooted. Since I was no longer held captive by the lie that the devil could get away with whatever he wanted in my life, I could rise up with faith and courage and refute this fear-threat as well.
The devil fights dirty. And life is just plain hard sometimes. Even so, may we stay determined and grab hold of this truth: God has made promises to us that He intends to keep.
Let’s fight for our freedom so we can know the flourishing Jesus offers us. When we flourish, others flourish as well. Our life, our freedom, matters so very much in the greater kingdom story. We can do this.
Scripture tells us that we have our shield of faith so we can extinguish every fiery arrow the enemy sends our way.4 We fight the enemy’s lies with the truth from God’s Word. Let’s look at how my own storm revealed lies that I’d believed and the truths that I’d need in order to walk out my freedom and to know the flourishing that Jesus purchased for me.
In my book/DVD study Your Beautiful Purpose, I wrote and spoke about the fear of exposure. Countless people admit to fears of being publicly humiliated or of having old skeletons fall out of the closet for all to see. And still others feel perfectly unqualified to do what they do, even if they are qualified and quite successful in what they do. Their greatest fear is that others will see them as the imposter they believe themselves to be. Fear of exposure drives us into hypervigilance, steals the joy from our work, and keeps us from flourishing in our God-given assignment.
I’ve learned over the years that when God allows a storm or a trial, it’s a great opportunity to identify our fears so we can grab hold of faith.
The closer we get to exposing and identifying our fears, the more it threatens the enemy’s claimed territory in our lives. How does he respond? He turns up the heat on our fears; he threatens exposure and terror because he’s the one who’s terrified at the thought of being exposed. His only power in our lives is the lie. So when the lie goes, so goes his access to us. Hang in there. You will win this battle.
Once you’ve identified and named your fears, you’re halfway there. You’ve got the upper hand. Fear hides in the dark. The enemy shoots arrows from the shadows into the hidden places in our hearts. That’s why the storms in our lives are really so useful to us! And when we grasp God’s faithfulness to us in the storm, we’ll more bravely face the threats against us.
My husband serves on the board of a ministry that serves the people in Rwanda. At the end of his first trip, the team went on a safari. He came home and said, “I learned something about lions. They have a loud roar and they’re fast but only for a distance. They don’t have endurance. That’s why they rely on their ability to prowl, strategize, and intimidate.”
In other words, the fear-lion slinks around in the shadows. He relies on surprise attacks and his loud roar.
Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are.
1 Peter 5:8–9
The fear-lion prowls around and looks for an opening in our lives, an opportunity to at least disrupt our peace, at worst, to bait us into sin, ruin our lives, and rob us of our influence, perspective, and joy.
Our fear gives Satan a geographical presence that he doesn’t deserve.5
The scrawny, emaciated fear-lion finds an opening in our lives where he knows he’s already planted fear. He knows us well. He’s studied us for years. He remembers well the traps he set for us when we were just children. He knows what lies he fed us when life let us down. He watches our response to certain triggers. And as long as we react to our fears instead of responding to God’s promises, the enemy’s strategy against us will continually be successful.
The Lion of Judah
One fear I could not seem to overcome in this season was the fear of debilitating disease. Almost thirty years ago, when my neurological symptoms first presented themselves, doctors suggested multiple sclerosis or a brain tumor. I was a young mom, in my twenties with three little children, an empty bank account, and an exhausted husband. I couldn’t—for the life of me—comprehend that God was allowing this storm after six months on bed rest due to a high-risk pregnancy.
Many of you know the story. I ended up with a Lyme disease diagnosis. And it’s been a battle. But the fear of other neurological diseases has nipped at my heels my whole adult life. This recent resurgence of sickness and symptoms became my D-day battle. Time to go to war. Time to put fear under my feet once and for all so I could truly be free.
I pictured myself crawling up on the altar with trembling hands and wobbly knees. I curled up in a ball and surrendered my worst fears. I had to face them, look all the way through them, and see Jesus there. I had to pray the “even if” prayer. “My God will deliver me from this fire, but even if He doesn’t, He’s still my God, and He will ultimately deliver and heal me when it’s all said and done.”6
In that same moment, the Lord gave me a picture of Himself as the Lion of Judah. Picture Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia. His mane flowed in the wind. He was majestic and strong (nothing like the emaciated fear-lion that gnarls at us). I saw Him put one large paw and then the other up on the altar. He leaned over me and let out a fierce roar, from left to right, as if to serve the atmosphere notice that I belonged to Him. This word picture left me breathless in the most beautiful way. The Lord whispered to my heart, “Right now you feel fragile and vulnerable. But you’re only one of those things. You’re fragile, but not vulnerable.” I was only fragile. Not vulnerable. I have the living, all-powerful God alive in me, fighting for me, and keeping watch over me. And He’s as fiercely protective of you. Praise God.