* * *
When we lean into the dilemma and trust the hand of God—we gain control.
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Instead of fighting a fear or merely putting up with it, start praying about how it gained entrance into your life, especially if the fear is a repetitive one. I always became fearful when Dave tried to correct our children and it was because I was corrected in an abusive way when I was growing up at home. I didn’t understand the reason for my fear until God revealed it to me through prayer. You might even need to get some counseling to get to the root of your fears, but whatever you do, don’t just put up with them. God has a great life waiting for you and you must reach for it confidently.
John Ortberg tells the story of a snow skier who after pointing his ski tips down the barrel of a black-rated slope, quickly entered the land of no control and instinctively leaned backward in hope of reversing sure disaster. “We all do that,” says Ortberg. “But in life, as in snow-skiing, the answer is not to react in fear and lean back and away from the experience, but rather lean into it. When we lean into the dilemma and trust the hand of God—we gain control. Fear is a snare!”5
Remember not to run from your fears, lean into them and you will conquer them.
Poor Training
Parents, teachers and other role models can teach children how to fear or they can teach them to be bold. A mother who is fearful herself will transmit that fear to her children. She will be overly cautious about many things and a silent fear sinks into the heart of her children. We should not teach our children to live recklessly, but we should teach them to be bold, take action, and to never be so afraid of making mistakes that they won’t try things. I believe we should teach our children and those under our authority to take chances in life. If we never take a chance we will never make progress. Progress always requires stepping into the unknown. Experience gives us confidence but we never get experience unless we step out and try things we have not tried before.
A child who is told over and over, “you better not try that, you might get hurt,” will more than likely develop a deep rooted fear of trying new things. If a child hears “be careful” too frequently they may learn to be so careful that they end up living a narrow life that has no room for adventure. I encourage you to teach others by word and example how to be bold and courageous. Tell people to try things, reminding them that making a mistake is not the worst thing that can happen.
What Does the Future Hold?
None of us knows for sure what the future holds. This lack of knowledge often opens the door for fear. What if I become disabled? What if my spouse dies? What if my child dies? What if we have another world war? What about terrorism? What kind of world will I be living in twenty-five years from now? Wondering about things we don’t have answers to opens the door to fear. Instead of wondering, trust God that whatever your future holds He will enable you to handle it when the time comes. Wherever you are going, God has already been there and paved the way for you.
I look at some of the things people go through and I think to myself, “I am afraid I could never go through that with the graciousness and courage I have seen them display.” Then I remind myself that when we must go through something, God gives us the strength to do so. When we merely fear going through something, we do it without any help from God at all. When I look back over my life and remember some of the things God has brought me through I think, “how did I do that?” It was because of God’s grace and power. He enabled me to do what I needed to do at the time and He will always do the same thing for you if you ask Him to. We may not know the future, but if we know the One who holds the future in His hands, we can look forward to it expectantly and without fear. If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.
Chapter Thirteen
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STRESS AND FEAR
Stress is one of the biggest problems we face in our society today. Everything is so fast-paced, loud and excessive that our mental, emotional and physical systems stay on overload. We are inundated with information. We have newspapers, magazines and 24-hour news networks that don’t just reach us through our television but through our cell phones and other mobile devices. At one time, a popular Web search engine indexed more than 3,307,998,701 Web pages!1 It’s hard enough to think about that number, let alone the content that goes with it. We have information overload and it is no wonder we have trouble calming our minds down so we can rest. In addition to what the world throws at us, we have schedules that are insane. There are never enough hours in any day to get everything done we are trying to do. We hurry and we rush, we feel frustrated and tired and we’re the first to say, “I’m under so much stress that I feel I am going to explode.”
Could fear be the root of many of our stresses? I believe it is. I believe we often get involved in things just because we are afraid of being left out. We are afraid we won’t know what is going on or that someone else will gain control of a situation if we are not there to speak for ourselves. We are afraid they might criticize us or think poorly of us if we say we don’t want to be involved.
We want our children to be like all the other children, so we let them get involved in far too many things and most of them require some involvement from us also. We are afraid they will get rejected, especially if we experienced a lot of rejection when we were children.
I never felt that I fit in as a child or teenager. Because of the abuse in my home and all the secrets I had to keep I could not develop proper relationships. I had to say no to a lot of invitations just because my father was so terribly strict and the result was that people stopped asking. I always felt left out and a bit odd.
I was afraid my children would go through the same pain I did so anything they wanted to do I thought we should find a way to do it, lest they feel left out as I did. People get under financial stress trying to have what everyone else has. Have you been one of the moms who bought a $150.00 pair of tennis shoes that you could not afford for your child just because “everyone has them?”
Are you so afraid of displeasing people that you say “yes” to a lot of things you know you should be saying “no,” to? If so, your stress is not caused by all the things you have to do, it is because you are afraid of disapproval.
We are afraid to be different so we desperately try to keep up with all the other people in our lives and it wears us out. The truth is we just want to go home and sit in a chair but we don’t want people to think we are a dud so we keep pushing ourselves to do things we don’t want to do.
Take a minute to stop and look closely at the reasons you are doing the things you currently do. If any of them are being done out of fear, then eliminate them. You will be amazed at how much time you may have if you have a spirit-led schedule rather than a people-driven one.
Confident People Do More with Less Stress
You might ask, “Doesn’t a really confident person get involved in a lot of things?” Yes, they probably do, but it isn’t because of fear. Whatever they are involved in they are confident they should be involved in. When we do things out of desire and confidence, they affect us totally different than when we do them out of wrong motives and fear. God will not energize our fears, but He does energize us if we have faith that we are doing the right thing and approach a project with confidence in Him.
Fear drains you of whatever energy you might have had and leaves you feeling stressed to the max, when confidence and faith actually energizes you. A confident person can do more with less stress because they live with an ease that fearful people never experience.
I don’t believe that what we do creates stress nearly as much as how we do it. If we do something fearfully and under pressure with no real desire to do it, then stress and no joy is the result. You’re miserable. If you have been under a lot of stress lately I encourage you to take an honest inventory of not only what you are doing, but why you are doing it. If fear is the reason you’re involved then eliminate some stress by getting your priorities straight. Yo
ur priority is not to keep everyone else in your life happy by doing all the things they expect; it is to live a life that is pleasing to God and one that you can enjoy.
Too many people are not living their dreams because they are living their fears. In other words, instead of doing things out of their heart, they do them because they are afraid of what will happen if they don’t. Someone will get angry! I will get left out! People will talk about me! It is time that you started being the person you really want to be. It is time to reach for your dreams. What has God placed in your heart? Is there something you want to do that you have been waiting on? I believe God’s timing is very important and I certainly don’t think we should take action foolishly, but some people never do anything but “wait” all of their lives. They wait for something to happen when they should be making something happen.
* * *
Too many people are not living their dreams because they are living their fears.
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When people are frustrated and feel unfulfilled it creates stress. There is nothing more stressful than going through the motions everyday and still feeling at the end of each day, week, month and year that you are no closer than you ever were to reaching your dream or goal. God has created us to bear good fruit. He said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” If we are not doing that we will feel frustrated.
Playing It Safe
Some people never realize the fulfillment of their dreams because they always play it safe. Although safety is necessary, too much of it is merely another manifestation of fear.
A farmer was once sitting on his front porch when a friend dropped by to visit.
“How’s your wheat going this year?” asked the visitor.
“Ain’t got any,” replied the farmer. “I didn’t plant any. I’m afraid the weevil will get into it and ruin me.”
“Oh, well how’s your corn?”
“Ain’t got any,” replied the farmer. “I didn’t plant any. I’m afraid the crows will eat it all up and ruin me.”
“Oh, well how are your potatoes going?”
“Ain’t got any,” replied the farmer. “I didn’t plant any. I’m afraid the tater bugs will poison them and ruin me.”
“Well, what did you plant this year?” asked the confused visitor.
“Nutin’,” replied the farmer. “I just played it safe.”
Think of all of the products and services we would miss out on if their creators had decided to “play it safe” instead of pursuing their dreams. What if Henry Ford had simply been content to run a sawmill instead of going on to pursue being an engineer and ultimately one of our nation’s first automobile creators?2 What if Alexander Graham Bell had listened to his friends and family and focused on the telegraph instead of his telephone invention? What if Jonas Salk, the scientist who discovered the vaccine for polio, had followed his initial “safe” inclination to go into law instead of medical research?3
Always living in the safe zone of life and never taking chances actually makes one a thief and a robber. You might think that statement is a bit strong but the truth is always strong, and the truth also makes us free. If I spend my life keeping myself safe then I rob everyone else of my gifts and talents simply because I am too afraid to step out and be willing to find out what I can do in life. I have a feeling that some of my readers have not even begun to live yet and NOW is the time for you to stop “playing it safe” and start being bold and courageous.
Inactivity Breeds Tiredness and Stress
Too much activity and no rest definitely is the culprit behind most stress, but no activity is also a problem. I am sure you have heard that exercise is a great stress reliever and it is very true. I would rather be physically tired from exercise and movement than tired in my soul from doing nothing and being bored.
I have noticed if I sit in a chair too long I will feel extremely tired when I get up. Why? God gave us all the joints in our body because He expected us to move! Movement means I am alive.
The Bible clearly warns against the dangers of laziness (Proverbs 12:27, 2 Thessalonians 3:6–10). The lazy man has nothing and he gets exactly what he deserves which is nothing. If you give things to a lazy man or woman they won’t take care of them and you’ll notice that everything around them is in shambles. Their car (if they have one) is dirty. Their house (if they have one) is messy and dirty. They are often in debt. People who are lazy spend their life “wishing” that something good would happen to them. They want others to do for them what they should be doing for themselves. They are miserable human beings and their lives bear no good fruit.
Work is good for all of us. As a matter of fact, God said we should work six days and rest one. That shows how important work and activity are in God’s eyes. God has created us to work, not to sit idly by and do nothing. Perhaps some of you are at a place in life where you simply need to “get up and get going.” There are several good stories in the Bible about people who had serious problems and when they asked Jesus for help He told them to “GET UP!”
In the fifth chapter of John we see one example. A man was crippled and he lay by the pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years waiting for his miracle. When Jesus came to the man and asked him how long he had been in that condition, the man gave the length of time and then continued to tell Jesus how he had nobody to put him into the pool at the right time and how others always got ahead of him. Jesus told the man to “GET UP, PICK UP YOUR BED AND WALK!” (John 5:8). The man felt sorry for himself so he just lay there and did nothing. The answer to his problem surfaced when he made an effort to move.
Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Well, don’t be like the story of the old mountaineer and his wife who were sitting in front of the fireplace one evening just whiling away the time. After a long silence, the wife said: “Jed, I think it’s raining. Get up and go outside and see.”
The old mountaineer continued to gaze into the fire for a second, sighed, then said, “Aw, Ma, why don’t we just call in the dog and see if he’s wet.”4
GET UP and start doing whatever you can do to get the messes in your life cleaned up. If they are marriage messes then do your part. Don’t worry about what your spouse is not doing, just do your part and God will reward you. If you have a financial mess, then stop spending and start paying off your debts. Get an extra job for a period of time if you need to. If you are not able to do that then ask God to show you what you can do. Remember, you cannot have a harvest without first sowing seed of some kind. Remember what I’ve already said: “If you do what you can do, then God will do what you cannot do.”
A lot of laziness is rooted in fear. People are so afraid to do something that they form a habit of doing nothing. They sit idly by and become jealous of the people who have the life they would like to have. They become resentful because things never work out for them. They fail to realize that “Things cannot work out for them if they don’t work!”
Only Change Will Relieve Stress
If you are stressed out all the time something will have to change in order for the stress to be relieved. It will not just go away as long as you keep doing the same thing. We cannot expect to keep doing the same thing over and over and get a different result. If you want different results, you have to change the ingredients.
Now, as soon as I mentioned the word “change” some of you tensed up because you are afraid of change. Almost one hundred years ago, the clerk of Abbington Presbytery came up with percentages for the kinds of attitudes people have about change and I think they still apply today.
1. Early innovators (2.6%), run with new ideas
2. Early adaptors (13.4%), influenced by (1) but not initiators
3. Slow Majority (34%), the herd-followers
4. Reluctant Majority (34%)
5. Antagonistic (16%), they will never change5
If you’re like the bottom 84% of people in the above list, you don’t like change, and you want the safety of sameness. It is amazing to me how some people spend their
lives resisting change while others thrive on it. Change keeps life fresh and adventurous.
* * *
Take some bold steps of faith and change anything the Lord leads you to change.
* * *
Take some bold steps of faith and change anything the Lord leads you to change. If what you are doing with your time is not bearing good fruit, then make a change. If you are not getting enough rest, make a change. If you are not disciplining your children and their behavior is causing you a lot of stress, then make a change. If you are not taking care of yourself, then make a change. If you are bored, make a change. If your friends are taking advantage of you, then make a change! Are you getting the point? Stress can be relieved if you’re not afraid to make changes.
You may be afraid of change but it is also possible that even if you find the courage to make the necessary changes that other people in your life won’t like the changes you make. Don’t be afraid of them either. You will get used to the changes and so will they. If you don’t take action now you will still be complaining about the same things a year from now, and a year after that, and ten years after that, and there will be no end to your misery. The time is NOW! Boldness takes action, but fear breeds inactivity and procrastination. The choice is yours!