Meditating on Fear
This side of eternity, there are legitimate reasons to fear. If a child falls down stairs or runs into the street, fear is what triggers our instinct to run and rescue. If we find ourselves in a dangerous situation at risk of being attacked or robbed, fear is what causes our heart to race and our brain to look for ways to escape. If we start to experience concerning physical symptoms, we fear the potential life-changing disease a doctor might discover.
God has hardwired these reactions inside of us, and fear can often be an appropriate response to the dangers of life in a broken world. But because we are functional worshippers, there is always a more significant and underlying issue: Does fear rule our hearts?
Let me provide the practical application of this month's article and then unpack it: we must fight against fear dominating the meditation of our hearts and controlling the lens through which we view life.
Meditating on Fear or Meditating on God?
There is a direct connection between what we meditate on and what we fear. What we are afraid of will be directly influenced by where we focus the meditation of our heart. This is one of the reasons for the warning in Proverbs 4:23: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
The more we focus on fear, the bigger, more complicated, and scarier our fears become. But something even more significant and life-shaping is happening at the same time. As our fear, depression, or anxiety looms larger and larger, dominating the vision of the eyes of our heart, our Lord seems to shrink in size and power.
If our struggles dominate the meditation of our hearts, then God's awesome glory, undisputed power, and comforting presence will not. It is spiritually devastating and emotionally paralyzing to fall into thinking that God is small, distant, or lacking in the power we know we desperately need. No wonder we are afraid! Our meditation, if focused on our troubles instead of our God, will rob us of enjoying the comfort of God's presence and sovereignty, leaving us weak, confused, and alone in our universe of difficulty.
That which controls our meditation will control our thoughts about God, ourselves, others, our situation, and even the nature of life itself. And, as we meditate on whatever is producing fear, anxiety, or depression, our joy wanes, our hope fades, and God seems increasingly distant.
Few people suffer from the fact that their God is too large! I have often heard sufferers describe how God has shrunk in their view, and I have thought, “If that is who I thought God was, I would not trust him either.” While our formal theology might remain unchanged, our functional view of God has, and because of this, we are chased and haunted by fear.
All the while, God has not changed, his truth is still true, and that which we are facing has not grown bigger—it is just bigger, darker, and more impossible because of our meditation.
Our suffering has replaced God and his truth as the lens through which we look at and understand life. We are not only dealing with what we are suffering, but also with the suffering of how our unbiblical meditation causes us to understand, feel about, and respond to it.
I like to say it this way: when fear rules our hearts, we tend to trouble our own trouble.
Fear is a reasonable response in the face of danger, but it makes a cruel god. Hearts dominated by fear will drive us to make unreasonable actions and reactions. When fear rules our hearts, we do not see or think about life accurately. We function with a distorted vision that causes us to make incorrect conclusions and poor decisions.
In counseling, I would often try to help my clients see that things were not as bad as they were making them out to be, warning them that they were making their legitimate trouble far worse by responding in a fear-driven manner.
What's the solution? Ask God for the vision to see life through the eyes of faith, and not through the lens of fear. Ask God for the grace to meditate on him, not our trouble.
When was the last time you prayed the words of Psalm 19:14? “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
Denying Fear or Denying God?
Biblical faith never requires us to deny the harsh realities of life in a fallen world. Minimizing or ignoring our fears is never a prerequisite for following God. Being a disciple of Christ never means we must put on a forced, fake happy face when we are experiencing the difficulties and troubles of life. Living as a Christian never calls us to defend God's reputation by acting as though we are fully confident in him and anxious about nothing.
In fact, an entire book of the Bible (the Psalms) is a script of the honest cries of God's people—cries of confusion, anxiety, doubt, depression, and fear in the midst of the painful trials of life. God never reprimands us for being afraid. He never mocks us in our weakness. He never minimizes what we are experiencing. He never turns his back on us when we wonder what he is doing or why we are facing whatever we are facing. Not only can our Lord handle every bit of our honesty, but his Word is an invitation to honesty.
Denial is never a biblical response to suffering. If we must deny our difficult realities to achieve some temporary peace, we may enjoy it momentarily, but it will be fleeting, and we are not exercising biblical faith. The message of the Bible is that the arms of God's power, presence, and grace wrap around the deepest and darkest moments of human fear, anxiety, or suffering. God wants us to know that it is impossible for us to go through anything outside his understanding and care. The message is that God's grace is not just about our past forgiveness and our future hope but also about everything we are facing right now. All of today's sorrows, disappointments, weaknesses, and unexpected dilemmas—and the suffering that results—have been addressed by his grace.
Forgetting Fear or Forgetting God?
Perhaps there is no greater spiritual trap than forgetfulness. Because we live in a broken world, where trouble assaults our mind and heart with so many new things to consider, face, decide, wonder about, or fear, it is so easy to lose sight of and practically forget the things that have been our motivation, comfort, security, and rock of hope.
This is why the Psalms preach repeatedly about our need to remember. In fact, two in particular, Psalm 118 and 136, are dedicated entirely to the importance of fighting forgetfulness.
We need to burn the refrain from Psalm 118:1 and Psalm 136:1 into our minds in those moments when loneliness, forgetfulness, and fear are about to set in: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”
If we are going to fight forgetfulness and the fear it produces, we must get into the habit of sitting down and recounting all the ways that God in love has guided us, provided for us, protected us, and met us with his grace and mercy. If we are going to fight forgetfulness, we must do this again and again. Doing so is not a denial of present difficulty; rather, it forces us to look at it through the lens of the presence, power, and love of our Savior.
Fear of Creation or Fear of God?
Fear of things in the creation is a tempting trap, but trust in the Creator is a secure way to live. Fear of God does not remove fear, anxiety, or depression from our lives, but dramatically changes the way in which we process those things.
When we fear God, the equation is not ourselves compared to the size of our trial, but our God compared to the size of our trials.
The only practical and lasting solution to fear of situations, locations, or people is the fear of God. Only fear of Someone more powerful than that which we are facing, and the assurance that this One of scary power has chosen to unleash his power for our benefit, have the power to give us courage in the face of something or someone more powerful than we are.
God understands what we do not understand. He controls what we cannot control. He has power where we have no power. He gives what we could never earn. He is ever-present, ever-loving, and eternally gracious. On his children, he pours down all of what he is. It really is true that fear of God is the only solution to fear of anything else.
Fear of God—that thankful and reverential recognition of his glory, sovereignty, and power—is how rest and hope can be found in the face of whatever seems difficult and hopeless. Proverbs 15:16 says it so well: “Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it.”
Finally, it is critical to remember that nothing that we face in this broken world is ultimate or eternal. It is important to preach to ourselves that whatever we fear will not last forever.
Suffering, in the eternal scheme of things, will not last forever. God is eternal. His presence will be with his children forever. His grace is a gift that will never be used up or wear out. His power will never fade. In the final analysis, our suffering will not determine our destiny. God alone does, and he is amazing in power and grace.
Fear, anxiety, or depression will almost always accompany life in a fallen world, but these ills do not have to rule our hearts or decimate our hope. By grace, we are the sons and daughters of One who is greater than anything we could ever fear. He is in us and with us and for us, and he unleashes his glory for our good.
I love the words of Jesus as he is facing the unthinkable: “Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me” (John 16:32).