fear

Fear, how many of can admit we live in fear? Fear of not being good enough. Fear of failure. Fear of abandonment. Fear of being like our parents, or not being like our parents. Fear of what could happen to our children. Fear of others’ opinions. Fear of being found out. Fear of losing control. The list goes on and on.

I believe fear comes from knowing we are not in control of our lives, even though we want to believe we are. Life comes in and shows us just how at its mercy we are. Hurricanes hit. Loved ones die. Loss of a job. Our “soulmate” finds another soul mate or simply decides to leave. We find out we have cancer.We do not want to acknowledge our need for God. We want to think we can manage everything on our own.We shut God out. We distract ourselves with other things. If we do take the time to go to church, we allow other people to tell us what God is saying. We don’t learn for ourselves. We rely on another’s time with God to dictate how we act. I believe this is because if we actually take the time to reflect on our hearts, we see how evil we really are. Even with the best of intentions, we hurt other people. It makes us feel helpless and even hopeless. Why even try if we are just going to have failure. It is easier to go ahead and live how we see fit than try to measure up. This is where religion gets us to abandon our relationship with God.God never intended for us to have religion- other people telling us how to live. He always meant for us to have a relationship with Him. To know Him for ourselves. To rest in His love for us. In His ability to manage the things we simply cannot. The Bible speaks of resting, this by definition means to cease work- or actions- we cannot truly rest in Him if we are doing all the work. He wants to work on our behalf. We must trust in order for this process to be effective. We cannot pick up our troubles because we do not see what we believe we should see.

Resting requires intention. It is deliberate. It has to be.