No person on this side of eternity lives a fear-free life. No one always operates out of total rest and security of faith in God. Every one of us has moments in which we lose our mind and our way. Of course, there are legitimate reasons for fear. If a child falls down a stairway, the quick responses of our thoughts and actions are all ignited by fear. In that situation fear of injury propels us to provide rescue and care. But here is the issue: although fear can be an appropriate response to the dangers of life in a fallen world, we must not let it rule our hearts. Fear is a good thing in the face of danger, but it makes a cruel god. So here is the fight in which we all must engage: we must not allow fear to become the lens through which we view life and the guide for how we make decisions.
When fear rules our hearts, we do not see or think about life accurately. We function with distorted vision that causes us to make wrong conclusions and bad decisions. And, because fear distorts our vision, we trouble our own trouble. In counseling I have warned people over and over again that things were not as bad as they could be and that my clients could make them worse by responding to their trouble in the wrong way. So we have to fight to see life with the eyes of faith and not through the lens of fear.
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 thoughts of our hearts. 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 else 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 the thoughts of our minds are dominated by our struggles, then God’s awesome glory, the hugeness of his power, and the comfort of his presence will not. Fear will have room to settle into our hearts. Our previous troubles have already taught us that we are not in control, that we are fairly weak and definitely not independent. This means that in our heart of hearts we know we cannot handle our difficulty on our own. So 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.
Denying Reality and Shrinking God
Biblical faith never, ever requires us to deny harsh or dark realities. Biblical faith never asks us to minimize our fears. Biblical faith never forces us to put a happy smile on our face and act as though we are joyful when we are actually depressed. Biblical faith 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.
After Abraham had waited several decades for the promised son, the one on whom he had invested all his hopes and on whom all the covenant promises rested, God asked the unthinkable. Had the long wait not been enough of a test? Was God really asking Abraham to sacrifice this long-promised son (see Gen. 22:1–19; Heb. 11:17–20)? If we had been in Abraham’s place, what would we have been thinking? What would we have felt? If all we focused on was the situation itself, it would have seemed like a cruel trick, and we would have been filled with rage, anxiety, and doubt. And, the more we tried to make sense of it, the more questions we would have raised.
But Abraham came into this moment fully persuaded of the goodness and faithfulness of God and of God’s willingness and ability to do whatever he had promised (see Rom. 4:18–21). He was able calmly to do the unthinkable, because for years his daily thoughts had been focused on the goodness, faithfulness, and power of his Lord. He was not paralyzed by the circumstances, confusing and distressing though they were, because he looked at those circumstances through the lens of the beautiful faithfulness and awesome power of God.
We can contrast Abraham’s response with that of the Israelite soldiers who for forty days huddled in their tents in fear of the Philistine warrior Goliath. Rather than reminding themselves that they were the children of the Lord Almighty, who had promised to defeat their enemies, and in so doing taking control of their meditation, they let themselves think about the impossibility of defeating such a warrior (see 1 Samuel 17). No wonder no one in the regular army volunteered to go into the valley and face Goliath. For those forty days the Israelite soldiers went undefeated by Goliath. Sadly, they were defeated by their own meditation.
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.” Because their formal theology has not changed, they are unaware of how much their functional view of God has, and because of this they 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 dealing not just with what we are suffering but also with the pain of the ways in which our meditation causes us to understand it, feel about it, and respond to it. When was the last time we prayed, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer” (Ps. 19:14)?
Denial is never a biblical response to suffering. If we have to deny our di cult realities to obtain some kind of temporary peace, we may enjoy temporary peace, but it is important to know that 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
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 such a problem that the Psalms, which portray for us the battle for a heart of faith in the midst of the trials of life, talk repeatedly about the need to remember. In fact, two in particular, Psalms 118 and 136, are dedicated entirely to the importance of fighting forgetfulness. 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. And we need to burn this refrain 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” (Ps. 136:1).
The only truly 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. 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.” 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 it. 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; and 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.
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 and that 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).
Taken from ESV Everyday Gospel Bible by Paul David Tripp, Copyright © 2024, pp. 1665–1667. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
