Jesus’ Two Steps to Freedom From Fear

Lord, what do I fear and what do You say about it?

This is one of the questions we asked in our “Spirit Life Circle” hearing God small group. He uses is powerfully every time I quiet myself down, fix the eyes of my heart on Jesus, ask Him a question, and write a journal entry out of the flow of spontaneous thoughts He brings to my mind. But there are a few journal entries that have been ‘Before and After’ moments in my life. This was one of them.

As you read this, feel free to please pray for me that I really ‘get it.’ I’ve made a lot of progress since the day I first wrote down these words, but today I find I need them all over again for the next thing I’m facing. And I trust that some of what He said to me in the place where He found my heart will be meaningful to you in the place where He finds your heart today.

Here we go!

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Lord, what do I fear and what do You say about it?

“My darling, you fear many, many, many things, and if we talked about all of them, it would not be profitable for you, because you could and would always come up with more and new things to be afraid of that you have never thought of to fear. The world is full of potential dangers and mishaps, and your powerful imagination, when used for that purpose, can take them and add many more to them that would never happen to you, even if you did everything you are afraid to do, both good and bad.

Sometimes your fear has ‘protected’ you in the sense that it kept you from doing things that were unwise or wrong or bad, like going on dates with drunk men in clubs for example, but many more times it has hurt you and drained your joy and peace and strength and cut you off from things that were good.

I want to set you free from all of this. You still believe the lie that without fear you wouldn’t be sane, you wouldn’t be human, you wouldn’t be free, you wouldn’t be healthy, and you wouldn’t be yourself. And it’s hard to let something go when you believe the lie that it is that good and important. But that is because you believe the lie that the opposite of being afraid of something is to not care whether or not it happens to you or to be fine with it happening to you. And that is not true.

Take for example, the fear of drowning. You believe the lie that if you had no fear of drowning, you would go out in deep and dangerous water and drown. And that worse yet, you might want to drown or not mind drowning, because you would have no fear of it. And so it seems to you that without this fear, you would not be sane or healthy or human.

Yet Jesus often acted like He had no fear of drowning, walking on water and sleeping in storms. That would have terrified you if you had been there, like it terrified the disciples, and angered you with Jesus, just like the disciples were angry with Me then. But Jesus never drowned and His disciples never drowned and Jesus never wanted them to drown nor would He have been OK with letting them drown, even for a moment there they thought He would have! He just didn’t have a fear of it.

The best picture of this that I can give you is Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego saying, ‘Our God is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace, but even if He doesn’t, we will never worship the statue that you have made.’ That has two parts, the first part and the second part, and they are the two parts I want to give you to freedom from fear.

The first part is to control your imagination and the pictures you allow in your mind. The picture in Shadrach Meshach and Abed-Nego’s mind was not of how much it would hurt to be burned and roasted alive in a furnace, but of God being able to rescue them. They were picturing all the ways the rescue could look like and how I would be glorified. The pictures in their mind were faith, not fear. They reined in the ‘what if’s’ and didn’t let themselves waste energy on imagining every bad thing that might happen to them but probably never would. They said, ‘we really do think that we are not going to die in that furnace, so we are not going to waste energy fearing as if we were.’ That is the first half to freedom from fear.

And the second part is, ‘But even if God doesn’t protect me from the pain I fear, I will still trust Him and fear Him more with reverence and awe and love and exclusive worship and devotion to Him alone.’ Because yes, I know, I have allowed some of My children to be drowned and raped and crucified in this world, and you know their stories, and so the devil can always point to them and say, ‘You can’t trust God to protect you, because sometimes He doesn’t.’

Some people are like James, who seemed like the one I did not protect, who was executed by beheading and went straight to heaven a few years after Jesus did. Others are like Peter, who was miraculously rescued from the prison and from the same beheading by an angel who broke him out of prison, only to be crucified upside down years later and suffer much more than James ever would. So who did I love more, the brother I rescued from prison or the brother I didn’t allow to be crucified?

You can’t think of it that way. You can’t see the whole story. But I can tell you that both brothers are sitting here with Me right now, both brothers have their reward and are content and so happy with the stories I wrote and allowed in their lives, and both brothers would tell you not to be afraid! And since you can’t talk to them until you get here, please take My word for it now so you’ll have no regrets when you are where they are now!

Don’t look at a moment in somebody else’s story, whether Peter or James, and come to the false conclusion that you can’t trust Me to protect My children. Death is not the end. Only in the next life will you know whether or not you should have been afraid. So trust Me and believe. The greatest faith, as the preacher you heard once said, is ‘Even If’ Faith, the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That faith says, ‘I do not expect to drown, but even if I do, I still choose to trust God and fear Him only.’

You always have that choice to stay devoted to Me in your suffering, even when it feels like all other choices are taken from you. Even if you are kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery, or the worst thing you can imagine on earth to fear, you still can make that choice. And that’s another thing I don’t want you to use your imagination to picture. I want you to say like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, “My God is able to protect me from ever being sexually abused or fill in the blank, but even if He doesn’t, I will still trust and worship and fear Him alone.” You can attack the fear from both sides: by saying “God will protect me and I will not let myself picture and imagine that bad thing that hasn’t happened to me and probably never will,” and also saying “Even if it does happen I will still trust and worship God and no one can take that choice from me.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego did not want to be burned to death. Their lack of fear, that is, their freedom from fear, does not mean they had a death wish or a pain wish or went jumping into furnaces for fun, OK? It only means that when there was something they wanted even more than to avoid the furnace–that is, to worship only Me–they could make that choice with courage and confidence, because they trusted Me. And that is what I want for you.

I don’t want you to play in dangerous dark alleys for fun anymore than I wanted them to jump into flaming furnaces for fun. But if and when there is ever somebody you want to rescue in that dark alley and you know it is My will, just like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego knew it was My will for them to not worship the king’s 90-foot idol, then I want you to be able to go into the alley with courage and confidence and joy, believing that I am protecting you and that you will be fine, painting the screen of your imagination with pictures of how I and My angels are accompanying you and how you will rescue that person with Me, not scary pictures of all the ways you could be mugged in the alley, and I want you to be saying deep in your heart, ‘Even if He doesn’t protect me from all pain and suffering in this alley, I will still choose to trust Him and obey Him and worship Him alone and fear Him more.’

That is the heart with which Jesus went through this dark world, and that is the heart with which I want you to go through it too. You’ll be out the other end before you know it; you’ll arrive at this party I’m having with Peter and James and a bunch of other people I just can’t wait to introduce you to, My brave warrior princess. So don’t be afraid.

The pictures you paint in your mind control your emotions. The disciples had a picture in their mind of drowning in the sea while Jesus slept in the boat, not of Jesus calming the storm with a word. They’d never seen that before and it didn’t occur to them to picture it. When He started walking towards them on the water, they had a picture of a scary ghost coming to haunt them, and they were terrified. Once they replaced the scary ghost picture with a ‘that is actually Jesus’ picture, they felt better again.

Peter set off towards Jesus on the water because he had a picture in his mind of being able to walk on water with and like Jesus and reach Jesus and give Him a big hug and have Jesus be so proud of him that he’d walked on water. That was great faith. When he looked at the wind and the waves–do you see, I’m not making this up, it was all about where he looked–he got a different picture of what it would be like to be swamped by one of those waves and sunk to the bottom of the sea and drowned, and seeing that picture made him take his eyes off Jesus–again, where he looked– and down he started to go. Jesus called that ‘doubt.’

You are like Peter. You have great faith. You stepped out of the boat and followed Me all the way to where you are now, walking on the water all the way, because you had your eyes on Me. But everytime you stop looking at the picture of who I am and what I am doing and start looking at the picture of ‘what is the worst thing those waves could do to me?’ you start sinking into fear again, and I pull you up again, and we keep going. That fear is not who you are, OK? It’s just a bad habit that you have formed.

Would You like Me to help you break that bad habit? I want to teach you to set your mind and eyes and heart and thoughts and imagination and the power of your ‘what if’s’ on things above, where I am, seated at My Father’s right hand and hosting this party for the overcomers (and you’re invited), so you won’t be afraid. I love you. And I just can’t wait to show you how little you have ever had to fear. So please trust Me along the way. We’ll have a more relaxing journey across this stormy sea if you stop sinking. But I’ll never let you drown.”

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We did a follow-up journal entry asking, “Lord, what do You want me to replace this fear with?” Next week, I plan to share how He answered that question.

In the meantime, turn your eyes upon Jesus. What does He have to say to you?

Lord, what do I fear and what do You say about it?

What do You want me to replace this fear with?