Don’t Give In to Fear

Haitian children

I said in an earlier post that it was my favorite quote…but, now this one is…

In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller talks a lot about “story” and what do you think is the biggest thing that holds us back from telling a great story with our lives?? FEAR!

...the great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear…The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is “Do not fear.” It’s in there over two hundred times. That means a couple of things, if you think about it. It means we’re going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn’t let fear boss us around. Before I realized we’re supposed to fight fear, I thought of fear as a subtle suggestion in our subconscious designed to keep us safe, or more important, to keep us from getting humiliated. And, I guess it serves that purpose. But, fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.

I always talk about fear and how it keeps us from doing a lot of things…notice how I said “I talk…”? Especially when I was employed by someone else over the past several years, I would talk about how fear was keeping me from pursuing what God wanted me to pursue (mostly with regard to the youth entertainment venue I’ve been envisioning for years). Whether it was fear of money, fear of failure, fear of it being the wrong decision…whatever…it always seemed like fear was holding me back.

But, as Donald Miller says in the quote here, fear serves a couple purposes. Indeed, as I look back, all the fears probably did serve a good purpose in keeping me in a situation until God was ultimately ready (or I was ready for God) to release me from that situation. But, I also still believe it also served as that “manipulative emotion” that was tricking me into living a boring life. I was too dependent on security, too set on not rocking the boat, that I just kind of mulled through life, hoping that ONE DAY I would be able to do what I felt like I should be doing.

Now, (and I admit it’s much easier to say on the “other side” of the situation) I am so glad I’ve stopped giving into fear so much. Because, I think it’s true what Miller says in the first part of today’s quote: “the great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.”

There is a healthy dose of fear that does play a positive role in our lives, I think. Like the fear of entering a motorcycle race when you’ve never been on a motorcycle before. Or anything like that. But, if you want to enter that motorcycle race, you shouldn’t be afraid to learn how to ride a motorcycle, and get to a point where you CAN enter that race! My wife, Anne, has been particularly moved by all the stuff going on in Haiti following the massive earthquake that hit that country last week; and we’ve decided that we’d really like to go to Haiti to help out. A few years ago, or even a year ago, we would have been very hesitant – especially Anne – to even consider doing that. But, the other day, Anne said “We need to go to Haiti.” And my relatively quick response was, “Okay.” Without thinking about how we’ll do it, when we’ll be able to do it, what we’ll do with the kids, how can we afford it, what about work, and all the other possible “fear” elements that normally come into consideration, we just decided this is something we think we should do. I love that!

And, when we do go to Haiti, do you know what? It will provide a GREAT STORY! We will be helping people who need help; and we’ll be experiencing a part of God’s story for our own lives. There are probably a million people like us out there, thinking the same thing, but fearful of all the questions I just mentioned a second ago. My recommendation is don’t give in to fear! Don’t let it stop you from doing what you know you should be doing.

For many millions of others, there are completely different FEAR circumstances that have nothing to do with Haiti or anything like it. But, it’s that “manipulative emotion that can trick us into living boring lives.” Don’t give in to it!