I’m not sure about you, but it seems that fear is a pretty big issue these days. We are surrounded by people telling us what we should be afraid of and why. The Christian radio is singing about fear not owning us, as if breaking up with fear is that easy.

And Scripture is constantly telling us to not be afraid. God says this to both Moses and Joshua multiple times. The angel says it to Mary. Jesus tells it to his followers. Do not be afraid.

So clearly, it is not a new issue. But simply saying “do not be afraid” doesn’t give us much to work with.

How do we go about overcoming fear in our lives?

I’ve been reading a book about how extreme athletes overcome their fears, and like anything, there are some things I agree with and some I don’t. And it is those ideas that I don’t agree with causes me to think about what God says about fear.

Let me first address one of the things from the book that I do agree with. One of the athletes states, “fear is a reaction to something that happened in the past.” If you have spent anytime around kids, especially little kids, they have no fear. And yet by adulthood, we have all sorts of things we fear. That’s because many of our fears are learned. Whether it is due to correction by our parents, or bad experiences in life, we are taught to fear. And often that fear is a protection. But that does not mean that is always beneficial to us. This is a broken world and God is calling us to reach out to others, to demonstrate the love that He has already shown us.

This is where we so often find God saying, “Do not be afraid, because I am with you.” If the creator of the universe is with us, who can really harm us? Paul speaks to this too in his letter to the Romans. Life, death, sickness, suffering, persecution. Bad things can and will happen but none of them can overcome God’s love for you. None of them can conquer God.

This leads me to the thing that I really disagreed with from the book about fear. The author states that the athletes overcome their fears because of their faith in their abilities. Scripture tells us the opposite. As followers of Jesus, we overcome fear because of our faith in our inability. It is my very inability to save myself and Jesus’ ability to do so that allows me to trust in Him and follow him in obedience. Jesus is the one who has overcome death. It is His Spirit who now lives within us, giving us the power to do things we could not on our own. And as Paul told Timothy, this is not a spirit of fear, but one of power.

I can follow God’s command to not be afraid because the Spirit makes it possible for me to do so. We can move forward without fear because God is with us. If the Creator of all things is with us, there is nothing we cannot do. And therein lies the real power to overcome fear.  

Just as we learned to fear, now we can learn to not be afraid, as we trust in the One who saves.