Fear - the silent killer

Have you ever noticed how fear can lead to pure foolishness?

A friend at work has a fear of flying. She is so scared in fact, that when her job required her to attend a meeting in San Diego, California she decided to drive there.

From Alabama. Forty hours one way - forty hours back.

Me and another co-worker couldn't help but question the insanity of such a choice.  I mean, that's a long drive! She said "It isn't that I'm afraid, I just need to be in control. In a plane, I am not in control."

We spent that entire lunch break trying to convince her that flying really wasn't that bad. Nothing worked. No statistic, no past experience or proven fact could change her mind that day. 

So finally, we pulled on the her faith. My co-worker asked, "Have you met my friend Jesus?"

"Of course!" she replied, "but you never know, He might be too busy that day." 

Like I said at the beginning - foolishness! By no means am I diminishing her feelings or her perspective. But this is a prime example of how fear leads to irrational behavior.  Even just looking at the stats, the odds of dying in the air are 1 in 7,229 compared to 1 in 415 as the occupant of a car. On a motorcycle the chances are 1 in 907. (source)

Now what makes my friend's situation so remarkable is that not only has she flown before and frequently, but she has also gone skydiving. She drives a motorcycle to work on a regular basis, has five kids including a set of twins. She is not a fearful person. 

Yet after seeing a news report one day of an airplane pilot intentionally crashing, she decided to never set foot on an airplane again. The news report didn't involve her or anyone else she knew but fear still gripped her. And fear turned what should have been a two day work trip into a week and a half long drive across the US of A.

This situation is a perfect picture of how fear can so effectively disrupt our lives by camouflaging itself into something entirely different.

Where we saw fear, she saw the illusion of control.

Where fear had set limitations, she saw unnecessary adventures in life.

Where we saw a friend in defeat, she touted as wisdom.

My phenomenal, brilliant-minded friend treated fear as if it were a dear friend - one to be protected. Fear is never a friend. Fear is a silent killer.

Fear hides in the dark corners of our mind. It constantly tells us not to call it out or to deal with it - to let it be. "Nothing to see here," it says as it continues to alter our behavior and our decisions. 

We find ourselves saying things like, "Losing weight is too hard." But if we dig deeper, we often discover that it's really just fear working to scare us away from trying. It tells us that we've failed before, so it must not be possible. It reminds us of how hard it may be, of the food we will miss out on. It says we will have to work too hard and it'll take too long. That we will be miserable. 

We find our inner dialog saying, "I can't really do xyz."  That's fear trying to convince us to quit.  Fear can make us procrastinate or cause us to give half-hearted efforts instead of giving our dreams the best we've got. It tells us we are too this, not enough that. That we don't know the right people or don't have enough money. But it's all just camouflage for fear.

As Christians, the tolerance of fear is especially dangerous because we cannot operate in both fear and faith at the same time. That's double minded, that's unstable.

The Bible tells us that when we ask the LORD for anything, "...we must ask in faith, nothing wavering." (James 1:6)

Fear makes us waver. It wants us doubt God and ourselves. The Bible goes on to say that a wavering person should not think that he will receive anything of the Lord. He is double-minded and unstable.  (James 1:7-8 paraphrase)

Faith will not allow us believe that the Lord is Jehovah Rapha, the Lord Who Heals and still doubt that He will heal us cancer. But fear will.

Faith will not allow us believe that the Lord is Jehovah Saboath, the Lord our Protecter and still doubt He will keep us safe in an airplane...or from ISIS...or the latest pandemic. Yet fear will.

This silent, dream killing, joy prohibiting, life paralyzing force called fear can be the very hindrance that keeps us from walking in all that the Lord has for us...if we let it. If we allow it to sit silently in the dark recesses of our lives, unexposed and unchallenged.

So, how do we deal with this fear? Stay tuned for next week's blog post, however here's a hint - we are going to learn to faith fear to death!