What’s your greatest fear or phobia?

Now, take that fear and give it to the Lord and tell Him you’re letting go of trying to have control over it. Dare to ask Him to help you walk through that fear — to help you to overcome.

Now see what happens.

This is what happened (is happening) to me. This has been my life, especially in the last couple of years.

I don’t know about you, but I have discovered I’ve had some silly fears. Silly on the outside, but very serious when I have to face them. The panic is real.

But I feel like I discover new ones that surface all the time. I am starting to get used to facing them now, and I used to run from them and hide.

…and it’s like, “Neeext!” Time to deal with a new one I realize I’ve been holding onto.

Things like public speaking, fear of the dark, fear of dead bodies (yea, maybe I’ll have to tell you about that one sometime, thankfully the Lord has already helped me to knock that one out. Do you know how hard it was going to a funeral as an adult and almost having a panic attack?)

Let’s see…. oh yes, when I was in kindergarten I had some really silly ones…. fear of my own brain (ok, I’m laughing right now, you are allowed to laugh now. May or may not tell you more about that one.) Fear of the gingerbread man…. (HAHAHAA!)

Fear of man, fear and intimidation of men (these are ones that I am currently in the middle of facing…)

…fear of angels, fear of demons… fear of facing God. Fear of closeness with God.

Fear of death.

All of these I have faced, some I am over now, and some I am still facing. Some seem bigger than others, some seem completely ridiculous and some seem what most would consider to be “reasonable”.

At one point in time all of these different fears made me go into a panic, they all made me want to avoid facing them, they all made me avoid life in one way or another. Whether it was when I was a kid and I saw the encyclopedia and saw that I had this creepy looking “brain” in my head and I told my parents to “get it out right now, it’s freaking me out!”… or a fear of death that so many of us face.

And yet there are things like needles that don’t bother me, I don’t really mind squishing spiders, and snakes, eh, I don’t like them but they don’t make me pass out. Isn’t that interesting how certain things affect us all differently like that. I once heard of a girl who was deathly afraid of pickles. Yea, it kind of makes you really laugh at that one, but it was a very real thing to her. She would rather die than be near a pickle.

Some fears seem “reasonable” to us and others seem completely ridiculous. Isn’t it interesting how certain things affect us and others don’t, and how we weigh the different kinds of fears in our minds to decide if it’s a small fear or a big one, if it’s silly or if it’s serious and legit or even if it’s “acceptable”?

Shows me that it’s all in the way we think about these things. It’s all in the mind. It’s all in what we decide to believe as truth.

I’m just thankful that when we take our fears to our Father, even our “greatest ones” and even our “smallest ones”, and we take hold of His hand that is already reached out towards us, and we dare to ask Him to help us –He will! We may not enjoy the process, and it may seem impossible in the moment, but He will ultimately help us to conquer, and in the most loving way.

Why? Because He loves us, and because He knows what living in fear will do to us.

He wants us to be free. We’re made to be free.

I am thankful for that.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” – 2 Timothy 1:7

–Heather