Regardless of where you stand on current issues, there is no denying the heavy role that fear is playing within our current society. No matter which nation or community, there seems to be one crisis after the next, without a moment to breathe between. My church is addressing a series of attacks people seem to be facing during this season, with the first of these being fear.
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
Helen Keller
We cannot change the crises facing the world, but our response is solely our responsibility. These are not petty issues driving our fears, and certainly ‘worthy’ of a response. The question then becomes, “If the global crises are driving our fears, what are our fears driving?” And what is our response to our fears?
Fearful Situations or Situations Offering Fear
Fear has a way of seeping through our core and it feels as though it’s a fact about the environment around us, with little to no chance of making an alteration. We then become fearful, but without any control over the situation or the way we feel. Living in a world of fearful situations, we become people living in a state of fear. We are then in a shroud of fear, much like a cloud. After all, what other options are there?
I posit the notion that our fears are less something that permeate the world around us, as situations are separate from the atmosphere they create. A situation can be dangerous and harmful, but we decide how we respond. It is not inherently a ‘fearful situation’, but rather, a situation which offers the opportunity to feel fear. If we feel fear, we had a moment (or rather, a million moments) in which we decided to respond with fear. We are not victim to our emotions. An event does not force us to feel a specific emotion.
Spiritual Component of Fear
This is certainly not the way we feel during these moments of crises, though. We typically have a naturally occurring and reflexive emotion. Fear is one of the most instinctual emotions we could possibly possess. While we often seem to dismiss all fears as ‘evil’ or ‘from the Devil’, this is contrary to the very nature of fear. Fear is a naturally occurring creation of God. When a situation is harmful, our fear cues us that we need to respond to a dangerous situation.
If God created us to be aware of dangerous situations, with our fears alerting us to a needed response, what then? Clearly, we need fear to inform our response. But, what can we do when we feel fraught with fear?
Proposed Response
I propose that fear is a powerful motivator. It gives us a powerful amount of energy and adrenaline. Physically, we can harness that energy to push us beyond the limits of our strength– I’m sure you’ve heard the urban legends of mothers lifting cars to save their children. Our fear functions as an alert to a necessary immediate response to the dangerous situation. We can direct that energy, although we often allow for our fears to take on a chaotic form, running rampant.
Connecting Fear with Prayer
I would like to pose that spiritually, we can also harness the energy backing our fears, in order to direct our responses, as well. In the earlier analogy, moving the car is the clear resolution to the dangerous situation, but this may not be as obvious in all situations. This is the first question we’ll need to answer, along with others:
Steps for Prayer
- How can you begin to act? Seek solitude, where you can focus. And then pray. As you pray, prepare for a dialogue. This means that you speak, but then you listen. This will feel counter to what feels natural, but it will also force you to calm your own voices. If you’re struggling with even beginning the process of prayer, I suggest that you listen to some Cindy Trimm.
- What is causing our fear? Move past the situation itself and find out what the core fear is in the situation. In current events: a black man is shot by a police officer or a police officer is beaten by a mob are dangerous situations. Even for those of us who are not a black man or a police officer, we can feel the fear rise up. Identifying the dangerous situation is not enough to address our fears. The core fears from those situations could be: none of us are safe, that those responsible for our safety may harm us, that violence fills our nation…. the core fears.
- Where is the fear leading you? Our instincts may lead us astray. Our fear will shout at us to freeze (as in, watch in shock) or flee (as in, run from the discomfort), rather than act. Know where it is telling you to go, so that you can fight those instincts.
- Who else is speaking to you? Fear has a loud, booming voice. You must intentionally listen to what is God telling you to pray. This will require that you focus solely on His voice, as He directs you in how to pray.
Prayer Drowns Fears
As we pray, our fears will fade. The more you pray, the more you will know what to do with your fears. You will become in tune with knowing when your fears alert you to pray. When all we can do is pray, we are not useless or powerless. Either we are more powerful than God, or inviting Him into the situation is more powerful than anything we could do in the situation. This is not to claim that inactivity is the solution, but any activity should be preceded with prayer. As God directs your prayer, He can also direct your actions, leading you to the most powerful, beneficial and effectual response to fear.
