Author: <span>Christine Lindstrom</span>

Psalm 56:3-4 (NIV)

“When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me?”

When all of this started – that week when it seemed like the world turned upside-down overnight – I went to Walmart to get a few things we needed. I think the sight of all those empty shelves is one I will always remember, along with the way I felt as I looked in vain for the items on my list. Disbelief, sadness, grief, and determination rose within me all at once. And fear. Plenty of fear. I remember buying things I didn’t need because I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving empty-handed. 

I directed all that anxious energy into keeping my family stocked with the basic things that we seem to always be running out of – milk, bread, eggs, peanut butter, cereal, and cheese. I didn’t realize it at the time, but searching for these things was a quest for security and certainty. My kids will eat this week. In reality we were never food-insecure and there was never a risk that my kids wouldn’t eat. They didn’t always get exactly what they wanted, but we never got close to true physical hunger. The hunger I was avoiding was something different.

A few days later, it was like God aimed a spotlight on the shadowy anxious places in me and I remember the moment of revelation. I was pushing a cart of groceries across a parking lot back to my car. There was milk in my cart, and eggs, and bread, and macaroni and I was thrilled. But there was another feeling there too. Like the things in that cart made me feel safer, and I was proud of myself for providing these things for my family. 

“When I am afraid, I will trust in you…” 

But when I was afraid, I trusted in gallon jugs of milk and picked over, half-smashed loaves of white bread. When I had those things, I felt ok, and when I didn’t have them, I felt afraid. 

One of the things I’m thankful for in this pandemic is the way it has forced me to face my definitions of security and how I respond to fear. I thought I found my security in God alone, but when grocery store shelves were empty, I learned that some of my security lay in always being able to buy anything I needed (and a whole lot of things I just really wanted). Those empty shelves opened Pandora’s box of fears and let me know that my trust wasn’t really where I thought it was. 

Psalm 20:7 says, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” I guess you could also say that some trust in milk and peanut butter. It turns out I do. I’m thankful that God is patient to keep refining me until the day when I can honestly say, “But I trust in the name of the LORD my God.” 

When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can empty grocery store shelves do to me? What can coronavirus do to me? What can a bad economy do to me?

Maybe we can’t say it honestly yet, but the first step toward it becoming true is to acknowledge that it isn’t yet.

Moment of Beauty

Beauty can be appreciated with all of our senses. Today, stop to appreciate one of your meals. Breathe deeply and inhale the aromas of the food. Take a bite and savor the flavors. Pay attention to the textures and consistency in your mouth, and chew slowly. Thank God not only for providing this food for your sustenance and physical nourishment but also that he provides in a way that is enjoyable and nourishes our spirit as well.

Hebrews 12:1 (NIV)

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

On weekends, I’d like to share relevant wisdom from theologians and wise faith leaders who have spoken into chaotic and uncertain times in the past. May we learn from those who have gone before and gain the perspective that “this, too, shall pass.” They are the “great cloud of witnesses” that surround us and help us persevere in running our race.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who is well-known for being an outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party’s rise in Germany. Here is an excerpt from a sermon he preached on January 15, 1933:

“The overcoming of fear—that is what we are proclaiming here. The Bible, the gospel, Christ, the church, the faith—all are one great battle cry against fear in the lives of human beings. Fear is, somehow or other, the archen­emy itself. It crouches in people’s hearts. It hollows out their insides, until their resistance and strength are spent and they suddenly break down. Fear secretly gnaws and eats away at all the ties that bind a person to God and to others, and when in a time of need that person reaches for those ties and clings to them, they break and the individual sinks back into himself or herself, helpless and despairing, while hell rejoices…

“Learn to recognize this sign in your own life. Learn to recognize and understand the hour of the storm, when you were perishing. This is the time when God is incredibly close to you, not far away. Right there, when everything else that keeps us safe is breaking and falling down, when one after another all the things our lives depend on are being taken away or destroyed, where we have to learn to give them up, all this is happening because God is coming near to us, because God wants to be our only support and certainty. God lets our lives be broken and fail in every direction, through fate and guilt, and through this very failure God brings us back; we are thrown back upon God alone. God wants to show us that when you let everything go, when you lose all your own security and have to give it up, that is when you are totally free to receive God and be kept totally safe in God. So may we understand rightly the hours of affliction and temptation, the hours in our lives when we are on the high seas! God is close to us then, not far away. Our God is on the cross.”

Read the full text of this sermon.

2 Timothy 1:7

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

Think for a moment about some of the amazing miracles Jesus performed. Water to wine, multiplying a few loaves and fish to feed thousands, calming the storm, calling Lazarus out of the grave… In John 14, Jesus tells us that those of us who come after him will do what he has been doing, plus even greater things. How is that possible? Because he would give us his Spirit.

In today’s verse, Paul reminds Timothy that the Spirit we have been given is not timid or fearful, and if we live according to this Spirit, we won’t be either. The Spirit that is alive and active in us is characterized by power, love, and self-discipline. 

A lot of us have discovered that our typical coping mechanisms for fearful or troubling times are not serving us well when the time is measured in weeks or months instead of days. Over-indulging in our favorite comfort foods, for example, may have us feeling sluggish and slightly sick. Numbing our feelings with online shopping may give us a fun package to look forward to each day, but we can also look forward to a credit card bill arriving soon that will be anything but fun. To say nothing of even more dangerous methods of dealing with fear that can lead to destructive addictions.Wherever we are after weeks of coping, it might be time for the Spirit to bring a little power, love, and self-discipline into the situation.

Where I most need that self-discipline lately – and see if you can relate – is when it comes to news and social media. Being informed is important, but riding the 24-hour news cycle is like strapping in on a roller coaster you can’t get off of. Social media has been so helpful for maintaining community while we’re all social distancing, but if I think I’m there to relax I’m kidding myself. One practice that I’ve found very helpful is to avoid all news and social media before noon. This keeps me from reaching for my phone instead of my Bible first thing in the morning and it also lets me set a good tone for the first few hours of the day before letting too many other voices into my head. I also make sure I don’t consume any of this within an hour of going to bed, to give those voices time to clear out before it’s time to sleep. Sometimes it’s a real struggle against the voice of fear that compels me to be sure I know what’s going on at all times, but the Spirit of power and self-discipline is on my side so the battle is already won.

What areas are you struggling with since this pandemic started where you need the Spirit of power, love, and self-discipline to give you victory over a fearful and timid spirit? 

Moment of Beauty:

Used with permission from https://poetrybydeborahann.wordpress.com/

1 John 4:18 (NIV)

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Ok, raise your hand if you have not been made perfect in love.

My hand is up and I imagine yours is too. I’m honestly not even sure what that would look like, except to look at Christ. This verse comes in the middle of John’s well-known “love passage” where we also learn essential truths such as, “God is love” (verses 8 and 16), and “We love because he first loved us” (verse 19). It’s well-worth reading – or re-reading – to put this relationship between fear and love in context.

If I were to stop people on the street (from a safe 6-foot distance of course!) and ask them, “What is the opposite of fear?” chances are they would answer something like bravery or courage. If I asked for a list of 10 words, how likely is it that any of them would be love? We don’t typically understand these two things as opposites, or even contrasting ideas.

In some ways, they seem to go hand in hand. I could make a pretty good-sounding argument that fear is born out of love. After all, if I didn’t love my family so much, I wouldn’t be afraid of losing someone to this virus. It’s because I love my kids that I fear not being able to provide for them if I become unemployed. It makes a lot of sense… but it isn’t biblical.

Jesus is our example of perfect love. Jesus loved his friends, but when the storm battered their boat in the middle of the sea did he fear for their safety? Nope. Not only was he without fear in that moment, but he questioned their fearful response. It seems we may have gotten the relationship between fear and love a little wrong. Love is not the source of fear.

Perfect love (a.k.a. God) drives out fear. When we fully receive and trust his love for us, there simply isn’t room in our hearts for fear. It doesn’t mean that nothing difficult or painful will ever happen to us, but that we trust him to be in it with us and to work all things together for our ultimate good. This is a lot easier to say than it is to live out and I’m definitely a work-in-progress in this area. But I’m learning to let fear act like a smoke detector in my life. When fear starts calling the shots it is like an insistent beeping that demands my attention. I can either respond from a place of fear or from a place of love. Choosing one automatically excludes the other. Maybe it’s time to ask God to put some fresh batteries in your smoke detector. 

Don’t forget that love is a verb. It is something you do, not just something you feel. When we focus on loving the people around us well, there’s no room for fear in that either. I don’t recall another time in my lifetime when there were this many needs so readily visible around us. Do we have to find new ways of meeting needs and expressing love in a time of social distancing? Absolutely. Is fear a reasonable excuse not to do so? Hardly.

How does love drive out fear? The same way anything is driven out – the new thing occupies the space where the old used to be. We receive a love that contains no fear and allow it to fill us until it overflows onto those around us. The calling is the same as it was before we found ourselves in a global pandemic. The temptation to fear may be greater but so are our opportunities to love. We always have a choice.

Moment of Beauty

Look around your local area for beautiful examples of people loving each other well. Read articles, find videos, and look for ways to join what God is doing in the midst of difficult times. Find the drive-through food banks, the teachers comforting struggling kids over Zoom, the friends delivering groceries to vulnerable friends. Thank God for these acts of love, big and small, that conquer fear. Ask him to show you where he’s at work and where he wants you to join him.