Fear – Sunday, October 31, 1982
All creatures of the earth seem to be born with some natural instinct that makes them recoil from danger. Rabbits tremble, birds keep frantic watch, and even newborn human infants howl if they think they are about to fall. Fear is an alarm system which keeps us from danger and only a fool would never admit to occasionally feeling it. George Washington was quoted after a skirmish in 1754 with the French and Indians as saying that bullets whistling past had a “charming sound.” When asked about it years later he said, “If I ever said so, I was young.”1 And so, sometimes our youth or inexperience keeps us from knowing the good of a warning fear.
And conversely, sometimes our fear can keep us from experiencing the good in life.
There is always the possibility for human beings that fear can expand beyond its beneficial function and become a menace in itself. That is when fear, like a childhood scar, becomes a permanent part of life, when worry about some impending responsibility, some task yet to do, some future insecurity walks with us much of the time.
Now, some may indulge in worry about a job they have to do because they imagine it makes them more responsible—as if anxiety were a key to success in any worthwhile endeavor. Others worry about the well-being of friends and family believing it proves they are more loving. In fact, the fear that edges into worry may be the most futile and debilitating of human emotions.
Anxiety tends to paralyze us, tarnishing our talents and squelching our strengths. This irrational nagging about what might happen makes it so we can do less to determine what will happen. We become frozen before our tasks, fearing that we will not live up to our best capabilities. We procrastinate in the face of challenge, always asking, “Will I do it adequately? Will it all come out right?”
Anxiety also makes us lose the joy of the very moment in which we are alive. One writer observed that, “Fear of misfortune is worse than misfortune itself.”2 And so it is. We may find we have spent a lifetime worrying about something that never came to pass.
The Apostle Paul said that the fear and worry which blight us are not from God, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”3
For every human being the future is as uncertain and dark as the pavement ahead of a blind man; it’s that way for all of us. But with the Lord as our light, we need not live anxiously.
1 Boller, Paul F. Jr., Presidential Anecdotes, Oxford University Press, p. 8.
2 “Attitudes. Anger, Courage, Fear, Honesty, Humility, Patience, Pride,” Richard Evans’ Quote Book, Publishers’ Press, p. 160.
3 New Testament, II Timothy 1:7.
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October 31, 1982
Broadcast Number 2,776