The Banishment of Fear – Sunday, May 23, 1943
Regrettably, one of the dominant factors in human relationships is fear. The lives of most men are beset by many fears; some, of course, much more than others. Fear is the weapon of the ruthless and the dread of these who are defenseless against it.
Going back to the chronicles of Deuteronomy, we find citation of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience, one of the most terrible of which curses was the curse of fear: “And among these nations shalt thou find no case, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart …. And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night …. In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart.” (Deuteronomy 28:65-67.) It is a prospect fearful to contemplate, and one which finds an echoing likeness in too many places among too many peoples.
Certainly all of us would like to outlaw fear from our world and our generation. But this great blessing is a thing of which no man fully can assure another, because the greatest fears of life come from within. It is true that we fear many external things—among them physical violence and physical want—but it is also true that no physical barrier will ever shut out fear. A man may close himself within his fortress and leave all the world behind, but his fears go with him. He may have great armies between himself and his enemy, but if his cause is not right and his conscience is not void of offense, his fears will still beset him. He may destroy all his tangible foes and still be haunted night and day by the specter of fear—the fear that grows out of his own weakness, out of his own brooding conscience, out of his own troubled thoughts.
Yes, it would be a glorious thing to banish fear, and in some degree its causes can be removed; but if men are to live without fear, their personal lives must be freed from some other things, too—by a process which begins as the Psalmist described it: “I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4)—a deliverance consummately to be desired, and predicated, then and now, not upon citadels or edicts, but upon personal and national righteousness.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, May 23, 1943, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1943.
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May 23, 1943
Broadcast Number 0,718