Why do we fear?

I was speaking with a man that I love, and I was surprised by the fact that he was living with regret. He had spent much of his life walking by his neighbors house, speaking with his neighbor, and yet never feeling the courage to have the conversation that he wanted to have with this neighbor the most. He wanted his friend to know Jesus, but it hadn’t come up.

Now, as he looks at his age creeping up and his body breaking down, he can’t help but wonder how many more chances he will get to walk by.

I am no stranger to this feeling. Because I moved back to the place I grew up, I have had the opportunity to workout with my younger brother. In many ways I feel like physically I can still handle him, but for how much longer? The reality of aging is that I am leaving whatever amount of athletic prime I had in my life, just as he is entering his own. I look at my life and wonder what if I had started doing the ultramarathons I now love earlier? What held me back, and what can I conquer so I won’t look back in ten more years with wishes I had done more?

Fear

I realize now that is has always been fear.

Fear kept me from trying extreme sports earlier. Fear keeps us from having conversations with new people. Fear keeps us from having the conversations we know we should have. Fear keeps us locked into jobs we hate. Fear keeps us from moving on, or from stubbornly staying. Fear tells us we can’t do it, that we have to stay in this bubble of safety.

What if I fail? What will people think of me? How would that impact the perception that I have of myself? What if I lose friends because of this? What if this costs me more than I can endure? What if…

Why do we fear?

I am still working this thought out, but I think fear ultimately comes from a low view of self. Not that there are not scary things out there. But fear is mostly is birthed from belief that the thing out there that I am afraid of is bigger than me. It is a belief that I have no authority over the things that scare me.

When Josiah is scared of something, he shrinks into himself and hides from the world. It takes the bigness of his mother or I to build him up to where he can see that he is capable to conquer the obstacle in front of him.

The same is true in adulthood. When we fear, we shrink into our comforts, to the places we know we can be successful.

But the thing we fear is not truly larger than us. We are more than capable of conquering.

As for me, there is one whom I fear, and that is God. I believe God is so awesome, that I will always be under him.

But that same God has said He is for me and with me. It is with childlike faith that I look towards God, who I call Father, and know that I have nothing to fear.

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