Fear is a Liar By Douglas

We were listening to the radio when this song came on. It made me think of the struggle I had gone through for many years. I would struggle to do things and think of reasons it would fail, then give up. As a youngster, I had a very low self image. I realized that due to my quirks, people would laugh at me. As a result, I would clown around, with the idea that if I was laughing at my failure, it wouldn’t hurt so much. Needless to say, one can set up a life pattern that way.

Mind you, with my ADD, I have more of a one track mind. Concentrating on one thing tends to crowd out other items. Even now, I can be one place, say the bathroom, and see something I need to do, e.g. fill the foaming soap dispensers. The moment I leave, I forget it until the next time I am there. It can take me ten times before I fill them. Ten times before I remember to buy marjoram spice. Ten times before I take the car for an oil change. School with its deadlines was pure torture. It was ripe for failure, even when I had the smarts to do well.

When I was single, I had a huge struggle to pay bills on time. (this was before automatic bill pay) One time, my daughter had arranged a sleepover for some friends. That day, they turned off the electricity because I forgot to pay. I quickly strung up a cord to the outside hall light so the fridge, the TV, and the lights worked. It was embarrassing, but the sleepover still happened. Needless to say, there are reasons I have fears.

I was struggling with this, and my tendency to be self defeating until I came up with my own “Fear is a Liar” slogan. It was, “Don’t fight dragons.” After all, I have stood at the top of waterfalls and looked over the edge. I was cautious because I feared slipping over the edge. That is a reasonable fear of a real danger. Dragons are not real. Sometimes, If I am worried about something, I ask myself, “Is that a dragon?” That is like saying, I don’t want to hike this trail because it may go near the waterfall. You don’t know that it will, so that is a Dragon. If I’ve been on it before and seen it goes dangerously close, I don’t want to hike it. That is a real fear and is not a Dragon. I hiked on trails in Portugal that went too near crumbly edges with warning signs. I prudently took a safer trail.  But not hiking on an unknown trail because it may be dangerous is self defeating.

I am writing up a post on Romans 8. In verse 15, it says, “You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” I struggled and overcame many things, but still struggle some to learn this power. One of the keys for me is Love. Think of a father who sees his child run toward the busy street. Love would compel him to run heedless of the traffic to save the child. When your heart is filled with love for the hurting people around you, fear is overcome, as it says in 1 John 4:18, “Perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love.” Corrie Ten Boom writes of being scared on a mountain road. She prayed for the fear to be taken away, but it stayed. She prayed for many other people, and while she was praying and feeling God’s love for them, her fear left. Love has healed me of much of my fears. May you walk on this path of love and learn to lose your fears also.  Don’t let fear of dragons enslave you.