Since listening to another thought-provoking sermon this morning, I've been thinking all day about fear. My fear. It's true that I'm afraid of bats, carwashes, failure, and rejection; but I can easily identify my greatest fear at this moment in my life: fear of love. Well, more specifically, fear of romantic love. For the first time in my life, I've become so afraid of loving a man, I've simply removed myself from the dating arena entirely. As one might guess, my fear is born from a bad experience (that may be the understatement of the year).
Pastor Ken used an illustration of a seesaw with fear on one side and faith on the other. But I found myself wrestling through an internal debate on this topic. What does my faith in God have to do with being safe in a human love relationship? After all, I wouldn't be dating God. Humans are fallible, sinful creatures, and there's no guarantee that overcoming my fear would equate to a worthwhile relationship with another human. It's not God's responsibility to plop me in the path of a Godly man. Are we talking about trusting God to lead me to a person worthy of loving and worthy of loving me? I don’t really believe it works that way. At least it hasn’t before. He didn’t lead me to that type of person before – several times in fact. To be fair, when I met the men who ended up hurting me the most, I didn’t necessarily meet them under Godly circumstances or doing Godly things. Except for the one I actually met at church. But I digress...
I have this thing called freewill that enables me to make all sorts of decisions that will guide my encounters and decisions in life. Likewise, other humans have freewill that determines their choices and behaviors. Being a faithful Christian doesn't protect us from life's hurts.
So I’m back to the same question: how will my faith in God outweigh my fear of loving? Since I have freewill and since God isn’t responsible for leading me to a good man, how does this work? Or maybe it doesn’t look like that at all. Maybe it looks like me loving God and enjoying my life whether someone is in it or not. Maybe it has more to do with trusting God to help me with discernment. I can already see the ways in which he has repeatedly shone His light on certain traits of certain people, making it impossible for me to continue in relationships with them.
I guess I've been wrestling with this, thinking that faith would cancel out bad things. But I think Pastor Ken's point was not to equate the absence of fear with the guarantee of success. Faith doesn't guarantee success. But it does guarantee that we won't walk alone. It gives us strength and courage, which enable us to take chances and even to deal with the inevitable failures and hurts that will come our way.
"I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart.
And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give.
So don’t be troubled or afraid." John 14:27
"This is my command—be strong and courageous!
Do not be afraid or discouraged.
For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9
"But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it.
So don’t worry or be afraid of their threats." 1 Peter 3:14
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