Fear: An Uneven Trade

Fear has been my close companion nearly all of my life.  I know it well.  Too well.

I believe that, more often than not, fear is the motivation behind many of our actions.  Fear that there will not be enough.  Fear of pain.  Fear of abandonment.  And so we hold on, white-knuckle tight.

Or maybe I’m the only one, but I don’t think so.

That’s why the following hit me hard, melting both my heart and my grasp (Yes, last week I used a big, long quote, too.  Please forgive me.  God keeps sending me these awesome words and I know they’re meant for you as much as me.).

“You probably know what you have been afraid to entrust to God.  When we surrender our fear, we are offering it to Jesus.  We are saying, ‘This fear is too much fear for me to bear.  I give it to you because I believe you are good and worthy of my trust.’  When we actively, by faith, lay down our fears at the feet of Jesus, we pick up his love in return.  It is an uneven trade, a heavenly exchange…

“Laying down what we want to protect or are afraid of losing or are terrified we will never have is not the same thing as losing those things.  It is surrendering them.  It is opening up our clenched hand around them and allowing God access to them and to us.  It is actually saying yes to God for them.  Yes to his plan.  Yes to his way.  It is believing that just as his ways are higher than the heavens are above the earth so his way for the things we fear for is higher.  This God of ours is a God of life, of goodness.  He is the God of the Resurrection.  We lay down our fear.  We pick up Jesus.  He is the only way we can live beyond fear.  He is the Way.”*

Join me, this day, in unclenching our fists, surrendering our fear, and trading it in for the love of Jesus.

*Stasi Eldredge, Becoming Myself