How can I manage my fear?
October 27 - November 2, 2024 | Always Peachy Devotionals | Fear Week 5
How do you stand up against fear?
We’ve spent this whole month talking about fear, since apparently it’s true that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We know now that fear is a normal, neutral emotion that everyone experiences at some point in life. We also know that simply experiencing fear isn’t a moral failure or a character flaw. In fact, some fears are even considered wise.
It’s just those fears that aren’t wise that we need to watch out for. And when we come up against those fears, what do we do? How do we manage? How can we cope? Because even though fear as an emotion is neutral, most of our physical responses to fear aren’t neutral at all.
Fight or flight is a real thing, and for many of us who have been conditioned to response to our fear in a physical way, it feels so much more productive to act out against it rather than being still and letting God fight for us.
Fear is such a complicated emotion, and our actions and choices are so deeply intertwined with our responses to it. It’s a challenge to sort it all out, but as someone who has struggled with fear for most of my life, let me share what the Lord has taught me about how to cope when I am afraid.
That’s what we’re going to focus on this week, and if any of you have advice or experience in managing fear, please feel free to share your story in the comments. You never know how your story might help someone else. Since we are all different, we all fear different things, and we all respond to fear in different ways. So if my experience doesn’t resonate, maybe yours will.
But for the next five days, we’re going to look at some steps we can take to manage our fear, so that our fear won’t be able to control our choices.
Monday - You have emotions because God has emotions (Genesis 1:27)
Tuesday - Be honest about what you feel (Psalm 34:17-18)
Wednesday - Do what God says is right even when you don’t understand (Hebrews 11:8)
Thursday - Never make a decision solely based on emotion (Proverbs 13:16)
Friday - Choose to trust God every day (Deuteronomy 30:19)
None of these strategies or choices will be easy, and you won’t be able to default to them overnight. But after you invest some intentional time trying to choose a wise, godly path in response to your fear, you will find that some of these come almost naturally to you.
So many tactics to managing fear boil down to faith, trusting that God has taken care of what we fear in advance or believing that He will work out the details in the final accounting. Even with the topics we’re discussing this week, you can’t be successful at any of them if you don’t trust God.
Trusting God is the foundation of a Christian’s life. If you try to follow Jesus without trusting Him, you’re not going to get very far. But He knew that, and that’s why He gave us His Word. He knew that life on earth was going to get tricky and dark and scary. He knew that we would face uncertainties and insecurities.
So I thought, what better verse to learn this week than John 16:33.
This is Jesus speaking to His disciples, shortly before He would be taken away to be crucified. He revealed many things to His disciples that night, many things that they didn’t understand at that time. And He did it so that they would believe, so that they could look back later in their lives and remember what He said and understand when they had context.
God hasn’t promised any of us an easy time. On the contrary. He promises us that we’re going to have struggles and difficulties and challenges, but in the same breath Jesus reminds us that even though we’re going to face trials and sorrows that He faced them too—and overcame them. And with His help, so can we.
Don’t settle for the half-hearted reassurances the world offers. Choose the peace Jesus has promised. And remember that we can face our fears because Jesus loves us.
Praying for you this week!
Amy
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