Fear: redirected

Over the past couple of days, I’ve experienced some not-so-fun events of life in both professional and personal realms. These circumstances and situations have taken me back, made me pause, and definitely made me think, over-think, and think some more. Overall, they’ve bothered me more than they should’ve for the wrong reasons, and not bothered me enough for the right reasons. I know I’m being vague here – that’s part of the point.  Because, really, these situations – they’re not about me. 

There’s a much bigger principle and lesson to learn for all of us here.

Throughout it all this week, I’ve come to the grips why these things have bothered me so. Each of these situations has attacked me at a point of my great weakness – they have threatened to take away the things I love the most. Put another way, they have pinpointed some of my personal fears.

Some may be able to relate and say God is using this for His glory and just getting my attention and heart’s focus back fixated on Him. (a.k.a. Leading me to the Rock that is Higher than I.) Some may look closer at the situations I’ve faced and say it’s an all-out-spiritual-warfare-of-the-soul that Satan’s using to attack me, threaten my hope, steal my joy, and confuse and distract from what my God is doing in my life.

Regardless of the “why’s,” I read a verse today that was completely helpful and hit me right where I’m living this week. It’s in Philippians 2:12-13, which urges us to work out our own faith or own salvation with fear and trembling since it is God Himself working in us.

Oftentimes, when we teach verses like this to our little ones (in my case, to my students at LCA), we would take some time to explain that “fear“ in the Bible oftentimes stands for “respect,” as in “fear the Lord” means to simply respect the Lord, His name, His Word, His principles on life, etc. This is how it was taught to me, and I do believe that meaning does hold true in many instances. However, in this case in Philippians 2:12-13, I tend to disagree. (and I could be totally wrong on this… I am willing to be corrected if I am.) I tend to think we should take the words “fear and trembling” literally or for their “face value.”

The many things we fear in life, whether real or perceived, create negative feelings in us that threaten to harm something inside of us. In some cases, it transfers out to an actual physical trembling of the body. I think no different definition for the words “fear and trembling” would suffice in the case of Philippians 2. We should have a reverent fear and an actual trembling of what God is doing in our lives to enable us to work out our own faith or our own salvation.

Much like the things I’ve encountered this week, those situations and circumstances in our lives aren’t fun to face… and they’re oftentimes heavy to handle… but they’re exactly what God uses to grow our faith.

Fear redirected in light of this verse in Philippians 2 produces faith beyond comprehension and a God-given peace that’s unshakable, yet worth trembling over.