How should we face fear each day, knowing each day has some element of fear to it? It may be the fear of people around us not accepting us or even rejecting us or even making unfounded judgments of us. It may be the fear of starting a new job or a new life in a new country. It may be the fear of being robbed at gunpoint (not uncommon in Honduras) or your children being segregated because of the color of their skin or the language that they speak (isn’t that a change for a white child from North America!). We have all kinds of fears: cultural fears, financial fears, relationship fears, work-related fears, and even academic fears of failing. Fear gives birth to anxiety, and it is that anxiety that becomes so destructive in our lives. I used to fear snakes in my younger years, and though I am still not fond of them I used to be crippled by my fear. It got to a point that when I would be out jogging and find one lying across the trail I was running on I almost became paralyzed. I could not jump over it, I could not get myself to go around it, and so I usually just turned around and cut my run short. The Bible talks about fear and one place where it does concerns King Jehoshaphat. Three nations came to battle against Israel and King Jehoshaphat some 2700 years ago, and the king feared for himself and his people. How he handled his fear I commend to you as the only true way of being freed from your anxiety today. The Scriptures say in 2Chronicles 20:3, 4, & 12 that Jehoshaphat “set himself to seek the Lord…ask help from the Lord...and set his eyes upon the Lord”, for they knew not what to do, but that God ruled over the kingdoms of the nations. In other words Jehoshaphat admitted that his anxiety came from his weakness and could only be overcome by a confidence in the greatness and goodness of God’s strength. So take your fears in the admission of your weakness before God, and seek Him, ask His help, and keep your eyes on Him—on His strength or the snake may keep you paralyzed from moving one more foot forward on the trail today!
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