Are We Fear-Focused or Faith-Focused?

Most of the United States celebrated Halloween last week. I'm not here to comment on that other than to say how appropriate it is that the world celebrates fear. God commands his people 366 times in Scripture not to fear. And yet a life without giving into fear sounds pretty incredible, doesn't it?

While I'm not saying our lives can be without fear completely, I'm going to challenge our modern culture's ideas on how fear affects us. I was surprised a little by how much the culture had seeped into my own mindset when I studied Scripture on this topic. So I figured I might not be the only one! Let's unfold this topic together and re-align ourselves with the truth. My prayer is that it will help us keep fear in it's proper perspective and even shed some of the fear we've been carrying!

Have you ever needed to buy something and once you started researching the item you began to see it everywhere you looked? Our brains were wired by God this way. What we seek, we'll find.

So when God commanded us not to fear, He was trying to help us understand that we get to choose how we live. We can focus on fear and worry (and find it!) or we can focus on faith and peace (and find it!). This isn't a "name it claim it" sort of a thing either. These are promises from the Lord and His promises never change. Just like the seasons may change and a tree might look wildly different from one to the next, God's provision might look very different from season to season. But He is still providing, still blessing, still caring.

This attention to our lives and the love He has for us is why we can rely on Him. His faithful character is worthy of our complete faith. Only when we put our faith in the one Who is most reliable will we find ourselves able to face any fear we might encounter.

We pray this week as we memorize this verse that it emboldens our faith in the only One who can truly help us overcome any fear.