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Beautiful Valley - Fear Lost Article

Fear Lost – Thoughts on the Fear of God and Man

February 3, 2015 by brianmichaelsteck Leave a Comment

I’ve rappelled off of 100-foot ledges, jumped into scalding hot springs, spoken in front of crowds in the thousands, leapt out of a plane, trekked deep into the mountainous wilderness and helped free a demon-possessed man. Fear lost.

I’ve changed blowout diapers, started a business from scratch, backpacked across Europe, carried a close friend’s casket and lived in a foreign country without knowing the language. Fear lost.

So why is it that there is one arena where fear still tries to stand it’s ground? What is it about the fear of man that still grips me and tries to make me forget who I am, what I’m about and that I serve an Almighty, Alpha and Omega kind of God?

My Fear Snapshot

Just in case the fear of man sounds like an elusive idea to you, or a distant concept that you are convinced doesn’t apply to you, I wanted to give you a sneak peek at what this fear looks like in my life.

The fear of man shows up when I’m at work and I have a deadline to meet, a meeting that I’m almost or already late for, a loving wife who needs me home by 5pm and a growing inbox of emails from clients wondering why it’s Tuesday and I haven’t responded to their messages from the weekend.

The fear of man focuses his efforts on those conversations where someone is communicating that I’ve let them down. His expectations of me are always a little higher than my actual capabilities. He reminds me that I don’t have what it takes and points out that no one is impressed and everyone is counting on me.

That’s a snapshot of what my fear of man looks like. He’s a jerk and a liar.

Not Alone

In my life, I’ve set my vision on Christ. He is my goal and my example. So, while I don’t pompously try to compare my silly daily trials with His ultimate sacrifice, I do find solace in the fact that Christ encountered a moment in the Garden of Gethsemane that required a knock-down, drag-out fight with fear.

As Jesus was wrestling with the impending decision to offer himself up freely as a sacrifice for the sin of mankind, it may not have been the fear of man alone that was waging battle, but I can imagine that He felt a similar feeling as we do when fear attacks. It’s the feeling that dark and ominous walls are closing in all around us and our imminent demise is awaiting, just moments away.

Servant of Christ

Knowing that Jesus faced fear head on and was victorious gives me hope of my own victory against the fear of man. Christ’s own words to his disciples where:

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28

Paul tells the churches of Galatia that if he “were still trying to please men, [he] would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10) A dear brother of mine just preached on the fear of God and made the strong argument in line with this; the fear of God is freedom from any other fears we might have, be it death, heights, sickness, rejection or inadequacy.

At the Core

The core lie of the fear of man is an attack on our identity. It says, “You’re not enough and soon enough, everyone around you is going to find and and be disappointed.”

The first step to answer an identity lie is to look at the One whose image we bear: God our maker. When our view of God is correct, and Christ is the image of God in the form of man, we’re in a position to have right perspective.

The next step is to believe what God says about us. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. No heights nor depths can separate us from His love. He is the only one that is worth pleasing.

Finally, I allow myself to mentally fail. I role play what it would look like to let everyone down. Standing there in my mind, as a failure in the eyes of all around me, I recognize that in the end only God’s opinion of me matters. I can’t please everyone. The only approval that matters is God’s.

As I am reminded of who God is, who He thinks I am and that my worth and value does not come from what others think of me… I win. Fear lost.

In the end, fear lost

In the end, death loses, sin loses and pain loses, because Christ won. Love won. He won in the Garden of Gethsemane. He won on Calvary. He wins every time in my heart. And Fear? Fear has nothing on you — fear has nothing on me. Jesus won. Fear lost.

Filed Under: Discipleship Tagged With: Fear

The Paralysis of Fear and The Freedom of Failure

July 24, 2014 by brianmichaelsteck Leave a Comment

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

This question is in the same difficult category as “what would you do for a job if money wasn’t an issue?” Most would write off this idea because you say, “but money is an issue” or “failure is a possibility.”

And it hurts, doesn’t it. Failure hurts. We fear it deeply, like it’s ingrained in us from our early years of falling down and scraping our knees. But what I don’t understand is why fear of failure has taken a hold of us so ruthlessly.

Rub some dirt in it

Didn’t we get up from those falls after all? What failure, exactly, are we so afraid of that is keeping us from living life fully? Are the consequences so permanent that we must live in paralysis? I mean, take a moment to consider: is it truly better to risk your entire life secluded in a chrysalis of safety than to choose a valiant story living on the other side of metamorphosis?

What are we really afraid of?

Sticking with the butterfly analogy: do we think our wings will get damaged if we try to fly? Will they think our markings ugly? Or is it simply the fear of the unknown? Perhaps slinking around as a caterpillar is sufficient risk and we can’t bare to think of our lives on the mysterious other side of the cocoon.

Fail already — There is freedom in failure!

Rappelling in Moab
Get out of the car and into the harness!
I listened to a great podcast on NPR’s Freakonomics Radio that suggested we stand on the other side of failure and look at the mess. Envision yourself having already fouled up.

Now that you’ve acknowledged failure, what do you see? Was it really that bad? What exactly happened? If the consequence of failure is really that legitimate, is it also impossible to mitigate? Create your safety net to protect against death and then step off the ledge! Fear shouldn’t keep you in the car, when you’ve got the opportunity to experience life in the harness.

Go ahead… live free, fail fast, get up and do it again! The only true failure is staying paralyzed in fear.

Filed Under: Lordship Tagged With: Failure, Fear

Spring Waters

How to cure stinginess

June 24, 2014 by brianmichaelsteck Leave a Comment

Have you ever clenched your fists around the money in your pocket as you passed the beggar? Have you ever taken a bathroom break, knowing that one of your co-workers were coming office-to-office raising funds for their kid’s project or the next 5k race they were running? Do you tense up as you leave the grocery store, knowing that the girl scouts are waiting right outside? I do. And if you’re like me, you don’t want this to be true about you. I’d like to know how to cure stinginess.

What is the grip that money and time hold on us? At the root, I believe a lack of love is at work. This lack of love produces pride and fear. Protecting our time and quenching our desires is the result of living out of an insufficiently filled “love tank”. Self-preservation becomes the focus and we put ourselves before others.

Pride causes me to shake my fist at the red light while I’m running errands. Fear prompts that small internal voice to say, “No, I won’t share that last piece with you.” Stinginess is simply the outflow of a heart that is living in fear.

So what is the cure to fear, pride and stinginess?

It’s love. It always comes back here, doesn’t it.

How do we grow in love? The same way we survive dehydration in the wilderness. When you’re out of water and are at risk of dehydration, you can’t just drink out of the stream next to you. Even clean-looking mountain streams carry bacteria that can make you sick and speed up the dehydration process. So you must head to the source, where it is pure.

Carrying this analogy out, there are a few ways to find pure water. Rain water can be trusted, because it’s untouched, yet it comes in sprinkles and dashes. Creating a solar still will allow you to collect water that evaporates from living plants and the ground; but evaporation is a slow process that yields very little. The best method, though not always available, is to find the water that comes from deep in the ground: a spring or a well. This water is abundant and pure.

I’ve often said that my time with the Lord in the morning is what keeps me a nice person. My wife knows what kind of person I can become when I don’t maintain that appointment with God. This is my time to go drink from the well. A service on Sunday or a book I’m reading — those are like solar stills and rain water — they help, but they are insufficient for the long haul. But time with the Lord is my “well”.

Recognizing that God first loved and that He still loves me with abundance, despite my selfish sin nature, enables me to walk in love towards those around me.

My selfishness over my time and my money shows that I don’t trust that God is going to provide and protect. It shows that, in my mind, I have placed myself above God. I’ve begun to rely on my own abilities to get the project done on time or have enough saved for that home downpayment, instead of believing that He loves me enough to take care of me.

Curing stinginess, at it’s root, means heading to love’s source.

When is the last time you lowered the gates of your heart and let God’s love simply wash over you?

Filed Under: Stewardship Tagged With: Fear, love, Pride, Stinginess

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