Fear Factor

Psalm 27; Luke 13:31-35

Quite a few years ago there was a show named fear factor. People would come on it and eat bugs, or do something they feared, like face a high place. It was supposed to show how people might face the thing they fear. Today we have a Psalmist who has faced fear or maybe its just naming their fears. Sometimes in order not to be overwhelmed we must name our fear in order to face it.

It is significant we have in the Bible places where people are told not to fear. They are not to fear when messengers from God come, or when they face God and are told a message they may not be ready to receive. A lot of these messages are about change. Change of being barren to having children so many, they will outnumber the stars. Or change due to war and who is in charge of something on this earth. 

Change can be a fear factor. We like things to stay just as they are. We dream of days past, when it was good times, but were they really good times? I remember a friend telling me that as she grew up she remembers the drills for a nuclear attack and the children all hiding under their desks as this went on. It was a fear of a generation, and it was not a fond memory. Or this another friend remembers her mom checking out when she reached the age of 40 because her mom was afraid of aging. My friend then had to take up all the cooking and cleaning because of her moms depression. 

Fear can make us become insular and not want to come out or change even if it is good for us. The thing is we believe in a thing called good news. The good news is we are not in charge. The good news is we are not alone. The good news is we don't leave this world alone. All our symbols of the church are a plunge between life and death. Baptism where we can't live underwater, where we are crucified with Christ and become a new creation. Changed into something different. The Christ candle where we can't live through fire, but are to burn with the life of Christ. All these remind me of the Psalmist this morning.

I won't fear, I can't fear because God is there. There is another Psalm, 139 which talks about God knowing our inmost parts because God knew us in the womb. Exactly where we were created. If we have such a God as this shouldn't we then trust and know we are not to fear? Yet most of our lives are lived in fear. Fear of death, fear of change, fear of an answer to a diagnosis we wait for, fear of growing old, fear of being different well you get the picture. 

The hardest thing in our walk is to live into our fears, like the Psalmist does this morning. We have to be willing to name our fear though. If it lives in the shadows of our mind we never come to terms with it and fear has a grip on our lives. 

So name your fears. Let them go, or at least don't give them as much space. Tell them out so they don't limit us into believing we are alone, or we are less than everything God intends us to be. Then we, like the Psalmist can declare we are not afraid because God is there.