Don't let fear in...

In God—whose word I praise— in God I place my trust. I shall not let fear come in, for what can measly men do to me? (Psalm 56:4 VOICE)

I have always loved the psalms because they are a collection of words meant to elevate the soul, but also of prayers spoken when hearts were hurting, life got way too real to deal with all alone, or times were just good.  Some of life's toughest challenges have been those times when I find solace in the words of the psalms, but they have also been there in times when celebration just overwhelmed my spirit and soul, until joy oozed from every pore.  It is "IN GOD" that I play my trust - that means it is his words inside me that fill me with hope and joy.  Even when the challenge is hard, his words have a way "getting under our skin" and right to the meat of the matter.  They are to be celebrated because they are carefully chosen just for us and spoken deep into those places just for our healing, protection, and provision.

If you look closely at what our psalmist says, fear gets "inside" us because we let it come in.  If we were to let God's word indwell us, there would be a whole lot of "insulation" between us and those things we want to fear!  The chances of fear getting on the "inside track" within us would be much less.  We don't "ward off" fear with more knowledge, but with more of God's presence - and that presence gives us cause for celebration.  When we let something happen, we either do so by deliberate action or unacknowledged neglect.  We can either open the door to it, or we can simply not latch it so tightly nothing gets in unnoticed!  Fear isn't selective about who it affects or how it invades our inner man - in fact, all of us are subject to fear because God created us to know both trust and fear.  When trust is rightly placed, fear has no room to grow.  When fear gets an inroad, trust is likely placed in something quite inferior to God!

One of the biggest struggles we each face is this fear of what man can do to us.  In times gone by, men have feared things such as the plague, leading them to fear contact with those who contracted the dreaded disease.  Most never realized the spread of the disease was from the tiny flea, not the mortal man in front of them.  Men have feared the devastation of atomic warfare, while being totally oblivious to the even more powerful devastation of the tiny organism which leads to blister-like ulcerations on the skin known as anthrax.  Some have feared the terrible shaking and devastation caused by shifting deep below the surface of the earth, all the while missing that they built their homes right on the fault line, almost ensuring they would live in fear most of their lives.  We fear what we do not know or understand, or mistrust what we do not readily see.  We can either live in darkness, or we can walk into the light. 

When we choose light, we move into a place of celebration, for light removes all fear.  We can choose to live in the darkness of fear, or we can embrace light and allow it to move us beyond all fear.  The choice is ours.  Just sayin!