I think my least favorite phrase for 2020 was “an abundance of caution”.
I turned on the news every morning to make sure the zombie apocalypse hadn’t started yet. The things I’ve been most thankful have been: my Jesus, my health, and my Disney+ account.
No church, no theater, no sports…who knew waiting for the angel of death to pass over would be so tedious?
As a Christian, I certainly wasn’t immune to the Corona Virus. However, I do think I had an advantage over my friends who don’t believe in God. You see, we believers are taught to live everyday knowing our life is in God’s hands alone. Put bluntly,
(a) There is a God.
(b) You are not Him.
Knowing these two will fight off a disease much older and deadlier than the Corona Virus: fear.
I’ll never forget the day after the 9/11 attacks, driving straight from Dallas, Texas back home to south Florida. My flight had been cancelled like all the rest. And those 17+ hours in the car, fearing the unknown and just wanting to hold my wife and kids, were pure torture.
Fear’s a powerful thing. Though it may have no physical force behind it, the threat of devastation is often worse than the object of our fear. People give in to despair and jump to the worst conclusion. They overreact and that reaction often causes greater damage than the original threat itself.
This is the secret the worst despots and manipulators of history have known. Find a threat, either real or imagined. Use that threat to make people run away in fear in the direction you desire. You don’t need actual power, just a potent cocktail of words and ominous shadows.
Though the recent threat has been quite real, we still have an enemy using it to manipulate us. He knows he can destroy people, even those who never contract a physical illness.
This is the secret Roosevelt knew when he said famously, at the start of WWII, our main enemy was not bombs or invasions, but “fear itself”.
Fear can color even good experiences with ominous clouds. It can destroy your ability to enjoy a life that others would die to have. It can make you overlook every single gift God has given, and begin to believe you’re cursed when you’re actually greatly blessed.
The pivot point is what you believe about God. Everything turns on whether you believe Him to be good, in spite of bad circumstances, or if you convince yourself He’s indifferent to your needs.
I know this from experience. If you ask my wife about my flaws, thankfully she won’t tell you. But when the doors are closed and it’s just the two of us, we often laugh together about how fearfully I go through life.
How bad am I? Well, to use the old analogy:
Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty.
I see it full…of poison!
My default tendency is to expect the worst from every situation. In fact, expecting the worst is some kind of twisted comfort for me. If I mentally leap to the worst-case scenario, then I finally relax a bit. I know it’s nuts, but that’s the way my mind works. And it’s been the pathology for the whole Gipson side of the family for generations now.
“Doomsday Preppers” were amateurs compared to the Gipson family.
Sure, it’s good to be prepared and keep some money tucked away for a rainy day. Go ahead and buy the Apple Care insurance on that new laptop. But living in fear destroys everything beautiful you might experience. You can’t enjoy life if you’re worrying about death and disaster.
And that’s been Satan’s plan for us all along.
In what’s considered the oldest part of the Bible, the book of Job, we’re taught our enemy has limits and boundaries. Satan’s only allowed to do certain things in your life. So you can know nothing comes into your life that doesn’t go past God first. Sometimes what He allows is quite painful. But if He allowed it in, He had a PURPOSE for it being there.
So when Satan’s not allowed to destroy you physically, he’ll certainly come after you mentally. If he’s not allowed to make you lose your job, he’ll make you fearful of losing it every time you talk to the boss. If he can’t kill your family, he’ll destroy your good times with fear of their destruction on every car trip.
And to be blunt, if he can’t kill you with a virus, he’ll make you a nervous wreck avoiding it.
Sure, take precautions and be careful. Use common sense. But DO NOT GIVE IN TO FEAR. Fear will not preserve your life. It will only steal all the joy from living it.
A few months ago I was having lots of trouble sleeping. I wasn’t sure about God’s direction in several areas of my life. So every night, I just sat up and worried. I’d distract myself with TV, and then worry some more. After a while, I started believing God was probably through with me. Despair wrapped its arms around me like a python, tightening around my chest and squeezing the hope from me.
One day in the midst of my fear, God “took me to the woodshed” as we say down south. He reminded me I’m a child of the One who created heaven and earth, and whose infinite goodness I’d preached about repeatedly. And now my faithlessness was destroying me, while making my faith in God look like a lie.
That day, God gave me a specific prescription. He said, “I want you to go to your Bible and start collecting verses about faith. I want you to study that list on a daily basis. I want you to go on long walks and meditate on one verse per walk. And in that process, I want you to actually start believing again that I AM WHO I SAID I AM.”
So I did exactly what He told me. I made a list of those verses into my iPhone notepad, and referred to them every time I felt fearful. I meditated on them over long walks. I surrendered my will and rested in His faithfulness.
That’s when something happened I hadn’t anticipated. Within days, the uncertainty I was facing was answered in miraculous ways. Yes, I know that sounds too easy, and no, it wasn’t like a magic spell. Believing in “faith” wasn’t the key. But trusting in Him and surrendering to His goodness literally changed everything.
God had put me in a position where my future wouldn’t happen without His help. He’d let me come to the end of my ability to fix my own situation, and then shifted my focus from how powerless I was to how powerful He is!
Through my little trial, I’ve learned more about placing my fears firmly on my Father’s shoulders. I was never meant to be in control. And if we try to carry that weight, it will crush us. Fear will destroy us well before what we fear every arrives (if it indeed ever does).
In these current crises, God is once again reminding us of our lack of power and control, while beckoning us to cry out to Him for help. Fear will destroy us, but faith in God will sustain us on the road to our destiny.
I’ve listed below seven of my favorite “faith verses” I meditated upon. When you’re tempted to fear, I hope you’ll do what I’m about to do again now with this new fear: take a little walk and meditate on just how big God is.
Turn off the news for a while, and rest in the only One who can truly hold your life in His hands. Your hands aren’t big enough for all that weight, they were never meant to hold that much. So let Him have it, and fear not!
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. – Mark 11:24
For we live by faith, not by sight. – 2 Corinthians 5:7
God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. – 2 Timothy 1:7
But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. – James 1:6
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. – Hebrews 11:6
Ask and keep on asking and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking and you will find; knock and keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you. – Matthew 7:7
If you can believe, all things are possible for those who believe. – Mark 9:23
