Welcome to the Family Life Blog. We’re calling our Monday post “Wisdom for the Week” because we want to offer you some thoughts at the beginning of the week that just might help you in the days ahead.
I’d like to kick this off by offering some thoughts from the CCEF “Living Faith” Conference that took place this past week in
One consistent theme from the seminars I attended that is our Wisdom for the Week is that ‘fear is a relational matter’. Did you ever think of how much of your fear presumes you’re alone – either through isolation, rejection, or lostness. For example, I find that I’m a lot more susceptible to fears when I’m home by myself than when my wife and kids are there – even though if anything really fearful happened I’d rather they not be there to face it with me. Most fear is reasonable – we live in a world we can’t control. But fears can dominate our lives is many ways. Here’s some wisdom: The thing that overcomes fear is not power, but relationship. Fear is vulnerability seeking isolation. David Powlison said, ‘we can’t reason ourselves out of fear, but we can relate ourselves out of fear…. Relating gets us out of our own heads’.
Do you fear anything this week – are you trapped inside your head by fear? The ultimate remover of fear is God himself, who says, “do not fear, for I am with you.” Ed Welch encouraged us that “God has a deep joy in being trusted”. Do you see God as demanding your trust, or enjoying it. Faith in the face of fear is expressed in talking – calling on God for protection and peace, and calling on others for prayer and encouragement.
Fear: Talk it out.
2 comments:
Outstanding! Thanks for sharing this, Andy! Life IS all about relating -- through the great stuff and the messy stuff. Just as a wolf would want to pick off a lamb straggling from the flock God's enemy Satan would want to isolate us from relationships. It's when we're open in relating with folks we're reminded that we're NOT alone.
Great recap. I like the part as well where Powlison examined the extreme vulnerability of the birds and lilies and then pointed out our daily vulnerabilities as well. How much more does God care for us?
His 'one day at a time' reference was interesting too, how that phrase is basically another way of saying Christ's command, 'do not worry about tomorrow'.
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