{"id":162,"date":"2016-11-12T10:06:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-12T10:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/?p=162"},"modified":"2016-11-12T10:17:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-12T10:17:45","slug":"fear-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/?p=162","title":{"rendered":"Fear Factor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was younger I was terribly afraid of the dark. When I say \u201cterribly\u201d I really mean debilitating. For the life of me I could not sleep in a room by myself. I only found rest when my sister-roommate was in the same room ready to sleep. Needless to say, this fear did horrible things to my sleep. I always seemed to be groggy at school and am sure this was the start of my insomnia. See, my sister was a super-uber high school over achiever and usually slept late. I, on the other hand, was still a budding middle schooler in need of much sleep. It was a terrible mix for catching zzz&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Till this day I have no idea why I was so fearful. The first thing that comes to mind (as I try to think like my 12-year old self) was that I thought something horrible was going to get me\u2026 eat me\u2026 you get the gist either way I\u2019d end up dead. What horrible thing you ask? Well, I don\u2019t know something awfully horrible. I\u2019m thinking maybe a hybrid between Freddie Kroger and the Sandman with gigantic claws waiting to get at me. Ahh!<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Question of Fear<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It makes me wonder\u2014why are we so fearful? Where does it come from? These are multi-faceted questions that I will ball up and answer in a nutshell based on my experience. Whether we\u2019re old or young I think fear stems from three things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Being Alone<\/strong> \u2013 There\u2019s no question that the thought of being alone when you\u2019re already deathly scared feeds fear. In my case, when I was younger, I was scared of being alone in a dark room without someone to call for \u201cback-up\u201d just in case something happens. For some reason, I felt like there would be power if someone else were with me instead of weakness with just myself. When we\u2019re older this fear of being alone could be from not being in a relationship and going through life\u2019s struggles on your own. You could feel somewhat helpless as if you&#8217;re unable to deal with the tough stuff solo.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Getting hurt\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 Sometimes the thing we face can end up getting us physically or mentally hurt and change our lives forever. This could be from of a decision you can make about your health, job, school, and so on. You may think this pain that you receive will leave you forever feeling defeated or regretful of the choices that you made.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Failing<\/strong> \u2013 Ah yes, this is a big one for me. I fear of failing probably several times a day. This is mostly from not meeting an expectation or disappointing someone somehow. I&#8217;m pretty sure that this is the biggest part of fear. We fear that we won&#8217;t be able to overcome and succeed whatever we are trying to conquer&#8211;perhaps this could be a project, financial goal, or about your physical health.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Fear in the Bible<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There were countless of figures in the bible that were fearful when faced with trouble or the unknown. First on my roster: Moses. Moses, I\u2019m sure, shook like a leaf in a storm when he was in front of the Red Sea with the Egyptians closing in behind him (Exodus 14).\u00a0Then there\u2019s the Lord\u2019s anointed one, David. This man had a target on his back, courtesy of King Saul, and tried with his might to run away from his spear to escape death (1 Samuel 19). Although, these two are great, my personal favorite fearful servant of God was Joshua. Joshua feared that merely marching his army around Jericho&#8217;s walls seven times wouldn&#8217;t cause it to fall and that his enemies would destroy him and his team. But in this crazy scary feeling the Lord told him to:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. &#8211;\u00a0Joshua 1:9<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I adore this verse. Why? Because it commands, reminds, and gives hope. It <em>commands<\/em> that I be strong and courageous. It<em> reminds<\/em> me that I should not be afraid or discouraged. It <em>gives<\/em> me the peace and hope that God will be with me wherever I go in this journey of life.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Present Fears, Choices, and Outcomes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I currently am fearful of my bumpy road to recovery. The process isn\u2019t going as quickly as I\u2019d like and I\u2019ve had a whole lot of setbacks that have sometimes left me feeling like dirt. Some days I feel alone\u2014really alone\u2014in this emotional and physical battle I\u2019m in. It&#8217;s as if no one understands the invisible, sometimes unspeakable, aching pain I go through. There are days where I do give up and think, \u201cFor the life of me I cannot breath! If this panic attack and racing heart are going to bring me to you Lord then so be it! I&#8217;m coming!\u201d with hot tears rolling down my face. Then I think of family and friends that would probably miss me if I\u2019m gone\u2014and so I feel like I need to keep fighting to get better and remind myself that I need to daily renew my hope and trust in God.<\/p>\n<p>Like my last post, I am now a converted believer in choices. With most of life&#8217;s struggles, we have some power to choose how we are going to react to what is thrown at us. Personally, I can either give up on trying to succeed and learn from my health issues&#8211;but something inside me tells me that I ultimately shouldn&#8217;t. That my greatest ministry, like some of the greatest stories in the bible, will not come from happy stories. They will come from tales of gut wrenching fear, life-changing mistakes, and unimaginable pain, pain, pain. These are the stories that will give us the power to help others overcome and make us realize that we aren&#8217;t alone in this world, that we won&#8217;t get hurt without good reason, and that we won&#8217;t fail with God&#8217;s power and guidance.<\/p>\n<p>P.S.<\/p>\n<p>Just in case you were wondering what the outcomes of Moses, David, and Joshua were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Lord put his hand over the mighty Red Sea and parted it for the Israelites to go through and get to safety.<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0The Lord protected David by sending Jonathan to help him hide in the field away from Saul&#8217;s wrath.<\/li>\n<li>The Lord sent the Walls of Jericho crashing down after Joshua and his army&#8217;s seventh lap around.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So fear, take that.<\/p>\n<p>Always,<\/p>\n<p>Faith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was younger I was terribly afraid of the dark. When I say \u201cterribly\u201d I really mean debilitating. For the life of me I could not sleep in a room by myself. I only found rest when my sister-roommate was in the same room ready to sleep. Needless to say, this fear did horrible [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175,"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shiningideas.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}