Day 2465 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.
Joshua 1:9 NIV
Fear, anxiety, and worry are all things that all of us have felt and experienced in life. But here's the thing about all of the above: they're only symptoms of doubt. They're only lies. They trip us up by making us focus on all the wrong things. But as commonplace as they may be, we have a choice. We have the right to stand up and refuse to allow ourselves to be distracted by the lies that are trying to confuse us.
You see, fear makes us think about everything that can go wrong. We start imagining the worst possible outcomes. We lose sight of all the good that could just as easily happen. We forget about the positive things that we might stumble upon. All we can think about is failure, messing up, making the wrong choice, saying the wrong thing, and not measuring up to what we need to be in the moment.
Personally, I've always dealt with nerves in so many different circumstances. Going to the dentist. Public speaking. Asking a girl out on a date. But those are all fairly common. I've even gotten nervous taking tests in school, renewing my driver's license, and teaching a bunch of little kids PE games. I can't count how many times I've gotten anxious to the point of feeling sick. But as I look back I notice a constant pattern: Everything went just fine.
We get ourselves all worked up thinking that we're going to do something wrong, say something silly, and fail to achieve the outcome that we're hoping for. But how many of the things that we were afraid of or that made us nervous ended up in the crushing failure and humiliation that fear told us they would be? Not many. Probably none at all. And I think that's what we need to remember.
I think we're so used to thinking that we're in control of life and the circumstances we find ourselves in. We think that it's all always on us to get everything right and figure everything out. But it's not. That's just another lie that fear makes us believe. Truth is that God is the one that's in control. He's the one who has already determined the outcomes of things that we don't even know about yet. And He always works everything out just as it should be. Always.
Friends, we can't let fear keep us from living anymore. We can't be afraid of change. We can't be afraid of failing. We can't be afraid of the unknowns that we're going to face. We've already faced and endured and experienced a lot of all the above. And we're okay. We got through every bit of it. And we're better for it! We just need to remember that God's got us in His more than capable hands. And He has promised to always be with us, always watch over us, and always work things out just as they need to be.
Fear will try to tell us that it's all going to go wrong. But faith tells us that even if it doesn't go like we imagine, it will still be exactly what it's supposed to be. And that's a promise that we can always lean on whenever fear starts calling our name!
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