For God has not given me a spirit of fear. But of power, of love and of a sound mind.

I remind myself of this a lot.  Over the years I have dealt with many different faces of fear. It’s been about 4 years now since we had someone break into our home. It was in the middle of the night and my entire family was there, sleeping.  The intruders left behind an axe that they had brought with them which was unsettling. But that wasn’t the only thing they left behind that day. They also left behind a heart gripped by fear.

It was almost 3 months later before I would sleep through the night again. Fear had found a place in my heart and mind.  It was slowly eating away at me. Like I said, I am familiar with fear. It’s something that has kind of followed me my whole life, taking on different faces at different stages of my life.  But this was new territory for me because suddenly a fear of mine had become a reality. And I wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

I would find myself bolting up in bed in the middle of the night, confident that someone was breaking into our house. There were times that I would go and check on my kids to make sure they were safe and times when I was literally so crippled by fear that I couldn’t even move. Sometimes I would wake up my husband and he would do a “check” around the house to set my mind at ease. Often we would pray together. But always I would find myself repeating scripture over and over again to help settle my mind. At times all I could remember was a single verse and so I would repeat it over and over again until the truth of it settled on my heart.

Psalm 27:1 “The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid?”

Psalm 34:4 “God met me more than halfway, he freed me from my anxious fears.”

The other night I woke up with the feeling that someone was in our house again. I tried nudging Aaron but he was sleeping soundly and I decided not to bother him.  Instead, I found myself thinking on scriptures and repeating

2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given me a spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind.

And the Holy Spirit just emphasized in my heart the three things that scripture says that God has given me. First, he has given me power. Psalm 68:35 says, “He gives power and might to his people!” He has also given me love.

1 John 4:18 says, “There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear.”

And lastly, he has given me a sound mind.

Proverbs 14:30 says, “A sound mind makes for a robust body, but runaway emotions corrode the bones.”

I wish I could say I never deal with fear anymore. But the truth is, I still do.  What I can say now is that when fear begins to push in on me, I am able to stand upon the word of God and fight it with the truth.  When my mind starts replaying the details of that night I can change my thought pattern and focus on the good that happened that night as well.  Because God was protecting myself and my family that night. None of us were hurt. My children slept through the entire incident which was a miracle in and of itself considering their dad was running around the house yelling for whoever was there to get out! And then there were the squad cars, the policemen going in and out, and even a canine unit. And my kids slept through the whole thing. Who knows what could’ve happened that night.  But when my mind starts wandering I move to what DID happen that night. God protected us. He was right there with us. And he’s not a one shot wonder. He didn’t just happen to get lucky and be there on that night, he’s right there with me every night.  I can trust him with my life because he gave his son’s life for me.

Today I pray God’s peace and love over every fear.  Whether it be a fear of things in the past, present or the future. Whether it be fear of man or man’s opinion of you.  Whether it be fear of failing or fear of succeeding.  Whether it be a fear of the unknown or a fear of all you’ve ever known. God’s love is well-formed love and that is the kind of love that banishes fear. So you can rest well tonight my friend. He’s got it under control.