We all have fears. Most of us have packed a few in a small suitcase to haul into adulthood. I have. One of my earliest childhood fears was of falling down steep inclines. At age three and a half I tripped and fell down a full flight of wooden stairs. To this day I carry that disturbing hazy memory of sobbing and shaking with fright when l fell. Thankfully, my coping abilities continue to grow, especially as my trust in God grows. But sometimes I can still get caught in that cycle of stone cold fear.
Like the time Phil, my young husband of three, short years surprised me with an unexpected Christmas present. He had proudly prepared a sled-run in the woods across from our little house. It ran down a steep, narrow embankment, freshly iced over for maximum speed, just for us to go down . . . together. The long cold fingers of fear squeezed the life out of any joy I could have had over this “present” wrapped in a shiny, black death bow. As I looked down that embankment, which was more like a drop, all I could see were the trees that were still standing close to the run. I knew it would be a miracle if I didn’t crash into one or more of them. I prayed and did my best to look open to trying it out, at least once. But you can bet my heart was racing as I got ready to face this new terror.
My husband had an absolute blast going down that hill over and over again. Me? I believe I made it down twice. Now, what I remember the most about that time was the tremendous release of anxiety I felt when sledding was over. I had done it and made it out of there alive and didn’t even hit one tree. (I was so proud of myself for not hitting a tree!) I realize now the most important thing I took away from Phil’s fun-run was that small, misshapen nugget of trust in the Lord’s help. Through the years, I’ve seen how that experience was just one landmine I dodged of many, many more, hiding along my path of life. Trust has been the map and the compass God gave me to use, that most the time, keep me safe.
King David had such a map and sometimes he used his moral compass, too. How truly blessed we are to be able to look into the windows of his tent and see how he lived and coped with life. So many times, faced with real fear in dire situations, David put his trust in God. He could say in Psalm 34: 4, “I sought the Lord, and He answered me, he delivered me from all my fears.” I’ll always wonder, until the day I get to heaven, if God’s answer to David’s prayer was for him to feign insanity. It was a clever ploy to assure Achish, King of Gath, saw him as no threat. And, without any bloodshed, the crazy man and his men were allowed to leave peacefully. But most importantly, David took away one more nugget of trust in God to sling at the devil’s attempts to make him fearful. By the end of his long life, David had a very full pouch of those nuggets. Over and over he learned to turn to God. It sounds simple, but when one is in the throes of life, hearts and minds are so “prone to wander.”
Most of us at sometime struggle to trust God with our very lives, that He will bring us safely home when it is our time. But it seems the greater struggle for many of us is the “life comes at you” kind of trust. We can certainly be in a fit of fear as we face those steep embankments that inevitably come. These are, indeed, great moments that test true faith. If we trust, we come away with our faces shining, touched by the radiance of the Lord, for all to see and wonder in. How a gaunt, hungry world needs the soulful nourishment of this kind of radiance. Of course, we’re not always basking in victories. We all have those times we choose to drop down the dark rabbit hole of sin and eventually have to ask God to please pull us out. And he does. He helps us to get back up, dust off, get clean and live to fight another day. He will help us fight and become skillful with trust; over and over again life lessons will come.
We are the only people on the earth, the only people in the whole world, who get to come and fellowship freely with our God. Every victory over sin leads us closer to him. As we align ourselves behind him as he draws up those battle lines, we can be confident that our faces never will be covered with shame. How could they be? We have the King of kings to lead us to victory.