David Jeremiah - Hope: Living Fearlessly in a Scary World

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Hope: Living Fearlessly in a Scary World

Copyright 2021 by David Jeremiah. All rights reserved.

Adapted from What Are You Afraid Of?, published in 2013 by Tyndale House Publishers under ISBN 978-1-4143-8046-9.

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Dr. Ken Nichols is a biblical counselor and communicator whose friendship and partnership in ministry reach back more than thirty-five years. Wherever he has been, you will find people whose lives have been healed because of his ministry. Over the last several years, we have talked often about the subject of fear, and he was the first to suggest that I write a book on the topic. Here it is, Ken. It is dedicated to you. Thank you for your encouragement!

You are asleep in your bed when your alarm shocks you awake. You pick up your phone and see the headlines filled with news of approaching thunderstorms, overnight killings, fires, stock-market plunges, government scandals, and car wrecks. Instead of jumping out of bed, you pull the covers up over your head. You know what a fearful world we live in, and you dread facing all the challenges of the day.

But maybe your morning fears are not in the news; theyre about your job. You live in constant fear of getting caught in the downsizing trend. Or youre apprehensive about a business deal that has your career on the line.

Maybe your deepest fears lie at home. Can you meet this months mortgage payment? Does your marriage seem shaky? Are your kids worrying you? After a recent service at the church I pastor in Southern California, a young soldier who had just returned from Afghanistan wept as he asked me to pray for him. He feared that he might be losing his family.

Might. Thats the word thats haunting him. Our greatest fear is the conditional might the threat of what might happen. Fear trades in the market of possibility. Or even impossibility for fear is the tyrant of the imagination. It imposes itself upon us from the shadows, from its hazy mirror of maybe.

Theres no question about it: we live in a world that is often a scary place to be. When we face these fears that prompt us to pull the covers over our heads and retreat from the world, what will we put our hope in? Will we exert our energy in wishful thinking, crossing our fingers that our circumstances will change? Will we hold our breath in the hope that luck will go our way this time?

Biblical hope is not wishful thinking. Its not a lucky chance. Its not ungrounded optimism. No, its a rock-solid belief in the character of God. Thats not to say we are guaranteed rosebushes without thorns or a life free from tragedy or disaster. But because we know that God is all-knowing and all-powerful and for us, we can face down our fears and trust the outcome of our circumstances to Him.

Hebrews 11:1 says, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. The antidote to fear is faith. And faith gives us hope in the midst of whatever scary thing we face. When the apostle Paul was giving counsel to Timothy, his young protg, he knew Timothy was afraid of something probably of his assignment to lead the large church in Ephesus. Timothy was raised in a small town in Asia Minor, and Ephesus was the big city. Paul himself had spent three years in Ephesus, building up the church there. It was led by a strong group of elders, yet false teachers were causing trouble. And Timothy was supposed to go in and be the leader of the whole thing. What young pastor wouldnt have felt fear at the prospect?

So what did Paul tell Timothy? Your fear is not from God. What do come from God are power, love, and a stable mental attitude (2 Timothy 1:7, my paraphrase).

Paul knew that when we get Gods perspective on the source of our fear, we can set aside what is not from Him and embrace what is. In all my years of following Christ, studying the Bible, and pastoring well-intentioned Christians, I have yet to find a fear for which God does not have an answer. And the reason is simple: God Himself is the answer to all our fears.

Think about it fear is almost always based on the future. Sometimes were afraid because we know whats coming in the future. But more commonly, were afraid of what we dont know about the future. Were afraid of what might happen. For instance, the Gallup organization asked thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds what they were most afraid of. In descending order, the top ten fears of these teens were terrorist attacks, spiders, death/being killed, not succeeding in life/being a failure, war, heights, crime/violence, being alone, the future, and nuclear war.

Notice that all these fears are future focused, and all are merely maybes. These teens may encounter none of them. Whether the future is just a minute from now (youre waiting on a doctors diagnosis) or five years from now (you worry about having enough money for retirement), fears home office is the future.

But what is the future to God? To Him the future is now! We live inside time while God, who made it, lives outside it. We know relatively little about the future, while God knows everything about it. All the events in our lives occur in two time frames: past and future. (The present is a continuously fleeing, infinitesimal moment that becomes past even before we can define it.) God, on the other hand, has only one frame of reference: the eternal now, in which He sees and knows everything, including the future.

Thats why God is the answer to all our fears. If God is good and loving (and He is), and if God is all-powerful (and He is), and if God has a purpose and a plan that include His children (and He does), and if we are His children (as I hope you are), then there is no reason to fear and every reason to hope, for God is in control of everything.