Fear

Yesterday I filled out one of those typical online surveys with a bunch of random information, mostly because I was bored. Looking back over it today, I'm struck by how often I wrote the first thing that popped into my head, and the honest answers that resulted.

In particular, I fear: failure.

I wish this wasn't so true. Or I wish that the failure I feared wasn't so defined in human terms. The downfall of King Saul in the Old Testament of the Bible is wrapped up in this statement that he makes concerning himself: "I have sinned; I have indeed transgressed the command of JEHOVAH and your words, because I feared the people and listened to their voice."

I wish my answer had been I fear: God.

We fear so much because we fear God so little. Not a horrified "there's a monster under my bed" kind of fear, but an awe and respect that only God deserves. All my fears about how I am perceived and whether I'll succeed miss the point that I am already loved by the God who created the universe.

Thomas Merton asked, “Why should I desire anything that cannot give me God, and why should I fear anything that cannot take God away from me?”

The Bible says that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Only we have the power to deny that love, by living in pursuit of lesser things, of what Tony Campolo called "lovers less wild."

Singer/songwriter Derek Webb has a gift for singing what I'm thinking. Never more so than in the words to a song called "Wedding Dress". Here is the verse that always knocks me flat:

So could you love this bastard child
Though I don’t trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
And with the other in your side

So, week to week and day to day I keep coming back to the one who gave himself for me, who offers me grace through his death and new life through his resurrection. Who assures me that if I fear the LORD, I have nothing to fear. Who calls me away from everything this world has to offer and offers himself instead. Asks that I put him on in baptism, like new clothes. Who commands me to die so that I can live. Who asks me to trust him and gives me every reason to do so.

Our son, Harry, has a Psalm that he sings around the house from time to time, and it serves as a reminder to me:

"When I am afraid, I will trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise"

It is a reminder to me that if I live in God I have nothing to fear. It is the reminder of the apostle Paul in the book of Romans:

"What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who is against us?"

My fellow church planter Bob Hyatt talks about fear and failure and mission this way:

"How will you define failure? I realized that failure wasn’t if we did this and had to close the doors in a year because not many people showed up and we couldn’t pay the bills. Failure would be if we failed to love the people God did bring us, if we failed to love each other in community, if we failed to feed, clothe and otherwise care for anyone. That would be failure… not if we simply failed to achieve any type of long term momentum and institutional stability. I realized that for me personally, failure would be if I didn’t even try. If you do this might you fail? I guess it depends on how you define failure. They say 80% of church plants fail. I don’t know about that… all I can say is that I think that many church plants that seem to be failures by the standard of “Did they make it?” were probably great adventures for many involved, probably introduced people to Christ and probably made a practical difference in the lives of some people who really needed those small, “failing” churches."

We may not meet with success as this world defines it, we may not always please people the way we had hoped, we may not always have the happiness that is so flighty and fickle at the best of times. But we will have the joy that is constant in the midst of sadness in the midst of pain and in the midst of anxiety. We will have the perfect love that casts out fear. We will lose the weight of this world when we put it down in exchange for taking up a cross. Jesus assures us "my yoke is easy and my burden is light" even as he calls us to die. Because no matter what hardship and sacrifice that God might call us to, it is nothing compared to the hardship of trying to live in this world without God. Because when I fear God I don't have to fear anything else.