How To Have No Fear.

I wrote a blog about fear and how having it means that you are not perfected in love (see here for the blog) at least as far as the Bible is concerned.  But it was not until today that I really understood what this meant.

Things in my life for the past few years have been going haywire and array to the point that I wonder if God was even with me anymore.  I prayed, cried, begged, and pleaded for things to change.  For things to get better, but they didn’t.

It got to the point that I did not even want to pray.  I did not want to face the fact that another one of my prayers were going to be unanswered.  I could not accept the fact that there was a distance between me and God and I could not understand why.  I could not get back to the place I was with God, and in a weird way I did not want to.  I felt like God disappointed me.  I felt no comfort nor did I feel any peace.  I had relied so much on God in everything that I did and now all of a sudden it seems like God was gone.

So then I thought I would try to do everything on my own.  I felt like God was not helping me or not concerned with my problems, therefore I needed to begin to figure this out on my own.  Why would I want to sit here, day in and day out and suffer for what I felt was for no good reason?  If God would not help, then I would do what I could do to fix it.

And then.....

That did not work.  I did everything in my power to control my situation and it did not work.  Things were still the same and getting worse by the minute.  And then I decided to do the only thing I could do, not care.

I was doing everything in my power for things to be fixed, but it wasn’t.  The only thing that was happening was that I was having more and more worry, anxiety, and fear that things were going to fall apart. In fact, they were already apart.  And guess what, I was still living and the world was still turning.  Some of the things I feared the most had come upon me and I was still living and breathing.

Even though I hated what I was going through, even though it hurt, I just learn to let go.  I let go because me worrying and thinking about it did not matter anyway.  If something was going to happen it was going to happen, me worrying about it or having fear was only going to affect me.

I could only do the things I could do and control the things I could control and leave the rest up to God. I either had to trust God and His word that everything would work out, or I had to continue to worry and have everything work out God’s way anyway.

When the world is crumbling down around you and there is nothing you can do when things keep falling you just let go. When you do the things you can, the things you feel you are supposed to be doing, then that is really all you can do.  Does that makes sense?

For myself, I am underpaid at my job.  It is something I am sure most people face in this economy.  Many people want a job and therefore employers try to get away with paying people the less amount of money as possible.  Plus the fact that I am a double minority (a women and black) statistics already say that these two populations are underpaid as it.  So imagine how broke and marginalized I feel.  I always feel, at most jobs and interviews I go one they look at me and despite was my resume says, they assume I can live off of less.

Well tell this to my mortgage company, utility company, or my car loan company; because I am sure they do not understand the struggle.  My biggest fear was that I was going to be homeless, car-less, living in the dark, with no water or heat.  WITH MY SON.  I worried every month how everything was going to get paid.  But with my worry it only affected me.  Somehow or the next everything got paid and is getting paid.  Even though I feared and worried, there was no reason to really fear at all.

The reason being is because me worrying is not going to get my bills paid nor is it going to allow it to make me more money.  What I could do was apply for more jobs or make money elsewhere.  All these things were within my control.

I promise you that I have applied for job that pay more and those that I well over qualified for, I still do not get.  I think this is for a reason.  I think God did this for reason.  Because I have learned through this situation not to fear.  That whatever is coming against me if I trust God then I have to trust God to work it out.  Because God working it out is the only choice I have.

It taught me not to fear about things I cannot control and go into every situation thinking I can handle whatever is thrown my way because I have God on my side.  So while I do not have the money, I have God.  While I may not be able to pay every bill, I have God.  While I may be going through a hurricane and it is breaking everything in my life apart, I still have God.  And with the knowledge that God is there with me, I know now that all is well.

I used to just say things like this because it is the Christian thing to say, but now I believe it because I have been there.  I have felt like I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and had no choice but to believe and understand that God was with me.  I had to have no fear, because fearing meant that I would allow it to overwhelm me, it meant I did not believe, it meant that I felt like I was being punished.

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:18

And that is not what God is about, God was not punishing me.  My love for wanting more money was not important to Him.  What is important is that I learn to trust God unconditionally through every situation and have no fear.  It is important to God to draw me deeper into a relationships with Him, so that He knows that when I get what I want He can trust me with it.

“To whom much is given, much is required.”  Luke 12:48

How can God give you anything unless you have been required to go through something?  Why should God give you anything that you have not earned?  And how do we earn the things that God has for us?  We earn them by going through things and allowing them to refine our character.  By going through all of what I just mentioned it increases faith in God.  It always allowed me to let go of my idolatry of money, because when I worked at another job in which I made more money I felt that this defined me, and it had to be stripped from me so that I could understand that God was God and money was not God.

God will strip things from you that you put over Him or you feel define you, because He wants to show you that they don’t.  I am convinced that God wants to put people in high places, but just so long as they can remember God when they get there.  That’s why I am convinced God puts us through Hell and high water, so we can remember who God is where we want to be when we get there and we always learn to trust God in all that we do in whatever situations we are in.  Make Sense?  I hope so because that was a mouth full.  And I think once you digest all of what I just said then it will help you understand the hardships in your life tremendously.