100 Days Of Encouragement

Fear Not-Isaiah 41:10

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

There are more sides to a story. This is something that we tend to overlook at times because we become so focused on what is in front of us that we fail to see the bigger picture. This is why we need to train ourselves that, as much as we exist moment by moment, our lives are never isolated from a moment but are comprised of them.

We face failure, loss, or heartbreak and want to give up because we see it as a finality rather than a stage we are passing through. If we had a birds-eye view of our lives, we'd live so differently because we would see our decisions the way a chess player sees the game. Each move is connected and predetermined by the ones that follow, never isolated.

We'd face loss and understand that our response is a buildup or a save, because as much as we may have lost a pawn, we still managed to retain the upper hand and secure the safety of the king and queen. However, we seldom take inventory and remain fixated and wailing over a single pawn instead of considering the rest of the game.

The spirit of fear, anxiety, doubt, etc. thrives on this fixation because it keeps your focus on what has been removed and not what you have or could gain. So instead of having the correct perspective, you lose focus and lament, only to lose a game that you could have easily won had you had the focus to see it.

Such is life when you focus on the wrong things; you lose even what you still have, even the upper hand, because you can't see the hand of God over your life that sustains you. When you not only know this verse but also understand its implication and know it as your reality, you live differently and, in turn, approach life differently.

Imagine David standing before Goliath, afraid and consumed with fear, and saying God would defend him. What gave Goliath the upper hand was the fear that consumed people: that they lost the battle before even fighting, because in their minds they had already been defeated and that they forgot what David knew: that God was with Israel and that they were His people.

We too need to stand before heaven and all that tries to bully us into a state of cowering and declare with faith and assurance all that God has stated concerning us as His people. We are either putting on the garment of fear, which is an amour that will be so heavy that it will weigh us down the same way King Saul's amour did David, or we take it off and use what God has played in our reach and trained us to use and declare that He will fight for us.