What is Fear

A friend of mine once asked me what i thought about fear, especially as this course approaches and i discussed it in alot of detail in my previous blog, so i thought i would share my feelings on fear.

I do not think that living with fear or in fear is necessarily a bad thing. Fear keeps us in check, it keeps us on our toes and aware of the circumstances around us. Though there are some fears that we can and should be able to over come, fear is always going to be a part of our lives, we must learn to live with fear and overcome the circumstances that produce that fear.

I believe that much of fear comes from the lack of knowledge, understanding, or complete presence of information. If you look back to many of the things we are affraid of in our lives, much of them have an element of the unkown to them. So if we know that fear comes from not knowing something one way to overcome fear is to understand better the circumstances we are presented with.

Now obviously there are some things that we will never know or understand until the situation occurs regardless of our prepardness. As i spoke with my friend on moving to a new place, there are things that one fears or does not know about. Where to live, if they will make friends, if the job is going to be what it was promised to be, all of these and more are things that we do know fully understand or know about and thus produces the fear of moving to a new place.

Now we dont know if we will meet quality new friends, we do not know that we will have the job we are promised, and we dont always know that there is a place ready for us to live in. However there are things we can do to help us with these fears.

The first one, and sometimes the toughest compared to the following, is faith and prayer. Putting out Trust and faith in the Lord during these fearful times. Isaiah 41:10 really speaks to our fears of things in our lives, "do not fear for i am with you, do not be dismayed for i am your God, I will strengthen you, i will comfort you, i will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Our Lord is present during ALL of our struggles and fears. He stands by our side and orchastrates the events of our lives. However, he does not ask us to merely sit back and relax while he does the work for us.

This is where the second thing comes in. Doing something. If we fear something because of the knowledge we do not have or the things we have not done, taking action to find that information or improve upon those short comings is a way to overcome those fears. We might not be able to know the friends we will make at a new place, but we can research and find out places where others hang out, get connected in community events, and other gathering where the desired types of people we wish to befriend might be found. We might not know exactly what our job entails, but taking the time to research the organization, talk to bosses, and even other employees can start to ease our hearts from these fears.

This is only scratching the surface on what fear looks like and how i feel about it. I am definitely taking these two tips into my NOLS course knowing that the more i pray and trust in God, while taking action to overcome these fears, the better off i will be in conquering them. But what fear does do, like i said before is it keeps us on our toes, We must rely on the Lord for strength and guidance, and we must be actively working and pursuing, which in turn is learning. So you see fear can be a great thing, when it can be seen as a chance to better our relationship with the Lord and build out faith while also learning something new and exciting.

This might not make much sense, but its how i see fear and overcoming it.