Fear and Faith

For those of us reading all four columns of McCheyne's today we came again to Psalm 33. This psalm is very significant to me because the Lord used it to encourage my fearful heart some 23 years ago.

I and my family were on the verge of leaving Wisconsin. We had worked hard for one year to find a job in California that would enable me to care for my family while I went to seminary. A week before our departure we still did not have a job.

Needless to say, I had a bit of anxiety. I was moving my family across the country and had no job nor a place to live. As I considered these things before the Lord, He directed me to Psalm 33:22. It reads, "Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you." As I read this it seemed to be a divine proportion to me. It seemed to be saying, "To the extent as I trust in you, may I know the steadfast love of the Lord." It was a call for me to put my trust in the Lord being confident of His steadfast love.

This gift of the word was an encouragement to me, and the challenges I faced in the year ahead proved over and over the truth of this. God's steadfast love did carry us through this challenging stretch. God was indeed faithful.

During the days of Samuel the prophet, this kind of trust was lacking in Israel except for one young man. The people were confronted with a major challenge in the person of the champion of the Philistines, Goliath. He defied the armies of the living God, but no one in the army had the nerve to stand up against him.

But maybe it wasn't nerve that they needed. Maybe it was that they needed trust in the Lord.

I love David's words in verses 45-47. I think they say it all and show his secret to success. He said, "You come to me with sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand... that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's; and he will give you into our hands."

There is the secret to David's success. When others looked to themselves and looked at the challenge before them, they strunk down in fear. David did not look at himself, nor his weapons. He only looked at or rather trusted in the Lord, and found the Lord's love completely faithful.

Today if you are confronted with fear realize that fear is like a warning light on your car, that tells you that something is wrong. And with fear, what's wrong is that we are looking in the wrong place. Instead we should lift our gaze on high, and when we do we will find a quiet confidence filling our soul. May God help us conquer our fears and know this tranquility of soul even in the midst of our challenge.