Faith Over Fear

How Fear Creates An Identity Crisis

By Jake Lane

To accurately start this off, we need to establish what exactly Faith over Fear actually means. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). The term over has many definitions, but for the sake of this demonstration, over means “at a higher level or layer than”. Fear is described as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the BELIEF that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat”. Now that we have established these terms, keeping them in mind is essential for the story I want to tell as well as the demonstration being presented. I feel as though one of the best pieces of evidence to convince anyone of anything is experiences.

Being intellectually talked into something leaves room to be intellectually talked out of something, but oh the power of experiencing something good or bad.

What I want to submit to you is my story of how God delivered me from anxiety and placing me in a freedom that is better than I could have even imagined. In order to do this, I have to take you back. This story starts when I was around 9 years old.

Although I’m not sure how it started, before I knew it, I had developed severe anxiety to the point where it affected my daily life. There was a wide range of things that triggered this anxiety for me, such as, elevators, small spaces, seatbelts, rooms with closed doors, and the one that affected me the most, storms. We are not just talking about a fear of tornadoes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters, we are speaking of common thunderstorms that happen on such a regular occurrence. When I say that I had a fear of them, I’m speaking of a fear that made me have tunnel vision and the only thing in my sight and on my mind was my fear of these common storms. This fear grew over the time that I was around 9 years old to the time that I was nearly graduating high school.

The way that this fear controlled my life was immensely powerful to the point that I would miss trips, skip out on things that I loved to do and even leave school every time that a storm would come. There were so many instances that I remember being at school and hearing thunder outside and immediately going to the bathroom, calling my mom, and pleading with her to drop whatever she was doing and come pick me up. This fear often made me only think only about myself and at times, put my parents or the people around me at an inconvenience due to my fear.

Now to switch gears a little bit to give some background of what else was going on during this time of my bondage to fear. At the age of 11, I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I remember that day so vividly, our church that me and my sister grew attending from a very young age with very close family friends was having what is known as vacation bible school or as we called it, “Kid’s Crusade”. This was a four-day event where we would have a themed service every night. The night that Jesus changed my life and entered my heart was on the last night. I remember the Pastor giving the invitation to be saved and accept Jesus in my heart to have a relationship with Him, and I believe the woman who tapped my arm was being led by the Holy Spirit to ask me if I wanted to accept this invitation. I nodded my head and went to the front and said yes to Jesus.

This was the day that all I had ever done wrong, and all I will ever do wrong was pardoned because of my belief that what Jesus did on the cross was enough to pay for it all. This was one of the most joyful moments of my life.

I remember a peace entering me that I had never experienced. One of my fondest memories of that night following my decision was calling my mom to tell her what had happened, I remember her excitement and joy to hear this news. I knew from this day on that no matter what happened to me, I knew that when I pass from this life, I will get to spend eternity in Heaven. Due to this knowledge, I knew throughout this journey of being afraid of storms that no harm would be done to me because I knew that God would keep me safe.

When I think back now on that fear, I’m not even entirely sure what it is that I was scared of. I didn’t know what scared me, I just knew that I was afraid and when these storms would come, I would find myself pacing around aimlessly with such a gut-wrenching feeling in my stomach that I had grown to know all too well. I remember praying through these storms, my prayers would consist of, “Lord, please keep me safe” or “Lord please make this storm go away”. I knew that God loved me, but what I had not yet come to understand was that God cares for me. You may say well obviously if He loves you, then He cares about you.

Allow me to explain. I knew that God loves me because I had experienced His love when he saved me that night and gave me the peace that I spoke of, but what I was unaware of was what He was saving from and for. In 1 Peter 5:7 it says, “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you”.

In my mind, I thought of God’s love as wholistic and not as personal as I have now come to know that it is.

If He could take all the mistakes that I’ve ever made and will ever make and say about them that he will place them as far as the east is from the west from me, He can also set me free from anything. If God created the universe, the stars and each one of us, that means that He is in control of everything and that there isn’t a single thing that happens on the earth that goes on outside of His knowledge.

When I came to this understanding, it made me think, what always happens during these times that these storms come? This is when I realized that all of the fear that I had inside me always came to the conclusion that the Lord’s hand was on me and He kept me safe and that all of these thoughts that would come to me in the midst of these storms never came to pass like I had convinced myself that they would. This must mean that God cares for me, He favors me, He cares of the smallest details of my life.

So I remember when all of this hit me one day when I was around 18, and my prayers to the Lord during these storms began to change. It was no longer just “Lord please keep me safe”, it was now “Lord I know that you care about me and you do not desire that I am scared of this and I know that your word says that your love which is perfect casts out ALL fear, so would you take this fear away from me, I don’t want to be afraid of this anymore.”

This changed everything because I understood who God says that I am, that I am blessed and highly favored, that I am his masterpiece, his workmanship created in Him for good works. Because I now understood how he sees me, it allowed me to receive freedom from this fear that I had been holding onto for so long. This is when I woke up one day and realized, I’m not afraid of that anymore.

Even the thought of storms used to turn my stomach instantly and fill me with fear – now I feel so free because that fear is no longer there. The beautiful thing about this is that it was God’s power motivated by love towards me that took that fear away from me but guess what else? It is also His power that keeps me walking in freedom from this fear that I once had. This is an understanding that God gave me that changed the way that I think about anything in my life that I have previously been scared of in the past.

So where does Faith over fear come into this? How does that pertain to an identity crisis? Let me explain… When fear is in our minds and something happens that calls us to be afraid, it controls us and leads us to abandon truths about us that we are strong, that we have everything under control. Well, what happens when things happen that are out of our control? This calls us to make a decision.

The decision is, if God said, I will never leave you nor forsake you, and that all things will work together for the good of those who love him, then no matter the situation or the circumstance, we can trust that it’s all going to be okay.

The alternative to that decision is to allow that fear to control your decisions and leaving you feeling powerless. I know the effects of this decision all too well and if you have experienced this, you know the hopelessness that it drags behind it. Because of this understanding that God has given me about who is in control and that I am more than a conqueror through Him who loves me, Faith over fear takes on a whole different meaning for me.

It reminds me of the decision that is always there when something attempts to make me afraid and go back under that bondage of fear that I was once in. I choose to have Faith in the one who has proven himself faithful to me. Psalms 34:8 “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” Jesus has proven to me that He is able to be trusted in every situation for all things that I will ever go through in my life. He loves me, He loves you, He cares about you, He does not desire that you be enslaved by fear of anything.

When you understand that his thoughts toward you are good, that he is in control of all things, and that it’s His KINDNESS that leads us to repentance, it allows a freedom to enter into your heart that is incomparable to anything else that you could ever find anywhere else. It is for freedom that He has set us free! He deals kindly and gently with us. You are safe with him!

Psalms 117:2 “For His merciful kindness is great toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord!” When you understand the way He sees you, you understand that everything that he does is motivated by His LOVE for you. Whatever that fear is for you that arises in a moment and strips you of your hope, or that thing that you avoid at all costs because you feel as though that is something you will always be afraid of, and that it’s just “who you are,” what God says about you is the only thing that has ever been true and will ever be true.

Ask Him who you are, He desires to pour His love into areas of your heart that you don’t entrust to anyone other than yourself. Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”