Faith, Fear, Failure, Favor: Part 2

Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”
“Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down (Matthew 14:25-32, NIV).

When it comes to obeying God one of the biggest obstacles can be fear. This passage certainly bears that out doesn’t it? Faith drove Peter to trust Jesus to enable him to do the impossible, to walk on water. Fear undermined that trust and changed his focus from Jesus to the wind and made him sink.

Christianity is living for God through Christ. And I have been learning that it is extremely difficult if not downright impossible to live for God through Christ if you are driven by fear. I say “driven” by fear because living for God through Christ is anything but a fear-free zone. It can’t be, because fear is part of being human. It is part of life. Show me someone who says they have never been afraid, especially in their walk with Christ, and I’ll show you an idiot!

Fear is a strong emotion. My go-to spiritual father, Jonathan Edwards, called strong emotions “affections.” Affections are strong emotions that effect your body when we feel them. That is why they are called affections. They are powerful emotions that affect your body. Your heart beats faster, you get goose bumps, your mouth goes dry, maybe you start to sweat, your mind starts to race. Love, joy, zeal, hope, grief, anger, and fear all do that to us don’t they?

There is something else affections all have in common, you don’t decide to feel them. You just do. You can’t turn affections on and off. That is certainly true of fear isn’t it? You don’t decide to feel fear, you just do.

John Ortberg in his book If You Want to Walk on Water You Need to Get Out of the Boat, asserts that the reason “do not fear” is far and away the most often repeated command in all of Scripture is because of how dangerous it is to the Christian life. I don’t disagree. But I would add that another reason it is given 366 times from Genesis to Revelation is because it is our nature.

Fear is not a result of the fall, it is part of the way in which we are created in God’s image. Fear of the Lord is good. Proverbs 9:10 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear of the Lord throughout Scripture is said to be one of the marks of a true Christian, and lack of that fear is the reason for sin.

The problem of fear is not that we have it but that it acts as a powerful fuel that our sinful nature feeds off of. When the sinful nature listens to fear, it defaults to taking control. When we are driven by fear in this way, it takes the focus off of Christ and puts it on you.

In my time as a pastor I have been learning that fear seems to come in one of two forms more than others.

The first is anxiety. Anxiety is a feeling of fear that comes from what might happen. Anxiety leads you to question God’s trustworthiness. It works very hard with urgent thoughts and images of crisis and criticism to remove God’s faithfulness from your mind.

The second is fear of failure. If being anxious is fear of what might happen to you, the fear of failure is a fear that you will fail to successfully accomplish anything God wants you to do. His promises to be faithful and gracious and to provide all we need begin to fade from our memories until we are left with the idea that we would never be called to do anything for God, great or small, because God would never risk His success by trusting failures like us with His business.

Both of these fears produce the false expectation that you should be in control of your life. They limit your actions to cut your losses. You start acting (or not acting) out of your own strength. If you can’t do it comfortably with what you have got now, you avoid it. Instead of it being all about God, it becomes all about you.

The reality is when you are being controlled by fear, you can’t be humble, at least not before God. We are not expected to be in control of everything. Humility leads us to the reality that God is in control and we are His servants. We aren’t supposed to be calling the shots. Calling the shots is God’s job. Ours is to play the shots that God calls.

When we are driven by fear we stop being humble. When we stop being humble before God we start to lose our God-grounded confidence. That leads to lack of trust. It leads to doubt.

When Jesus says “why did you doubt” in verse 31 the word for doubt literally means “double.” He was saying “why were you of two minds” or “why were you double-minded?” Doubt is double-mindedness. That minded me of James 1:6-8 (NIV),

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Interesting imagery isn’t it, the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. Could he have been thinking of Peter?

Part 3 tomorrow…