What Will I Choose To Fear?

"The fear of God is the death of every other fear; like a mighty lion, it chases all other fears before it." – Spurgeon

 You may have heard me say this before, but I have this phrase that often shows up in my journals: "Fear seizes and paralyzes me."  I don't always even know what I am afraid of, but I know that I feel paralyzed.  


So when I read this quote by Spurgeon a light bulb came on.  I began to think - "so if I currently am experiencing fear, does this mean I do not fear God but I fear something other than God?"  A sense of understanding started to settle upon me.  Then I read this quote on my friend's Facebook status:

"Courage in not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

When I read this I realized that what I had been doing was giving leverage to the things I was fearing.  I was saying - this thing that I am fearing is more important than fearing God himself.  I believe having courage or being confident in the Lord is not having an absence of fear - for that would not be human and I am DEFINITELY human - but it is using the knowledge that God gave me to choose that what I am fearing need not swallow me whole.  Instead to choose fearing God - not in a scary halloween fear way - but in a reverent, God is holy and all powerful and knows what's best sort of way.  This choice is not always easy, because often the things that I fear are so much more "in my face" - but when I believe that God is for me and not against me, and when I lean wholly into Him, I know that the Spurgeon quote will start to resound more loudly in my life.