Fear is always selling something. It might be selling despair as a paralytic toxin to render all who fear as helpless. It could be selling a false hope, some super-duper cure-all.
Many parents in Asia spend enormous amounts of money on education for fear that their children will not graduate as first in the nation—never doing the math that only one graduate can hold that position. After all, fear inhibits reason. Insanity is another thing fear often sells. But, if you don’t graduate at the top of your class from the best school in the solar system, then your life is over, right?
Sometimes fear takes the form of grandiose goals—goals that are physically or computationally impossible and would serve no useful purpose even if they weren’t. It’s great to be able to calculate complex geometry in your head, but it is grandiose to think your life depends on it—or anyone else’s. Once your head gets too big, your ego pops like a balloon and you are left in fear of seductive ambitions that never existed.
It is difficult to overcome a fear of something that doesn’t exist. Thus is the nature of fear. All fear is unwarranted. It won’t do you a lick of good.
If it is inevitable that you will die, there’s no use in dying fearfully. Of course, Death gets us all. So, that’s one angel we need not fear.
If your bills are late or the odds look dark, if you need breakthrough by a certain time or if you’re running out of options, sobriety and calmness will be your best friend. Whatever person, business, or demon wants to sell you fear has some sort of purpose that is less than noble.
God commanded Israel not to fear. It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t an “encouragement”—it was a command: Do not fear!
Anyone who knows God knows that only God is worthy of fear. Whatever you fear you also revere. If you fear anything other than God, get a Biblical life!
Understanding anything begins with fearing the Lord God only. Next time you see something scary—an advertisement promoting fear—concentrate on fear’s competition: Fear God.
Deuteronomy 6:13; 31:6, Joshua 1:9, Psalm 23:4; 111:10, Proverbs 9:10, Isaiah 40:10, Luke 12:4-6, John 14:27