The Confident Woman: Start Today Living Boldly and Without Fear Page 17
But then one summer we were staying at a condo someone let us use and when Duchess heard the word bath and saw me getting out her shampoo and other supplies that I normally use for it, she disappeared. When I finally found her, she was shaking and hiding in another room. At first I didn’t know what was wrong with her because she hadn’t acted afraid of baths for a while. But then I realized it was the bath and she was afraid because she was in a new situation and a new place.
Even animals respond to fear by running and hiding. They live by instinct and will always respond to those instincts, but thank God we live by making wise choices according to our knowledge of God’s Word. His Word says not to give into fear and with help from His Spirit, we can make the right choice.
Is Anyone Immune to Fear?
Are some people cursed to be afraid while others are blessed with being brave? We recognize that we are born with different temperaments. We don’t choose them; God chooses them to help us fulfill our purpose in life. Some people are just naturally more aggressive, brave and daring than others but I personally don’t believe anyone is totally immune from fear. Even the person you know who appears to be the bravest of all has fear about something.
Some people do a better job than others of hiding their fears. They may not even admit to themselves that they have fears but the reality is that Satan attacks everyone with fear. We can overcome it! If it weren’t possible to overcome fear then God would not have instructed us in His Word to “fear not!”
I believe we are all brave in some areas and fearful in others. The pendulum may swing one way or the other, but we all have some of both. For example, a woman we will call Theresa was timid and shy. She didn’t talk a lot and was introverted. She would be petrified to stand in front of a crowd of people and speak, and yet Theresa was very brave when it came to facing pain and tragedy in her own life. She had cancer at the age of 32 and endured surgery and painful radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Theresa also had three miscarriages before she finally gave birth to a healthy child. She bore these difficulties graciously, bravely and with little complaint.
Janice, a friend of Theresa’s, was very outwardly aggressive. Janice was so outgoing she could have made friends with a telephone pole. She was a leader, spoke easily in front of large groups and was generally admired by all. On the surface Janice did not appear to be fearful at all. Like Theresa, Janice also faced tragedy in her life. For twenty years, she worked for a corporation and had built up a large retirement through investing in a 401(k) matching funds retirement program. Quite to everyone’s surprise the company was investigated for fraud concerning the investment of the employees’ retirement fund and suddenly Janice as well as many other employees discovered they had no retirement. The company filed bankruptcy and several of the officers were tried and sentenced to prison terms. Not only did Janice suddenly have no retirement, she also had no job. She did not handle her tragedy graciously. She displayed fear that amazed those who knew her. She had always appeared to be so fearless, but in this situation she was almost paralyzed with fear about her future and financial security.
I am bold enough to stand in front of a million people and speak for hours. I have no fear of being transparent and sharing details of my life that many people would not be comfortable sharing. On the other hand, if I got onto a roller coaster at an amusement park I would be shaking and possibly screaming, but not with delight.
During our travels, my husband Dave will try all kinds of food he has never eaten or even seen but I am always looking for something I am familiar with. I am afraid if I try something new that I won’t like it and my meal will be ruined. My point is that nobody is really immune from all fear. Some people’s fears are more obvious than others, but I believe we all have them.
It’s important for us to realize that we are not alone in our battles with fear. The devil wants nothing better than to convince you that there is something really wrong with you or I and that other normal people don’t have the same kinds of problems. Don’t let him do it; all of us experience fear.
General George Patton would certainly be considered a very brave man and yet he admitted that he had fears. He just chose not to pay attention to them.
During World War II, a military governor met with General George Patton in Sicily. When he praised Patton highly for his courage and bravery, the general replied, “Sir, I am not a brave man . . . The truth is, I am an utter craven coward. I have never been within the sound of gunshot or in sight of battle in my whole life that I wasn’t so scared that I had sweat in the palms of my hands.” Years later, when Patton’s autobiography was published, it contained this significant statement by the general. “I learned very early in my life never to take counsel of my fears.”
The spirit of fear is not exclusive for who it visits or when it visits them. Sometimes fear shows up at very inconvenient times, moments when we would prefer to feel fearless. After all, who wants to confront and deal with fear? Nobody does and most people don’t! It just seems easier to run or hide or procrastinate. We wish it would go away, we pray it will go away, but until we confront it, fear will always have us on the run. If we are going to run, it needs to be toward the enemy, not away from him.
Variety! Variety! Variety!
The variety of fears that the devil presents to people is endless and amazing. Various people are afraid of everything from dirt to death. I’ll mention several that I have either dealt with in trying to help people or have heard of. Fear of being lonely, rejected, abandoned, taken advantage of, intimacy, childbirth, heights, water, bees, dogs, cats, other animals or rodents. Some people are afraid of sickness and they always imagine some new disease is developing in their body. The fear of man is huge and so is the fear of lack. The fear of failure torments many people, while others are afraid of success. Women especially often have a fear of their husbands dying and being left with nothing, something some call the “bag lady syndrome.” Some people are almost paranoid about their appearance. Other people have a fear of drowning, germs, elevators, crowds, flying or fire. I know a grown woman who has never struck a match because she is afraid of them. Some people can’t form meaningful relationships due to a fear of intimacy.
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What Are We Afraid Of?
A Gallup Poll conducted in 2005 revealed the most common fears of teenagers in the United States. They included:
1. Terrorist attacks
2. Spiders
3. Death
4. Failure
5. War
6. Heights
7. Crime/Violence
8. Being alone
9. The future
10. Nuclear war
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I could go on but I think you see my point. You may even be a person who experiences a fear that seems so weird you would never even tell anyone about it. Believe me, someone out there has a fear even stranger than yours. But why do some people have one fear while others have another? Someone who grows up in Florida may be more fearful of hurricanes than someone who grows up in Kansas or Tennessee who has an intense fear of tornadoes. Someone who lives in the city may be more fearful of muggings than someone who lives on a farm. Why can one person be terrified of dogs and someone else love them?
We do know some of the answers but certainly not all of them. I don’t think we need to figure out fear nearly as much as we simply need to make up our minds that it is no longer going to control us. Some people spend their entire life trying to figure out their problems and never get around to getting past them. But God can help us get past those fears that attempt to freeze us up, if we’ll only look to Him for His help.
Face your fears today and ask God for His help in moving past them. It is only by His grace that we can all overcome our fears!
Chapter Twelve
FEAR HAS RELATIVES
Once you allow the spirit of fear to take hold of your life, you open the door to other spirits that want to grip your heart and cause you to freeze up, unable to m
ove forward in confidence and assurance. Worry and dread are both relatives of the spirit of fear. Or, look at it this way: Fear is the parent and worry and dread are the children. The Bible clearly teaches that God’s children are not to worry. When we worry, we rotate our minds around and around a problem and come up with no answers. The more we do it, the more anxious we feel. When we worry, we actually torment ourselves with a type of thinking that produces no good fruit. Worry starts with our thoughts but it affects our moods and even our physical bodies.
Keep in mind that worry doesn’t wait until we grow up, either. A study out of the United Kingdom showed that more than half of teenage girls worry about their appearance, one in three are stressed out by school and nearly 40% worry about their families. It’s no wonder that 80% of chronic worriers also have a poor self-image—their confidence has been eaten up by fear and doubt disguised as worry!1
A person can worry so much that it makes them feel depressed and sad. Worry places stress on your entire system and causes a lot of physical ailments like headaches, tension in muscles, stomach problems and many other things. The only thing worry does not do is something good. It never helps and it does not solve our problems.
Jesus said that we should not worry about tomorrow for each day has sufficient troubles of its own (Matthew 6:34)! Trying to solve tomorrow’s problems today only steals the energy God has prearranged for you in order to enjoy today. Don’t waste your time worrying! It is vain and useless. Don’t be like the bassoon player who went up to his conductor, and nervously said that he could not reach the high E flat. His conductor just smiled and replied, “Don’t worry. There is no E flat in your music tonight.” Many of our worries are like that—unfounded and unnecessary.
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Prayer opens the door for God to get involved and meet our needs.
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Humble yourself under God’s mighty hand by casting all your care on Him (1 Peter 5:6, 7). In this way you are saying to God, “I know I cannot solve my own problems and I am totally trusting in you to take care of me and give me the answers I need in my situation.”
You can only be a confident woman once you remove fear and worry from your life and it starts with prayer. Prayer opens the door for God to get involved and meet our needs. The Apostle Paul said we are to be anxious for nothing, but in all things by praying we will experience the peace of God (Philippians 4:6, 7). He didn’t say in “some” things, he didn’t say in “one” thing, he said in everything. Prayer must replace our worry.
We can worry about hundreds of different things. From what people think of us to what will happen to us as we age. How long will we be able to work? Who will take care of us when we get old if we are not able to care for ourselves? What happens if the stock market crashes? What if gas prices go up? What if I lose my job? Quite often, worry does not even have a basis or a nugget of truth to it. There is no known reason to even think about the things that worry and then frighten us. Worry can even become a bad habit. It is just what we do! Some people fret over something all the time. If they don’t have problems of their own they worry about other people and their problems.
The only answer is to “stop worrying and place your trust in God.” He has the future all planned and He knows the answer to everything. His Word promises us that He will take care of us if we trust in Him.
Someone once said that “Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due.” Worry believes it will have trouble before it does. It constantly drains the energy God gives us to face daily problems and to fulfill our many responsibilities. It is therefore a sinful waste. Worry is the end of faith and faith is the end of worry.
Don’t worry that you might have a rotten day, because if you do have one you will certainly know it and you can deal with it then. You know you’re having a rotten day when . . .
Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles.
Your twin sister forgot your birthday.
You call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold.
Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hells Angels on the freeway.
Your boss tells you not to bother to take off your coat.
The bird singing outside your window is a buzzard.
You wake up and your braces are locked together.
You put both contact lenses in the same eye.
Your husband says, “Good morning, Judy,” and your name is Sally.
When Jesus instructed us not to worry about tomorrow, He was saying that we should deal with life one day at a time. He gives us the strength we need as we need it. When we take that strength He gives us and apply it to worry instead of action, we rob ourselves of the blessings God intended for us to have today—not tomorrow or the next, but today. We miss out on good things because we worry about bad things that may not even come to be!
For several years a woman had trouble getting to sleep at night because she feared burglars. One night her husband heard a noise in the house, so he went downstairs to investigate. When he got there, he did find a burglar. “Good evening,” said the man of the house. “I am pleased to see you. Come upstairs and meet my wife. She has been waiting ten years to meet you.”
Life has its bumps and potholes in the road. You will have enough things to deal with just because you’re alive and on planet Earth. Why would anyone want to worry about tomorrow’s problems? What we worry about frequently never happens anyway and if it is going to happen, worrying won’t prevent it. Worry does not make you escape your trouble, it only makes you unfit to deal with it when it comes.
God is our help in trouble (Psalm 46:1). With worry, you are on your own. When you worry, which do you worry about, what might happen or what might not happen? For worriers, the Scots have a proverb: “What may be, may not be.”
A confident woman does not worry because she sees the future differently than women who are worriers. She confidently believes that with God’s help she can do whatever she needs to do no matter what it is. Her positive attitude enables her to expect good things in the future, not bad ones. Confidence is the fruit of trusting God. When we trust Him we may not have all the answers, but we are confident that He does.
Don’t Worry about Past Mistakes
It is useless to worry about anything and doubly useless to worry about something that is over and done with and that nothing can be done about. If you made a mistake in the past that can be rectified then go ahead and take action to correct it. But, if you cannot do anything about it except be sorry, then ask for forgiveness from God and anyone you may have hurt and don’t worry about it any longer.
Let me remind you that worry is useless . . . so why do it? God has given us wisdom and a wise person will not spend their time doing something that produces nothing of any value.
There are many wonderful scriptures in the Bible that teach us to let go of the past and look to the future. We’re reminded to forget what is behind and keep our eyes facing forward, on God and His plan for us (Philippians 3:13). We can find peace in the knowledge that God’s compassion and kindness is new every morning and that His faithfulness is abundant (Lamentations 3:22, 23). Also, we must never forget that He is able to overcome and do far more than we could ever imagine that He could do for us (Ephesians 3:17, 21). God has provided a way for your past to have zero power over you, but it is up to you to receive His gracious gift of forgiveness, mercy and a new beginning.
Don’t allow mistakes in your past to fester and threaten your future. When you ask God to forgive you for something that you have done wrong He is faithful and just to do it. He continuously cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). It’s forgiven and forgotten—but you must do the same!
Get Over Guilt
Millions of people destroy their lives by feeling guilty about something that is in the past and that they cannot do anything about. When God forgives our sin He also removes the guilt. But just as we must receive His forgiveness, we must also rece
ive freedom from guilt and not let the emotion of guilt control us. If God says we are forgiven and pronounced not guilty then we should believe His Word more than how we feel.
We frequently hear people say, “I will feel guilty about that the rest of my life.” Or, I have heard people say, “I will never get over what I have done.” God’s Word says that when He forgives us He forgets the offense and there is no more penalty for sin where there is complete remission of it (Hebrews 10:17, 18). Why decide that you will feel guilty the rest of your life when God has provided a way for you to live free from it?
I’m reminded of a story from the early 1900s about a little boy who killed one of the family geese by throwing a stone and hitting it squarely on the head. Figuring his parents wouldn’t notice that one of the twenty-four birds was missing, he buried the dead fowl. But that evening his sister called him aside and said, “I saw what you did. If you don’t offer to do the dishes tonight, I’ll tell Mother.” The next morning she gave him the same warning. All that day and the next the frightened boy felt bound to do the dishes. The following morning, however, he surprised his sister by telling her it was her turn. When she quietly reminded him of what she could do, he replied, “I’ve already told Mother, and she has forgiven me. Now you do the dishes. I’m free again!”