Living Courageously: You Can Face Anything, Just Do It Afraid

Fear! Has it ever been a problem for you? Has it ever held you back from moving into areas that could enrich your own life and the lives of others? I am sure your honest answer is yes because everyone is visited by fear at some time or another. Keep this in mind: If you have ever dealt with fear, or if you are dealing with fear now, you are not alone. Fear is one of the biggest problems that we all must face if we truly want to live life to its fullest.

But I have good news for you—there is a solution to fear!

One of the many benefits available to Christians is freedom from fear. But in order to receive that freedom, we have to be prepared to face fear head-on. When we avoid making changes or confronting issues in our lives because of fear or dread, we need to remember that God has promised to go before us and bring us through victoriously as we obey Him. I believe a close relationship with God is the solution to living boldly instead of fearfully.

Throughout God’s Word we are instructed not to fear. The statement “fear not” is found continuously throughout the Bible. God did not expect His children not to feel fear, nor to never be
confronted by fear, but He does expect us not to submit to fear. We can and should resist it in the power of God. We are called by God to live courageously, boldly, and obediently—none of which is possible unless we are willing to recognize and deal with our fears.

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is fear that has said its prayers and decided to go forward anyway. I was tormented emotionally and prevented from doing many of the things that I wanted to do for many years simply because I was waiting to not feel afraid, but then I discovered that I could “do it afraid.” You see, the freedom we have in Christ is that we can do anything we need to do because He is with us. He has gone before us and paved the way, and He promises to never leave us nor forsake us. It doesn’t matter how we feel; we can boldly go forward in faith, trusting God. When we confront our fears with faith in God, we might still feel the effects of those fears, but they cannot stop us. Fear must eventually bow its knee to courage—it has no other choice.

The different types of fear are so numerous that I doubt they could even be counted, but they all have the same solution: Put your faith in God and go forward doing what He instructs you to do. God’s power is available to us and is received through faith. Faith takes a step and believes that God will meet it with the power to follow through. As the Israelites traveled toward the Promised Land, they found themselves with the Red Sea blocking their way and the fierce Egyptian army rapidly coming up behind them. They felt afraid and began to complain, wishing they had never left Egypt at all.
Moses told the people, Fear not; stand still (firm, confident, undismayed) and see the salvation of the Lord which He will work for you today
(Exodus 14:13). In the midst of what seemed to be an impossible situation, God told Moses to go forward, lift up his rod, and stretch it out over the Red Sea and part it.

Moses had to take a step of obedience while still feeling afraid before he witnessed the miracle-working power of God doing the impossible. I wonder how foolish and afraid Moses felt when he stood with a rod in his hand holding it out over the water. What a foolish action it must have seemed to be in the face of such a huge dilemma, and yet the Red Sea did part and the Israelites crossed over safely, while God simultaneously destroyed the enemy that had caused them to feel fear in the first place. This was indeed a true miracle but one that would not have occurred unless Moses and the Israelites had been willing to “do it afraid.”

Please don’t miss this very important point: We take a step to be obedient to God while we feel afraid, and then that releases the grace (power) of God to do what needs to be done.

If you are looking for a way to never
feel
afraid again, then this book won’t help you. But if you are ready to say good-bye to fear and learn to live courageously, I believe you will receive the spiritual tools you need to do so. It is your inherited right as a child of God to live life to the fullest and to enjoy it. Be expectant as you begin your journey to learn to conquer fear and be all God wants you to be, so you can do all that He wants you to do.

Before we can really begin dealing with specific types of fear and how to overcome them, I believe each reader needs to make a decision, and that decision is “I will not fear.” It is necessary to have your mind set that you are done with fear. If you have been married to fear, it is time for a divorce! Time to cut off all ties and put yourself in a position where you are free to live the life you
truly desire. One of obedience to God that will produce joy and promote growth and progress.

As you go through this book, you will learn about the nature and source of fear, the types of fear that people deal with, and how to resist it in the power of God, but first you need to make a firm decision that you are done with it. Your decision won’t prevent fear from visiting you, but you are determining ahead of time that when it does, you will not give in to it. You only have one gear now, and that is forward! Fear holds us back, reversing us, but that gear is being stripped from our lives and all systems are now go!

The Word of God teaches us that we are to set our minds and keep them set on things above, not on things of the earth (see Colossians 3:2). When applying this verse to the subject of fear, we might say to set your mind and keep it set on faith in God’s direction for your life, and not on fear that drives you backward or keeps you frozen in place, unable to make progress of any kind.

What I call “holy determination” is a good thing. It is not a determination of man’s will only—which is not strong enough to finish the task—but a determination in and with God that you will not give up until you experience victory. Apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. Not even the strongest willpower will bring lasting success without Him. But with, in, and through Him, we can face anything and do anything that is His will for us.

The psalmist David often said, “I will not fear.” I believe he said that as an answer to fear when it came knocking on the door of his mind and emotions. He was declaring his position in God and letting it be known that he intended to stand firm and not give in to the torment, lies, and threats of fear. He even went so far as to say that even if he walked through the valley of death, that he
would fear no evil, for God was with him (see Psalm 23:4). David was setting his mind and keeping it set.

It would have been nice if fear did not exist, but God arranges things in such a way that we must always make a choice. He doesn’t want robots that serve Him because they have no other choice; He desires that we freely choose Him and His ways. God has given us free will. That is a privilege and a responsibility. Every day we make lots of choices, and those choices determine the quality of life we will have. God shows us the best way to choose, but He will never coerce us to make the ones He desires us to make. Satan uses tactics of force and manipulation, but God gives us wisdom and the opportunity to choose right or wrong. In a way, we might say that God has made us the master of our own destiny. He wants us to use our will to choose His will, and when we do, the destiny He has in mind for us will come to pass.

However, should a person choose to use his own will to not follow God’s will, God won’t force him to do right. It is the person’s choice.

It is easy to see from this Scripture that although we are confronted with good and evil (faith and fear), God wants us to choose faith in Him. Fear always brings death and curses, while faith brings life and blessings. I would venture to say that every decision we face in life fits into this Scripture in some way or another. Every decision we make provides life or death, blessings
or curses. Even if a person decides to not get enough sleep and to have a diet of junk food, they are choosing death and curses instead of life and blessings. Ultimately a person is the culmination of the choices he has made in life.

Some decisions have more serious consequences than others do, but they all produce some level of consequence. God puts it very simply when He says that “we reap what we sow” (see Galatians 6:7). The result of bad choices can be overturned by making good choices, and so we see that man is never in a position where he cannot see positive change if he truly wants it. If you are tired of fear and its consequences, you can turn your life around by listening to what God is trying to say to you right now.

The decision is yours to make. Will you say good-bye to fear and not look back? Will you face life boldly knowing that God is always with you? Will you stop living by feelings and start living by the truth of God’s Word? I believe that you will!

Deciding in advance that you will not live in fear helps you be prepared to meet it head-on when it comes.

When God told any of His servants to “fear not,” He was in essence telling them that fear was going to attack them, and when it did, they were to remain steadfast and not run. Fear pressures us to run, hide, and watch life pass us by. Even in the Garden of Eden, as soon as Adam and Eve knew they had disobeyed God, their first instinct was to run away and hide from Him. God had intended them to live boldly, to rule and reign, but they were hiding.

After God created Adam and Eve, He blessed them and told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. He said they
were to subdue it and have dominion over it and everything else He had created (see Genesis 1:28). That certainly doesn’t sound like cowardice and timidity was His will for the man and woman He created. However, when they disobeyed God’s command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, bringing sin into Earth’s atmosphere, fear came with it. They could no longer stand boldly and comfortably in God’s presence because they knew their actions were wrong, so they hid in fear. Sadly, mankind has been hiding in fear ever since.

Eventually, God sent His Son Jesus to set us free from sin and the fear it brings with it, but multitudes still reject God’s beautiful answer found in Christ and continue to live defeated lives, hiding and running and being tormented by fears of all kinds. Make a decision that you will face issues squarely with God by your side. I have been saying for a long time that “the only way out is through.” We cannot conquer anything by running away from it or trying to avoid it—we must go through it, and once we are safely on the other side, we have a victory that cannot be taken from us.

I tried for years to avoid my problems and the things from my past that were haunting me, but I finally decided to face them. It wasn’t easy, but now that I am on the other side of them, I can certainly say that it was worth it.

I had to face the truth that my parents did not—and never could—truly love me because they didn’t know what real love was. I had to squarely face that my father sexually, mentally, and verbally abused me, and my mother abandoned me in the situation by living in fear and refusing to confront my father. My childhood had been stolen and I could never get it back, but I could trust God to redeem it.

My mother’s fear opened a door for many years of misery for
me, and it eventually destroyed her mental health and left her with only regrets for memories. Fear is NEVER a good choice. It has negative consequences that are life altering. I had to face these sad facts and trust God to work good out of them rather than allowing them to destroy me. But the first step toward victory was setting aside the fear of them and facing my life as it was, not as I wished it had been. I confronted it! I embraced it and went through to victory, and you can do the same thing no matter what your circumstances have been so far in life. Don’t run from the truth and live in pretense, but instead choose to be honest, open, and not afraid of your past or your current reality.

There are several good examples in the Bible of men and women of God who ran from their circumstances or the will of God, and without fail, they all ended up back at the place they had run from. It is evidence that we never really get away from things by running from them. The truth is that they continue chasing us, and the only way to be free is to stop running, turn and face them boldly, and go all the way through to victory with God’s help.

Jonah, a mighty prophet of God, did not want to do what God was asking him to do, so he ran and went the exact opposite direction from the one that God had instructed him to go in. He ended up in very bad circumstances and eventually prayed to God for help. As a result, God sent Jonah back to the place he ran from with the same instruction God gave him before he disobeyed and invited bad circumstances and misery into his life. The simple truth is that God is wiser than we are, and doing things His way is always the best policy. We can ignore that truth and go our own way, but we all eventually must come face-to-face with the result of our choices. Thank God that it is never too late to begin again! Jonah did repent and was able to begin again, and so can we.

Giving in to fear alters God’s best plan for your life. Instead of
being fearful, be obedient and do what He wants you to do, even if you have to
do it afraid!
The rewards are great.

Elisabeth Elliot, whose husband was killed along with four other missionaries in Ecuador, says that her life was completely controlled by fear. Every time she started to step out to minister, fear stopped her. Then a friend told her something that set her free. Her friend said, “Why don’t you do it afraid?”

Do you see the power in that sentence? Her friend didn’t say, “Maybe you should give up because you feel afraid” or “You’re a weak Christian because you’re dealing with fear.” Her friend suggested that she trust God and press through the fear that she was feeling.

Elisabeth listened and took that advice, and alongside Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the murdered missionaries, they went on to evangelize the Indian tribes of Ecuador, including the very people who had killed their loved ones.

What an amazing story. I can only imagine the fear that Elisabeth felt each time she tried to go back to the place where her husband had been murdered. I am sure the images that Satan presented to her imagination were frightening, and the thoughts that he presented to her mind could have been disabling had she not decided that she was going to do the will of God even if she had to do it while she felt afraid.

She could have easily run, but she would have missed the amazing opportunity that God gave her to turn her husband’s sacrifice into something good and beautiful. Courage will always defeat fear if we will let it guide us.

If you want to run, don’t run away from things, run toward them. That is exactly what David did when he faced the giant, Goliath. God’s Word states that David ran quickly toward the battle
line. He did run, but he ran in the right direction. As we know from Scripture, David, against all sane and reasonable odds, did defeat Goliath and go on to become the king, champion, and hero of Israel. David was the least likely of all in the land at that time to be chosen for this task, but God doesn’t see as man sees. God looks on the heart, and He saw that the little shepherd boy, David, had courage in his heart. David was untrained and uneducated in the ways of war, but an uneducated, untrained man with courage and faith in God is more valuable to Him than a highly educated, well-trained coward.

I have been privileged by God to lead a ministry that reaches a majority of the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I would have been the least likely candidate. I did not have the right education, experience, or personality for the job, but I was willing to step out and try as long as God stayed with me. I know there were many others more naturally qualified than I was, and perhaps God gave them the opportunity even before He gave it to me, but they were afraid to believe or too afraid of failure to even try. I don’t know why God chose me, but I do know that it certainly wasn’t because I was qualified by natural standards.