WordStudy: Fear

fear[feer] - noun

1.  a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. Synonyms: foreboding, apprehension, consternation, dismay, dread, terror, fright, panic, horror, trepidation, qualm. Antonyms: courage, security, calm, intrepidity.

2.  a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights. Synonyms: phobia, aversion; bête noire, bogy, bogey, bugbear. Antonyms: liking, fondness, penchant, predilection.

3.  concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's safety.

4.  reverential awe, especially toward God: the fear of God. Synonyms: awe, respect, reverence, veneration.

5.  something that causes feelings of dread or apprehension; something a person is afraid of: Cancer is a common fear.

 

Fear: Friend or Foe? 

 

 We all live with fear.  Some forms of fear are actually healthy and necessary...the fear that keeps you from walking too close to the edge, or that intuition that cautions you about a particular person. And then sometimes our "healthy" fear becomes broken or goes haywire.  Having been a participant in harmful relationships, I am all too familiar with unhealthy, unrealistic fear as an undercurrent to the entire relationship.


I've recently returned to church after a 20 year absence.  There's lots of reasons for this, which may be another post or may just emerge through a series of posts about other topics.  But, one of my biggest issues with going to church in the past was having to live in fear of God.  From early childhood I lived a life of (unrealistic) fear in a dysfunctional home...I desperately needed church to be my refuge, which it very much was.  It was the safest place I knew...but there was no room for fearing God in my heart.  I was being punished enough at home, I couldn't be punished by God, too.

Today I listened to my (new) pastor deliver a sermon on the fear of God, which I very much welcomed, as this was still one of the loose threads of my frayed heart.  He explained that the fear we are encouraged to have in regards to God is not the paranoid, frantic, apprehensive fear most of us assume.  But rather we need to adopt a reverential awe of God.  Like when we stand in front of the ocean....it's awesomeness is really beyond us..we stand in reverence of it's enormity and it's power.  

Same goes for God...regardless of your specific denomination, God is beyond our comprehension...we need to stand in reverential respect and awe of Him.  Don't fear what He will do if we "misbehave" but rather fear what He won't do if we don't allow Him to work in our lives.  God doesn't punish, He forgives...if out of frantic, paranoid, faithless fear we choose to leave Him out of our lives, we've created the consequence of not being able to benefit from His love and grace.  He's laid the table with a wonderful bounty, we can choose to eat or not, all He asks is that we come to the table in reverence and humility.


So having lived and participated in harmful relationships and then having to wrestle with the idea of fear throughout my healing process, I've had to define and determine what healthy fear is.  I've had to redraw the boundaries and cement them with my ever-blooming faith and God's grace.  For a time, I flew the flag of being "fearless".  Maybe it was a necessary phase of my healing as I made a clear choice to live a life of love instead, but "fearless" can also be dangerous.  Now I allow healthy fear to fulfill it's role, to allow it to caution me against real and present dangers and to respond without reacting (work in progress, by the way). 


But the real joy came today, in being able to resolve one more conflict with my need for an active fellowship life and my hesitations with "church-going".  "Fear" has taken on a deeper meaning for me today...and has a much needed and respected place in my life.