HANDLING FEAR

Handling Fear


Fear is a constant. We fear losing our jobs. We fear failing. We fear losing loved ones. We fear not having enough money in retirement. We fear dying. And on it goes.

For some of us, these fears lie beneath the surface of our lives and erupt, volcano-like, only periodically but when they do erupt, they can paralyze us. For others of us, every morning we wake with a sense of dread of what might go wrong.

This is why fear is such a big theme in the Bible and why it is such a common topic of prayer. Moses' encounter with God early in his life (in Exodus 3 and 4) has much to teach us about how to pray through our fears.

Holy Ground

Before Moses became a powerful political and military leader, he was a shepherd. One day as he was tending his sheep near the wilderness of Sinai, he saw something strange: a bush that was engulfed in flames and yet was not consumed. This naturally aroused his curiosity, so he drew nearer. When he did, he heard a voice: ''Moses! Moses!"

Stunned no doubt, he replied, "Here I am."

"Do not come any closer," the voice said. "Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground."

The reader, of course, is tipped off at the beginning about what is going on. It is "an angel of the Lord" who is appearing to Moses in the burning bush, and the voice is that of the Lord. For our purposes, the story illustrates again the varied ways in which God chooses to meet us.

With Abraham, God came to him through a chance encounter with passing travelers. With Moses, he came through creation. Again, we need to be ready to pray, to dialogue with God, at any moment not just in our living rooms, not just in church, not just with people but also when no one's around and we're in the middle of nowhere. Wherever we meet God, it is "holy ground “a special place where extraordinary things may happen.

There is usually something appropriate about the way God chooses to meet us. Abraham was approached through human agents, as if to accent that it was flesh-and-blood humanity who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah and that real people were under the threat of punishment. We might wonder if Abraham's concern for those cities was heightened by the fact that he had encountered God in human form.

Moses met God in nature, where God's incomparable power and beauty are found. It's as if God was trying to accent his ability to conquer Moses' fears. Too bad it never really worked.

God's Family History

The voice finally identified itself to Moses: "I am the God of your ancestors the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

In other words, "I have a history with you and your family." God had met, comforted, guided, inspired, and sustained Moses' extended "family," the Israelites. Thus Moses stood in a tradition that had a special relationship with God.

So it wasn't as if Moses was encountering a stranger. Because he knew his people's history, he knew something about the history of this God. He knew that God was just, gracious, and powerful. He knew that God was God, which is why the Exodus writer notes, "When Moses heard this, he hid his face in his hands because he was afraid to look at God."

This is a key aspect of prayer that we've touched on only briefly. Our history-impaired age is fascinated with the latest craze, and most things like fashions or computers a year old are considered ancient and not worth bothering about. This is a disastrous attitude to take into prayer, in which we would hanker after novel spiritual experiences or practices; this addiction to the new and different robs us of much wisdom and strength that prayer can impart.

Instead, we can pray to a God who has met, comforted, guided, inspired, and sustained people for centuries. We can read their stories and pray their prayers and find rich resources for our lives today. We aren't the first generation that is attacked by fears that threaten to overwhelm us. And the God who helped our forefathers, is the God who meets us today.

God Knows Our Suffering

The story continues: "Then the Lord told him, 'You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering."

This is one of the most profound truths of prayer, and yet it is one of the hardest to believe sometimes. God does indeed care about our suffering, but when we are forced to endure pain for months or years without relief, we doubt that God cares. We even doubt that God exists.

This is why the Bible never tires of reminding of this the "good news about Jesus Christ" is that he is the definitive expression of God's care for us. The New Testament author of the Book of Hebrews put it this way:

We have a great High Priest who has gone to heaven, Jesus, the Son of God. Let us cling to him and never stop trusting him. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same temptations we do, yet he did not sin. So, let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it.

Though this might be clearer to us today, it was not all that clear to Moses.

Telling God Like It Is

After the Lord told Moses of his concern for his people, he added this: "I have come to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt to their own good and spacious land."

All well and good, thought Moses, until the Lord continued: "Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

At this, Moses panicked. "But who am I to appear before Pharaoh? How can you expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?"

A natural enough reaction, we might think, except for a few facts. Moses had been raised in the house of Pharaoh, so he knew something about the halls of power and how to manage himself in that world. He had already committed murder in defending an Israelite who was being brutalized, so he obviously had courage to act boldly. And he clearly had some innate leadership gifts because, in fact, he did become Israel's greatest leader.

At this point, though, Moses was not aware of those experiences and gifts. He was instead overwhelmed with fear. He was acting very much as we do when faced with a new situation.

What exactly was he afraid of? It's hard to say, but three things come to mind immediately:

1. Responsibility. Responsibility is a burden. It's the thing that gets you in the office early and makes you stay late. It keeps you up at night with worry. It makes you cautious because the success and possible failure of others depends on you. And when you're responsible for others, it makes you care and hurt more than is comfortable. Tending a few sheep in a wilderness far removed from the politics of Egypt is about all the responsibility Moses wanted.

2. Failure. Closely related is the fear of failure. We like to think of ourselves as competent individuals, people who can do what's asked of us and do it well. When given an opportunity to do something grand, most of us panic because we're afraid we'll fail. This is Moses.

3. Making a fool of yourself. This covers a lot of ground; we spend lots of time and money making sure we won't appear foolish. We buy the right clothes and drive the right car and learn to say the right things so that we will fit it.

This is why the fear of public speaking (which we'll soon see is one theme in this story) is the greatest fear, rated higher by Americans than even death. If we die, we don't have to face the scrutiny of others. If we goof up speaking in front of others, we still have to step down from the podium and walk among those who may be snickering at us.

The point is this: Fear comes in many forms and plagues us in a variety of ways. Moses refused to put on a pious act ( "Yes, Lord, if you want me to lead the people, I will") but instead blurted out exactly how he was feeling: "How can you expect me to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?"


Meeting God at Every Excuse

Here's where the prayer Moses' dialogue with God gets interesting because Moses refused to be comforted. He was so overwhelmed with fear that he simply would not let God help him deal with his fears.

To Moses' initial objection, God replied, "I will be with you."

To this Moses said, "If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' they won't believe me. They will ask, 'Which god are you talking about? What is his name?' Then what should I tell them?"

To which God replied, "I Am the One Who Always Is. Just tell them 'I Am has sent me to you.'"

Moses protested again: "Look, they won't believe me! They won't do what I tell them. They'll just say, 'The Lord never appeared to you.'"

Seeing that Moses doubted his own abilities, God decided to do something miraculous as if speaking out of a burning bush wasn't enough. But God had to do more, so he helped Moses himself perform a couple of miracles.

First he ordered Moses to throw his shepherd's staff to the ground. The writer of Exodus records, "So Moses threw it to the ground, and it became a snake!"

Moses' reaction? "Moses was terrified, so he turned and ran away." God brought Moses back and convinced him to grab the snake, whereupon he found himself holding his staff again.

Knowing that selling Moses on leadership would be tough, the Lord got Moses to perform another miracle still: Moses was able to make his hand become leprous and then clean.

And as if this were not enough, God told Moses that if he took water from the Nile River and poured it on the ground, the water would turn into blood.

At this point, Moses was nearly checkmated. He knew that if he were to do these sorts of things in front of the Israelites or Pharaoh, they'd be inclined to believe his claims. But fear still ruled the heart of Moses, and he made one last desperate attempt to squirm out of his new job: "O Lord, I'm just not a good speaker. I never have been and I'm not now, even after you have spoken to me. I'm clumsy with words."

The writer of Exodus suggests that at this point, God becomes a bit impatient: "Who makes mouths? Who makes people so they can speak or not speak, hear or not hear, see or not see? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and do as I have told you. I will help you speak well, and I will tell you what to say."

That should have settled it. God does seem capable of doing that sort of thing. But a frightened Moses would have none of it: "Lord, please! Send someone else."

The story concludes, "Then the Lord became angry with Moses. 'All right,' he said. 'What about your brother Aaron, the Levite? He is a good speaker. . . . You talk to him, giving him the words to say. I will help both of you to speak clearly, and I will tell you what to do.'"

Checkmate. Moses could think of nothing more to say.

God's Failure

Moses failed the interview with flying colors. He had the opportunity to become a pious man of great faith. Instead, he was forced to slink away a defeated and reluctant leader.

If Moses failed his test, so did God. He brought to bear as much power and wonder as would seem necessary to convince a mortal, but Moses refused to be convinced. It is fear that wins the day, not God.

Then again. . . .

God has a funny way of appearing defeated only to come out the victor in the end Jesus on the cross is but the supreme instance. In this case, when we take the long view, we see something different than the failure of Moses. What we read as we continue is a story of Moses' remarkable leadership, his great courage, his keen insight, and his heroic sacrifice. He becomes, in short, not merely an extraordinary leader of the people of Israel, but one of the greatest men in human history.

The lesson in prayer is simple: Our fears are not to be shoved down in the name of faith or piety. Our fears should be expressed frankly, persistently, and honestly to God. He is so gracious that he will respond to each and every objection, changing his very will to accommodate our petty concerns. In the end, you see, he is working with us to develop us, to help us blossom into the people he has created us to be, fulfilling the life purposes he wants us to fulfill.

The path to those ends, though, is through honest and, yes, fearless prayer before God. If he can transform a coward like Moses, surely he can work with us.