Taming the Voice of Fear

For about 25 years I worked as a freelance writer-producer in advertising and multimedia. Being a freelancer means that you are not employed by anybody. You are a contractor and you go from project to project. If you don’t land any projects, you have no work . . . and if you have no work, you have no money.

There was a measure of fear lingering in the background. What if I couldn’t land the next job? The I would have no money, and I wouldn’t be able to make the house payment. What if the client didn’t like the project I was working on? What if I had to redo the project to the point of losing money . . . or not making much?

Well, these are the issues the freelancer or independent producer deals with on an ongoing basis. They never seem to move completely off of the radar.

The life of the freelancer can be a scary endeavor. Just to continue, to keep going and continue to secure the basic needs of life can be scary.

Pastor Peter Haas of Substance Church in Minneapolis where I attended for a few years, made this statement from the pulpit: “The human mind is wired so that it is six times more likely to believe the negative than the positive.”

We humans have instinctive fear issues, do we not?

When Gideon, the great leader of Israel, was preparing to go into battle against the Midianites, God told him to let anyone who was afraid of going into battle return home. The army numbered 32,000. When Gideon gave anyone who was afraid, the option of going home, 22,000 of them did just that. 10,000 remained to go into battle against the Midianites. A little over two thirds of the army was afraid (Judges 7:3).

There is considerable disagreement to the questions, “How many times does fear not appear in the Bible?” mainly because different translations present different numbers. However, the number 365 is cited the most.

For our purposes, let’s use the number 365. That totals one fear not for every day of the year, and that’s significant.

Does God need to remind us to fear not every day?

Is our human nature that riddled with the root of fear?

It would seem so.

In my journaling, I find that God says to me a lot, “Don’t worry,” which is essentially the same thing as saying, “Don’t be afraid.”

For a number of years in ministry, my job was to produce city-wide evangelistic youth events. Each time I launched into a new event I was scared . . . terrified might be more accurate. However, each time I moved ahead and did the event, and each time God brought tremendous results.

Now, the whole point of this discourse is to discuss how fear can distort or drown out the voice of God. Fear is a great neutralizer. The voice of fear is LOUD! You may find yourself in the place where God is saying to you, “Do this for me,” and the voice of fear is shouting, “No! No! No! No! Don’t do it. If you do, you will go under. You’ll be toast!”

In your journey of learning to hear the voice of God, the voice of fear is bound to shout at you from time to time. Sometimes the voice of fear wins. Remember, the voice of God is usually the still, small voice that Elijah heard in the cave. The voice of fear, on the the other hand, is usually LOUD.

In the process of leaning to hear the voice of God, you will also learn to recognize the LOUD voice of fear. Fear is there when the stakes are high, when you are looking at huge risk.

If you are going to get anywhere with God, you will need to take risks . . . sometimes vey large risks. Sometimes it seems God is asking you to jump off of the cliff. The things that God asks you to do usually seem impossible in the natural. He does that on purpose because if you could do the task in your own wisdom and strength, you would be tempted to take credit for the victory. You might say, “I did that,” and get puffed up with pride.

God wants you to know that He did it,

so the things He asks you to do,

are often impossible in the strength and wisdom of man.

Remember, after Gideon released the men who were afraid, he had only 10,000 men left. But God said, “No, that is too many.” So, He told Gideon to put the men through another test. They went down to the brook to drink and those who bent low and put their mouth in the water were eliminated. That left 300 men who scooped water up in their hands and then drank out of their hands. The 300 qualified to go into battle against the Midianites.

Imagine . . . Gideon was to go into battle against a great army with only 300 men. That doesn’t make any sense to our natural minds. If you are going to do that, you have to be sure that you heard God correctly. I’m sure Gideon probably had regular conversations with God. He knew God’s voice.

The Midianites were camped in the valley. God told Gideon to go out about midnight and surround them with his three hundred men, each carrying a trumpet and a vessel with a burning wick inside. At Gideon’s signal, they all blew their trumpets and broke their vessels. The Midianites suddenly woke up from sleep to the sound of trumpets all around them. Then they saw lamps or fires all around them and they panicked, thinking they were surrounded by a huge army. Gideon’s men didn’t have to even lift a sword, because the Midianites began killing each other.

God’s voice often doesn’t make any sense to our human logic. Can you imagine going into battle against a huge army with 300 men? If Gideon had resorted to human logic, he would have refused to go . . . and he and his men would not have been part of this miraculous display of God’s power.

As you practice hearing the voice of God, it will become easier to recognize, and you will be able to distinguish it from the voice of fear. You will become more comfortable with obeying God’s voice, even when it doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Have fun on your amazing journey of learning to hear the voice of God!

Check in next week for the next installment of Learning to Hear the Voice of God, posted right here!

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine