LIE: Fear and anxiety are unconquerable

LIE: Fear and anxiety are unconquerable

TRUTH: Fear and anxiety can and must be conquered

We feel trapped and have no clue how to overcome fear. Some downplay it as anxiety and believe that no one can live fear free. But they would be wrong.[1]

Now, let me quickly say that everyone will experience fear. No one is immune. From time to time we will confront dangers and threats of various kinds and intensities, whether real or not.

Whenever I am afraid,
I will trust in You.
In God (I will praise His word),
In God I have put my trust;
I will not fear.
What can flesh do to me? — Psalm 56:3–4

But the question is: what do we do with them? Do we ignore, minimize, drown, distract or muddle through; or, do we face them honestly and deal with them in the light of God’s Word and presence? The answer is obvious, but how do we actually do that? What kind of mentality does it take? What kind of commitment, discipline, spirituality?

What I’m saying may seem to be too good to be true, but I can tell you, as one who used to worry over many things, you do not need to be crippled by fear. And that is exactly what fears do if left unchallenged — they eventually cripple us until we become empty shells of the people we’re called to be in the world.

And it’s not enough to mollify or just suppress fears, tolerate them, learn to live with them. No, they must be conquered or else they will rule us. God would not command us to do something — ‘fear not!’ — if we were incapable of doing it.

In this article I will tackle this question by breaking this down into three sections:

1  What is fear and how does it feel?

2  What does fear do? to us and to others?

3  How do we overcome fear and anxiety?

1  What is fear?

Let me first name some fears so that you understand the kinds of fears I’m talking about.

FEAR OF . . .

death	disease/illness/pestilence	loss of home, possessions
tornado, weather	hunger, thirst, malnutrition	loss of electric or utilities
social unrest, violence	tyranny, confinement, torture	loss of communications
pain, injury, physical suffering	rejection, abandonment	loss of skills
failure	aging	loss of church, community
cold, exposure	magic, superstitions, taboos[2]	loss of job/income

Fear is universally understood but difficult to explain. But let me try to define it.

Here’s Webster’s 1913 edition definition:

1. A painful emotion or passion excited by the expectation of evil, or the apprehension of impending danger; apprehension; anxiety; solicitude; alarm; dread.

☞ The degrees of this passion, beginning with the most moderate, may be thus expressed, — apprehension, fear, dread, fright, terror.

Wiktionary:

A strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion or feeling caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.

☞  He was struck by fear on seeing the snake.

My own definition:

Primal feeling of unprotected vulnerability. The illusory feeling of being without God.

But let’s go deeper.

First, fear is an important and necessary reaction/emotion which triggers our natural ‘fight or flight’ response. When we’re mortally threatened, by a bear or fire or hurricane, we need a jolt of terror to run or fight, which may save our life. But beyond this kind of fear, we need to stand guard.

What then does fear feel like?

Of course there are varying degrees and levels, intensities and shades of fear. It may be accompanied by a sudden shock, or it may slowly grow like a gradual, enclosing darkness. It may be triggered by an event, a person, a message, a bodily feeling, an unknown or known, a look, and many others. Depending on the trigger, the fear will take on different dimensions. But all fears have one thing in common: they all instinctively cause us to both look away and look intently; to avoid and to focus. We try to block our fears but at the same time we end up becoming obsessed by them.

Let’s take a simple example.

If I happen to see a creepy crawler millipede on the wall of our bathroom, I instinctively back away from it. But at the same time, if I must be in the same room with it, I cannot think of anything else.

Or take a more subtle example. Let’s say you have this intermittent pain in your abdomen. You first dismiss it, ignore it as best you can, yet it persists, perhaps it gets worse. You keep quiet, still try to ignore it, rationalize it. But inwardly, in the back of your mind, you can’t stop wondering about it. You don’t let complete thoughts surface, and you certainly don’t calmly debate what to do about it. It’s background noise, until that is, the pain becomes too intense and demands your attention.

So fear is this dynamic of contradictory postures of avoidance and obsession. At its highest intensities, it’s irrational and remains a feeling that varies in intensity. You want it to go away but it doesn’t go away. It’s a form of self-torture, a dangling of self over the precipice, that limbo state between life and death. It’s torture because it tears and rips and divides our souls, going in two opposite directions at once.

But let me land this plane: what am I really aiming at here?

Let me put it this way. Much of the world does not want to see — it’s too scary to look full at it, the darknesses, including death, disease, destruction, injustices, and evil of every kind. We assiduously, unconsciously train ourselves to become professional avoiders of these things, including the very scary proposition that, all that talk of secret societies — devil worship, conspiracies — could not possibly be true. Must. Not. Be. True.

Yet because we must work so hard to avoid, deny, dismiss and rationalize these things away, the very fact that we expend so much energy to do so, means we are quietly, subconsciously engrossed in it. This is the source of our fear. This fear is experienced as deep anxiety and dread.

Fear is the feeling of wanting to control something but being unable to do so. If it could be expressed, it’s an irrational thought: ‘I should control this (but I can’t.)’ This also tears and rips at our soul and ultimately, if allowed to continue, will cripple us.

The opposite is peace, wholeness, shalom, (as opposed to self-torture and soul division). The tearing and ripping of fear stops and love heals and restores our soul.

Hear the Apostle John from his first letter:

Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us. — I John 4:17–19

It’s really very simple — ironical but simple.

The irony is that fear comes from our refusal to see and acknowledge our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. But it’s only in embracing those weaknesses and vulnerabilities that we learn to depend on the Lord and find our strength in him. To the degree that we embrace our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, to that same degree we will trust in God and conquer fear.

2  What does fear do to us?

As I said before, unconquered fears and anxieties ultimately cripple us. And often the crippling is a slow and torturous process. Here are some of the effects of allowing fear and anxiety to remain and fester:

Fear . . .

• numbs us
• paralyzes us
• tortures us
• perpetuates itself
• makes us emotionally driven
• hinders rational thinking
• hinders relationships
• makes life ‘all about you’ – staying in an infinite, self-protective loop
• makes us over-dependent on small comforts and routines. These comforts and routines ultimately fill our lives with an emptiness.
• makes us equivocate; can never be sure or decisive
• makes us put on false appearances, blustering and swaggering

Unconquered fear and anxiety becomes despair and produces a zombified life. We need not dwell on these unpleasantries. So then that brings us to the logical question: how then do we conquer fear?

3  How to overcome fear

Overcoming fear in many ways is similar to overcoming darkness. We ‘overcome’ — defeat, conquer, vanquish — darkness by simply turning on a light. Darkness is not a thing in itself; rather, it is the absence of something: light. But light ‘comes on’ in different ways, from different sources, in different intensities, and either immediately or over time.

We defeat fear with light and by light I’m using light as a metaphor. But it’s an apt one. So here are five ‘lights’ to use in your fight with fear.

A—Face your fear, face the truth

In a word, stop believing lies. This website is devoted to exposing lies, half-truths, deceptions and distortions. Here’s a few:[3]

LIE: God is a vast impersonal force

LIE: Freedom is the right to make my own choices, part 1 and part 2

LIE: Resistance to assimilation is futile

What is the Mark of the Beast? part 1, part 2 and part 3 (the grand deception)

LIE: We are not slaves, we are free

LIE: We should not hate

LIE: We overcome tyranny by fighting for our rights

LIE: Christians shouldn’t get discouraged

LIE: Evil is more powerful than good

LIE: Passive use of the Internet is harmless, part 1, part 2 and part 3

LIE: Christians are sinners saved by grace

LIE: Prayer is useless

LIE: I’m immune to deception

One way to profoundly confront our fears is to go on a mission trip, or as it’s sometimes called, ‘vision trip.’ These are trips usually organized by churches or mission organizations that expose people to a second or third-world country and culture. When we go on these ‘vision trips’ our eyes are opened to the ‘real world’ and when we return, we come back to what seems to be a dream. By living in this dream world, modernity bubble, we automatically assume and therefore live thinking that this is how the rest of the world lives. But the world in America and most European cities is an alien landscape of concrete, glass, asphalt, aluminum, steel and rubber. The western world is a world of unreality. In our modernity bubbles, we dare not look at the grinding poverty, oppression, malnutrition, corruption, and filth of that world.

There really is a huge gap/divide between the west and the so-called ‘third world’, even in many crumbling American cities. That gap is real, but it’s most often mentioned to guilt people to donate to a mission. But we also should acknowledge this gap to realize that, as long as we remain in the bubble, we will be challenged in understanding, empathy, relationship.

It’s a universal that, whenever anyone from America goes to a third-world or even a second-world country, they experience what’s known as ‘culture shock.’ And shock is an appropriate word. That means that the change in environment is so different, the contrast so great, it induces nothing short of a shock. The contrast is too great for us to process rationally, immediately. We experience it as a disorientation and dislocation.

So living in America and the middle-class bubble insulates us and prevents us from confronting our fears. They remain in the dark. I’m afraid that we can too easily think our faith is strong when it’s actually weak, untested, and unable to ‘stand in the evil day.’ To combat this takes discipline which I’ll talk about in section D below.

It’s almost universally understood that, to overcome a fear, we must face it squarely and name it, understand its source, its full effects, the full possibility, accept the real possibility of those effects and then work to remediate where possible, including strengthening the opposite of fear, which is faith/trust.

For example, if we fear food shortages, hunger, famine, rationing, etc, then we must decide how likely those conditions may be and the impact that it may make; we may face the very real possibility of those conditions. But we shouldn’t stop there; we should work toward growing our own food and finding alternative sources of food.

It will do no good to ignore, rationalize away, try to escape from reality. We first need to come to terms with this ourselves, but then gently help others in our family and church to face it too.

So it’s painful to squarely face these fears, but not facing them will be more painful. ‘Pay me now or pay me later.’

B—Defend yourself with integrity — the Armor of God

The onslaught of lies and fears does not stop. We cannot remove our enemies or remove ourselves from our enemies. They persist. As they were in the life of Jesus, they continually surround us.

David, the psalmist king also knew this:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over. — Psalm 23:4–5

Paul also knew this and so he exhorted the Ephesian believers to put on the whole armor of God:

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints— and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. — Ephesians 6:10–20

The armor of God begins with truth, pictured as a belt or sash tightened around the waist. It allows us to move freely, to walk, to run. It’s fundamental and integral to life and to everything else. This is truth in our words and beliefs.

The second piece of armor is the breastplate of righteousness which protects us and is also fundamental and integral. This is truth in our life, conduct and lifestyle.

So truth and righteousness form the foundation of integrity. It is our integrity — ‘walking the talk’ — both saying and living what we believe that forms the platform for the gospel, the assurance of our faith, salvation, the use of the word of God and our facility to pray and watch and boldly speak to those principalities and powers.

The whole driving point of Ephesians chapter six is to be able to ‘stand in the evil day,’ and that we can ‘open our mouth boldly . . . as we are ambassadors in chains.’ The word ‘boldly’ is used twice, a clear emphasis in Paul’s statement. Why would boldness be required? Because he clearly is aware of the principalities and powers — that to wrestle with these powers carriesa real possibility of defeat and death.

Jacques Ellul in his book The Presence of the Kingdom, called the Christian life: ‘an agonized life,’ and by that he meant that we’re locked in a battle that we feel. And for the duration of our mortal life we must fight. If we are truly engaged in this wrestling, we will feel a range of emotions. Here is Paul’s experience of the ‘agonized life:’

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you. — 2 Corinthians 4:7–12

. . . which brings me to the next ‘light’ —

C  Discipline yourself

To endure in this fight we must learn discipline on many levels; we cannot allow ourselves to become undisciplined. A big part of this discipline is learning and practicing what are often called the spiritual disciplines. Here are a few of what I’m talking about:

• solitude
• silence
• prayer
• meditation
• service
• study
• fasting

I realize this list can be intimidating, especially if you’re not familiar or practicing them. But understand that we all practice these imperfectly. The important point is to learn, that we start, and when we fail, we get up and start again.

Learning discipline is a serious part of overcoming our fears, so much so that Paul endorsed its necessity:

You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. — 2 Timothy 2:1–5

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified. — I Corinthians 9:24–27

To see how far removed Americans are, it’s good to get some perspective. One way to gain that perspective is to go on a ‘vision trip.’ See above.

But I need to provide some balance here. Although the pursuit of individual discipline is noble and important, it can never replace our need for the church, our family, our community. Though we may ‘discipline our body,’ we will, in many ways, always be weak. We will always need someone else to pick us up:

Two are better than one,
Because they have a good reward for their labor.
For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls,
For he has no one to help him up.
Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm;
But how can one be warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him.
And a threefold cord is not quickly broken. — Ecclesiastes 4:9–12

D—Believe: God is with us

This truth alone, if we bask in its light long enough, is powerful enough to vanquish any fear.

In studying all of the instances in the Bible of the phrase, ‘fear not,’ and ‘be not afraid,’ by far the most common reason given not to fear is simply that: ‘God is with us.’ I count at least twenty times this idea is stated. For example:

“I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for My servant Abraham’s sake.” — Genesis 26:24

Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.” — Deuteronomy 31:6

Do not fear. . . . For the Lord will not forsake His people, for His great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you His people. I Samuel 12:20–23

Do not be afraid of their faces,
For I am with you to deliver you,” says the Lord. — Jeremiah 1:8

But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.” — Matthew 14:27

How could we possibly gain a greater confidence than to simply trust that the loving God, our Father, is closer to us than our breathing?

But how easily and quickly we forget!

So we must continually remind ourselves and each other of God’s faithful love and care. ‘His lovingkindness endures forever.’ — Psalm 136.

E—Embrace the cross (willingly suffer for love)

This brings us full circle to the first light — face your fears.

Not only does Christ teach us to face up to the things that can hurt us, to which we are vulnerable and weak; he actually teaches us to embrace these things, to dive in head-first. I realize this is counterintuitive, but stay with me if you’ve not heard this before.[4] But the basic truth is this: helping, serving, loving others, even our enemies and oppressors, even though we may suffer in the process, is good and actually defuses hate and fear.

One example of this kind of suffering besides Christ, is Paul, who ‘boasted’ in his sufferings for the Corinthians.

Are they ministers of Christ?—I speak as a fool—I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. . . .  beaten with rods; . . . stoned; . . . shipwrecked; . . . in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, . . .  robbers, . . .  my own countrymen, . . . of the Gentiles, . . . in the city, . . . in the wilderness, . . . in the sea, . . . among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness— besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation? — 2 Corinthians 11: 23–30

Paul exhorted the Romans to:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. — Romans 12:1

In this Paul gives us a succinct identity: ‘living sacrifices.’ This is the ‘agonized life’ that our Lord invites us into. It may sound threatening and induce fear itself, but it is the only way to live not dominated by fear and anxiety. Ironically it’s the only way to peace and joy.

Conclusion

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God, — I Timothy 1:7–8

Fear is an absence, a void, and self-torture. But our God stands ready to vanquish every fear. He is with us!

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:31–39

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[1] Yes, some fears/paranoia may take intensive counseling or intervention. Also, invasive spirits of fear exist and require special attention by godly and qualified ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[2] By taboos I mean the irrational fear that admitting or saying something out loud will make it true or cause it to happen.

[3] I’ve now collected and written about 88 lies within 10 categories in this website.

[4] For a more complete explanation of taking up the cross, see my articles: LIE: I am defeated, part 1 and part 2.