Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest

by Edward T. Welch

Fear is natural to us. We don’t have to learn it. We experience fear and anxiety even before there is any logical reason for them. Children’s fears predate their acquaintance with scary stories.

Listen to your fears and you hear them speak about things that have personal meaning to you. They appear to be attached to things we value.

To deeply understand fear we must also look at ourselves and the way we interpret our situations. Those scary objects can reveal what we cherish. They point out our insatiable quest for control, our sense of aloneness.

I have a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time.

Rather than minimize your fears, find more of them. Expose them to the light of day because the more you find, the more blessed you will be when you hear words of peace and comfort.

Any time you love or want something deeply, you will notice fear and anxieties because you might not get them.

Any time you can’t control the fate of those things you want or love, you will notice fears and anxieties because you might lose them.

Our bodies can tell us we are anxious even before we are aware of it.

Stress is saying that life is teetering on the brink, right at the farthest reaches of your ability to maintain some control. What would happen if you really lost control? You don’t know, and you don’t want to know.

So much of their busyness is self-imposed.

Maybe the anxiously driven person is running from something. Blaise Pascal was one of the first to suggest that personal character can be assessed by how people handled rest and solitude. Do you avoid quiet? When you are alone, is either the iPod or TV always on? It should make you wonder: What am I avoiding? What is it about quiet places that is so scary?

What am I avoiding? What is it about quiet places that is so scary?

I am not strong enough to handle the despair any longer. I am afraid all the time. I am losing my ability to hide my true self. I am afraid I’ll be exposed. Underneath the emotional pain is terror.

Though some run in fear, others attack, defending something important that is at risk.

Listen to anger and you will frequently find fear.

The problem is compounded with men because men aren’t supposed to be afraid. With no permission to discuss fears, men opt for anger.

Sometimes their anger says, “This is the only way I know to get some control in an out-of-control world.”

Control that emerges out of anger is stri...

Fear and anxiety say this: “You want something, and you might not get it.”

Fear and anger can be the same words spoken with a different attitude.

But every age is an age of anxiety, every century a century of fear.

But fear is speaking, and we should listen.

One useful life skill is to know when to listen to our feelings and when to ignore them.

Anger says, “You are wrong.” Embarrassment or shame says, “I am wrong.” Fear says, “I am in danger,” but it also says much more.

Implicit in “Life is dangerous” is “I am vulnerable.”

Behind this desire for control is the gnawing awareness that we are merely human.

Here is where fear is a door to spiritual reality. It suggests that authentic humanness was never intended to be autonomous and self-reliant. Humans are needy by design.

Will we abandon the myth of independence and seek God? Fear, control, God—they are all linked together. Since independence only works during the really good times, the obvious answer would be to seek God. The problem is that God, the one in control, does not seem to exert much control. Trust him or not, bad things will happen. (More on this later.) At this point, just realize that fear is saying something about you.

There is a close connection between what we fear and what we think we need.

If we need approval from others, we will fear being criticized.

If we need love, we will fear rejection.

If we need admiration for our attractiveness, we will...

What do these fears say I trust in? What do my fears say I love?

Anxiety about the future event is usually worse than the event itself.

Worriers are visionaries minus the optimism. An experienced worrier can go for days leapfrogging from past to future and back again, never landing in the present.

When you listen to worry and witness its stubborn grasp, you find something that is most assuredly you. You have your reasons for worrying. You have purposes in your anxieties.

Worry is looking for control. It is still irrational because worry will not prepare us for anything, but at least it has its reasons.

If that is true, it is likely that even our worry reflects some self-centeredness: Worry puts the focus on me.

Worry lets me indulge in self-pity. When I worry, people listen.

Take a hard look at yourself instead of your circumstances when worry is blaring. Ask yourself what you are trusting in. Consider your poor track record for predictions, yet recognize that all these steps, while they may give some hope, still don’t push back the boundaries of fear and worry. Reason alone can’t do it. Face the reality that we have to go outside ourselves for an answer and seek the God who is in control.

“Do not be afraid.”

My words, of course, were meaningless. They veered off into self-serving platitudes because I didn’t really want to hear about her fears.

God never says anything just to get you off his back. The sheer number of times he speaks to your fears says that he cares much more than you know. He is not so busy that he attends only to macro-level concerns. Instead, he is close and speaks to the details of your troubles.

He does not compare your worries to those of others, decide which ones get priority, and then give everyone a number based on need. The way he repeats himself suggests that he understands how intractable fears and anxieties can be. He knows that a simple word will not banish our fears. He knows that our worries aren’t patiently waiting for permission to leave.

Search Scripture and find that our fears are not trivial to God.

“Do not be afraid” are not the words of a flesh-and-blood friend, a mere human like yourself. They are not the hollow words of a fellow passenger on a sinking ship, who has no exper...

These words are more like those of the captain who says, “Don’t be afrai...

Fear doesn’t trust easily.

Fear is impatient.

Fear has tried God and God didn’t work. To reconsider God goes against fear’s manic style.