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

by Edward T. Welch

The great blessing in the fear of the Lord is that it gives us a heart to flee from sin and run toward obedience.

Blessed are all who fear the LORD, who walk in his ways. (Ps. 128:1)

Whatever is most important is the thing that rules us.

If we have a mature fear of the Lord, it means that we value and revere him above all else. That’s how we fight fear with fear.

When I fear the Lord, I fear nothing else.

the actual length of eternity is too much for you, you are right: A finite mind can’t truly grasp the infinite, so stick with things you can understand.

You are imagining the future rather than living wisely in the present.

You are forgetting that whatever challenges are up ahead, we will be given grace for them whe...

Go back to the manna principles. God acted in response to the cries of his people. The people of Israel weren’t especially righteous; they weren’t even crying out to the Lord, yet he heard them. This means that God will certainly hear you.

If that is not enough to assuage our fears, it is probably because we are concerned about judgment.

Yet I can be scared with hope.

Remember, the assurance that we belong to God is a big deal in Scripture. There is no reason that you should be kept guessing.

We have reason to be sobered, perhaps, but not afraid.

But if our life in the kingdom is no different from the way we lived when we were outside the kingdom, there is cause for alarm.

If we are reluctant to forgive, why would we think that we have been forgiven

If condemnation and fears of judgment haunt you, it is time to consider the possibility that the issue might be neither your own sin nor God’s displeasure.

You are thinking in terms of perfection; think in terms of faithfulness.

The normal Christian life is a race of repentance.

The very fact that you are convicted of sin is a work of the Spirit (John 16:8), so you can accept conviction with a smile on your face, knowing that it is just one more evidence that you belong to Christ. Now allow the Spirit t...

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.

One piece of evidence of kingdom life is that you will see more sin, not less.

When you are brought into the kingdom of light, you both see sin and, for the first time, get in a battle with it. The battle means you are alive.

When you see sin, you confess it as ultimately being against God. You respond in gratitude for the forgiveness he already gave you because of Jesus’ death, which was the payment for sins. Then, knowing that you have been given the Spirit so you can do battle with sin, you attack. You ask for the power to love. You ask others to pray for you and counsel you. You adopt a zero-tolerance policy with sin. When you fall in defeat, you learn from it and get right back into the battle.

You will see more and more sin, but you will also notice that the Sp...

Confess Secret Sin

Past sin.

God does not forgive you based on the quality of your confession or your resolve to be a better person.

“I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isa. 43:25).

God bases his forgiveness on himself and his forgiving character, not on the quality of your confession.

You confess while you give God all authority to interpret reality, instead of giving your personal feelings authority.

Confession to another person is not a way to artificially unload guilt. The one who hears your confession is not a priest who will grant absolution. The reason you confess something private is to test your own heart. It is also a way to close the door to one of Satan’s condemnatory devices. Satan delights in keeping all things in the dark, where they can accumulate more condemnation, but we can do battle by keeping our lives in the light.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23—24).

When you are perfect, you will know his perfect love.

All will be clear in heaven

Don’t forget that feelings can lie. They demand that they are right even when they aren’t.

When you doubt, he reveals more of himself. When you think he is too good to be true, he reveals that he is so good that he must be speaking the truth, because no one could make up anything so glorious.

Already we find the basic outline of God’s strategy: He allows his children to have their backs to the wall so that when deliverance comes, it will obviously be from God alone.

“Even 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.”

“The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? The LORD is with me; he is my helper. I will look in triumph on my enemies.”

Fear and anxiety are always occasions for us to mature as people who pray.

We know that any mention of God’s mighty hand means that there will be a mighty deliverance

To humble ourselves before God means that we acknowledge his kingship and sovereign power. It means that we trust in him as the Deliverer. We pray, and we wait for him.

Once again, we are reminded that prayer is not natural to us. Complaining and grumbling are, but not prayer.

When it comes to anxiety, Scripture is happy to repeat this encouragement. And it is repeated because it is so hard for us to believe.

Why would we ever be slow to speak with him? According to this passage, it is because of our pride. The passage is about humility, and casting our cares on the Lord is an expression of humility. Prayer is evidence of humility. Prayerlessness means that we neither believe him, which is pride, nor turn to him because we prefer to trust in ourselves. Like everything else in the Christian life, all change and growth must travel first through Jesus Christ, and then through our response of humility before him.

we are to retell it in a way that honors the deliverance we have received.

When you call out in your need, do it with thanksgiving.

When I know that prayer is not natural, I realize that I shouldn’t wait for prayer to feel easy. If it seems hard, I am on the right path.

If you are familiar with fear, Psalm 46 is a surgical strike on the soul.

But even in the midst of this terrifying scene, the psalmist begins with God. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. (Psalm 46:1—3)

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”