Most of us are able to place one foot in front of the other and walk the white line along the edge of a bike path without any problem, and most likely, without having to think about what we’re doing. However, if we were to take that six inch strip of walkway and suspend it thirty or forty feet above the ground, suddenly things are much different. Instead of plodding along at a normal pace, looking around at the scenery that surrounds us, we’re inching along, analyzing every movement, and probably on the verge of a panic attack. It’s still the same six inch walkway, and we’re still the same human beings. So why do we go from meandering along without a care in the world to our wold suddenly grinding to a halt at the placement of each step?
Fear.
While some of us are petrified of heights, it’s not necessarily the change in distance between us and the ground below that causes this abrupt change in behavior. After all, we’ve been walking for most of our lives, and tend to be pretty adept at it. Instead, the root cause is something much more common, and at the same time, much more revealing of our hearts.
Fear may be able to mask itself as many different things, but if you dig through the layers and look at the root cause, you will find that it stems from feeling a loss of control. When we start to feel the heavy weight of fear starting to drag us down, we need to look to see where our trust lies – most likely, we will find that we are placing our trust in something other than in God.
It’s an easy trap for us to fall into. The snare with trusting in ourselves is that as long as things keep going (at least mostly) according to our plans, the deception is hard to detect. But as soon as something starts looming on the horizon, we can feel that little quaking begin deep in our hearts – the foreshock of the earthquake of fear.
The antidote to fear is simple, but not easy for us. Instead of focusing on what’s happening, or what could happen, we need to turn our attention to our Father – to trust that He is in control, and that He does know what’s going on, and that no matter what is going on, He is able to redeem it into something good.
But – that’s hard!
I’m not denying that it is, because I’ve been there just like everyone else. We want to be in control. We feel comfortable when we feel like we are. The thing is, we can’t be – we weren’t designed to be. Even when we think we’re in control, we really aren’t – we’re just deceiving ourselves. When we view things from that perspective, it becomes easier to let go of what we already don’t have hold of anyhow, and leave things in the more-than-capable hands of our Father – right where they belong.