I am a very “afraid” person. I have things that I am just never a fan of… in any contexts and I have no shame in expressing my fear in front of others as long as I don’t have to face the thing I am scared of. One of those fears is HEIGHTS. I remember two years ago, my friends and I were in Chattanooga, Tennessee. They are very outdoorsy people, so they love hiking and exploring in the woods. They also enjoy jumping off waterfalls. I am convinced that they plan their trips around the amount of waterfalls they can jump off of, it’s a thing. Well they were encouraging me to jump from this one waterfall that wasn’t like the tallest ever, it was fear that probably any other person that is also afraid of heights probably could manage.
And I repeat, I am a very irrationally afraid person, so there was no managing fear, there was only pacing up and down the waterfall as my friends encouraged me to jump off this waterfall. I just couldn’t do it, the fear of falling and not having my feet safe on the ground was so much BIGGER than the trust that the jump or the anxiety from the jump wouldn’t kill me.
The root to all fear is a lack of trust. I did not trust the water to catch me, my friends to lead me or my body to mentally and physically manage the fall.
I feel a similar way when I face changes in my life. I get very cozy and comfortable in things. I think we all can to an extent. And when God starts to disrupt my comfort and challenge my faith, I feel the same way I felt standing on top of the waterfall, terrified, anxious and depleted of trust. But that’s what God instructs us to do in His word, when we are presented with fear, trust and obey. It feels like free fall. It can feel unreasonable and maybe not practical, but God often calls us out of what feels comfortable so we can unlock more opportunities to depend on Him. And oftentimes, we can’t see exactly what we are jumping into because it doesn’t require trust in God when we can place trust in our circumstances. We need to deny the crave within our flesh to have certainty in our job, spouse, family, position etc, and reach for that certainty in Christ.
The same certainty Noah had when he built the ark even though everyone thought he had lost his mind. Nope, He trusted the Lord. The same certainty of Esther as she risked her life entering the king’s courts so that her people might be saved. The odds were against her. The law was not in her favor. Her certainty was in the Lord. The same certainty of the three guys that were thrown in the furnace for refusing to worship the king. As well as Daniel in the lion’s den, Paul who was persecuted more than any of us can possibly imagine and Jesus’ several disciples who carried their certainty to the point of being killed for it. That’s the kind of faith and trust that God calls us to have.
So Lord, we ask for a sensitivity to your spirit to sense where you’re leading and the boldness to jump on your count, certain that you will catch us every time. One, two, three, TRUST.