Sunday Sermon: What to Do With Your Fear
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Text: Psalm 56:3
Series: Certain Truths for Uncertain Times
In the good, old days when people were asked about the things that most caused them to be afraid, they’d respond with a list of phobias that had to do with their surroundings – things like fear of insects or fear of enclosed spaces or fear of flying or speaking in public. But check out the lists that are being compiled today and you’ll hear about fears that are more deep-rooted and existential – things like the fear of running out of money, or the fear of being criticized by others, or the fear of dying alone from an incurable disease.
Do you see the difference in those two lists of fears? The first list has to do with fears you can see – an insect, a small room, a plane, a large audience. But the second list is marked by more unseen enemies – like the market or public opinion or a coronavirus. I’m not minimizing the former phobias; I’m only underscoring the more profound character of the latter ones, and how both are equally debilitating.
Fear is an emotion that none of us wants to experience, for when we do it always calls into question our confidence about our future. And yet because there is no one on the planet that is able to avoid fear entirely, when it does come our way, we want to know how best to handle it and what to do with it.
So, how do you handle your fears? Do you try to deny them, as many do, by pretending they do not exist? Do you try to drown them or at least dull them by engaging in some activity that will take your mind off them? Or do you trust your fears to God, which is the only way to defeat them regardless of the number of times your fears rise up to do you in?
In the passage that’s before us this morning, the 56th Psalm, we are reminded of how in every fearful moment of life, we have a choice. We can either give in to our fears or we can give into our faith. But we cannot do both at the same time, for either faith will chase out our fear or our fear will chase out our faith.
Like so many of the psalms, this 56th Psalm is attributed to David, but not during the time in David’s life when he was king of Israel. The backstory to this psalm is when David was a commander in Saul’s army and the object of the people’s adulation because of how he had been able to win victory upon victory in his military campaigns against Israel’s most feared enemies. The people had even come up with a congratulatory refrain, which had gotten under King Saul’s skin and left him fearfully raw: “Saul has slain his thousands,” the people would say. “And David his tens of thousands.” You can imagine how Saul, not the most stable of kings to begin with, had become so wearied by David’s popularity with the people that he conspired with his counselors to do him in.
Thus David found it necessary to flee Saul’s wrath, but in an effort to do so had gone from the proverbial frying pan to the fire. In this case, David had fled to the land of the Philistines, which you’ll remember is the place from which the giant Goliath had come. Not enough time had passed for the Philistines to have forgotten what David did to their mighty warrior so that the king of the Philistines, a man named Achish who had gotten wind of David’s popularity, did not think it wise to let David run free in his land. These are the dynamics behind the notation that is at the beginning of Psalm 56, which tells us how David had composed this psalm “when the Philistines had seized him in Gath.” You can read the entire story in 1 Samuel 21, though the operative verse in the story is the 12th verse, which reads: “and (David) was very much afraid of Achish king of Gath.”
If David, that courageous young shepherd who had killed the lion and the bear and even the Philistine giant Goliath could be afraid, then what chance does any of us have to avoid fear? Which is precisely the point – David had a choice, the same choice that you and I have when we run the risk of being overcome by our very own fears – David could either let his fear get the best of him, or he could yield them to God in faith. And this 56th Psalm is his testimony as to how David chose the latter. Even when hemmed in by the Philistines and their wily king Achish, David chose to place his trust in God.
“When I am afraid (not if I am afraid), I will trust in you. (I will trust) in God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. (For) what can mortal man do to me?”
What David had come to understand is that, in every threatening situation, fear and faith are two forces always at work. But while fear is a reaction, an impulse, an instinct, in the face of a perceived threat, faith is a response. Faith is our confidence that when we call upon God in our times of fear, the positives God brings to bear with His presence are always greater than whatever negatives we may be encountering so that the first step in overcoming our fears is to face up to them and see them in the light of God’s sovereign presence.
Have you done that in your life? Have you made the choice to trust in God’s sovereign presence so that your faith might cast out your fear? Or have you allowed your fears to chase away your faith, causing you to doubt in God’s ability or His willingness to deliver you?
There are far too many folk today who miss out on God’s powerful presence because they are waiting for a time to live for Him when they are not afraid to do so. But what David’s experience teaches us is that the deepest expression of faith is that which chooses to praise God even when there seems no reason to do so, for in those times when we make that faithful choice, God draws near to hold us and keep us and fight for us so that in His power we are able to emerge victorious over all the realities that made us feel fear in the first place. “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.”
As I was reflecting upon this psalm, I was reminded of an image of faith offered by the early church father and fifth-century theologian Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in North Africa. So much of how we understand faith in Christ goes back to this seminal thinker because of how his theological reflections were on one hand so profound and yet on the other hand so easy to understand.
For example, when Augustine sought to explain faith to a people not greatly educated in the formal sense of the word, he drew upon an image he knew they would understand – the image of floating. Surrounded as so many people were at the time by massive bodies of water, like the Mediterranean Sea, Augustine spoke of faith as one’s trust in what he called “the buoyancy of God.” Faith, he went on to say, is like floating in seventy thousand fathoms of water, which is about 80 miles of deep water. Of course, Augustine knew that no ocean on the planet is that deep, but his point was crystal clear: if we are fearful and struggle as we try to float in such an immeasurably deep body of water, we will sink and we will drown. But if we trust in the water to keep us up, we float. We stay on the surface.
Do you remember the first time you learned how to swim? If you were like most folk, the biggest hurdle you had to overcome was learning how to relax in the water. Your instinct and your impulse was to thrash around and do your best to stay on the surface, but that was an impossible task until you learned to relax and trust the water to keep you afloat.
So many people today are in the deep end of life, where 70,000 fathoms might seem like a kiddie pool compared to what they’re going through. The threats and the challenges are more than they can handle and all they know to do is churn and thrash, which only makes it worse.
But when you find yourself in such a place, you know how to stay afloat; do you not? Instead of giving in to your fears, you can face them in faith. You can put your trust in God and never worry about your future again. Your life is in God’s hands, and God will never let you sink.