When Fear Quietly Replaces Faith

When Fear Quietly Replaces Faith

For a long time, I didn’t really understand why I was reluctant to share my faith with other people.

I knew what I believed. I knew what God had done in my life. I wanted other people to know Him and experience what I had experienced. And yet, when it came time to actually talk about my faith, something would hold me back.

Eventually, I realized what it was.

Fear.

Not necessarily fear of what other people would think of me. It went deeper than that. I was afraid “God wouldn’t show up.” —not how I expected Him to, anyway.

And if God didn’t show up, who would look foolish?

I would.

Somewhere along the way, I had taken responsibility for God’s performance.

That realization bothered me because, underneath it, was another uncomfortable truth: I was acting as though I knew better than God. I was afraid to trust Him with someone else’s life because I couldn’t control the outcome.

But faith was never meant to be about controlling outcomes.

It’s about trusting God with them.

The Weight We Were Never Given

I can pray for myself and somehow tolerate uncertainty. If I pray about something in my own life and nothing happens immediately, I can wrestle with it. I can wait.

But when I’m praying for someone else, especially someone I desperately want to see and experience God, the pressure feels different.

I want them to see Him.

I want them to know that He is real.

And because I want it so badly, I can begin carrying a responsibility that was never mine to carry: What if God doesn’t show up for them?

But what if that’s the wrong question?

What if my responsibility isn’t to make God show up?

What if my responsibility is simply to be faithful?

I can share what God has done in my life. I can pray. I can encourage. I can take the risk of saying, “I believe God is here, and I believe He cares about you.”

But I cannot control what God does, when He does it, or how someone responds.

That’s God’s part.

And when I try to carry God’s part, I put myself in a position I was never meant to occupy.

Fear Can Look Like Wisdom

One of the hardest things about fear is that we don’t always recognize it.

Sometimes fear sounds like wisdom.

“Maybe this isn’t the right time.”

“I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

“What if I make things worse?”

“What if they think I’m crazy?”

And sometimes those questions are legitimate. But sometimes they’re simply fear wearing a more respectable outfit.

I experienced this in my own prayer life.

There was a time when I had to sit completely still and tell God what I really believed about Him—things I had never said out loud to anyone, and some things I had barely admitted to myself.

It took fifteen or twenty minutes just to find the courage to say them.

At the deepest level, I was afraid that if I admitted how much I struggled to believe God would show up for me, He might punish me for it. I was afraid that acknowledging my doubt would make me a failure in His eyes.

But once I finally said it, something changed.

It felt almost as though God stood up, came over, put His hand on my shoulder, helped me to my feet, and said:

“Okay. Now that, that is out of the way, let’s go.”    He knew it all along but he knew I needed to say it out loud to hear myself say it.

That experience taught me something important.

God wasn’t waiting for me to become fearless before He could use me.

He was waiting for me to become honest.

Faithful Risk

I’ve always remembered something I’ve heard from pastor Chip Ingram: God loves a faithful risk taker.

I think there’s something profound in that phrase.

A faithful risk taker isn’t someone who isn’t afraid.

It’s someone who is afraid—and moves forward anyway.

There’s a story Jamie Winship tells about being confronted by armed men in the Middle East. He believed he was in serious danger. He was terrified. Yet in that moment, he believed God told him to tell one of the men that he wasn’t afraid and that he wanted to be his friend.

That sounds almost absurd when you look at it from the outside.

He was afraid.

He didn’t feel like being that man’s friend.

So was he lying?

I don’t think that’s what was happening.

He wasn’t denying what he felt. He was choosing what he would act upon.

He was saying, in effect, “Fear is telling me one thing, but I’m going to move according to what I believe God is telling me.”

And that distinction matters.

Faith isn’t pretending fear isn’t there.

Faith is refusing to let fear have the final word.

We Don’t Need the Perfect Words

Maybe that’s one of the reasons so many people struggle to share their faith.

We’ve made it too complicated.

We think we need the perfect words. We need the right argument. We need the right Bible verse. We need to know exactly what to say and exactly what will happen next.

And somewhere along the way, we can turn faith into a scoreboard.

“How many people have you brought to Christ?”

But people aren’t numbers.

Faith isn’t a scoreboard.

We aren’t responsible for keeping track of how many people responded to our words. We’re responsible for being faithful with the opportunities God puts in front of us.

Sometimes that means praying for someone.

Sometimes it means telling someone what God has done in your own life.

Sometimes it means simply sitting with someone who has been hurt by religion and showing them a different picture of who God is.

And sometimes it means taking a step forward while your hands are still shaking.

Fear and Faith Can Exist Together

I’ve come to believe that fear doesn’t necessarily mean we’re lacking faith.

Sometimes fear simply means we’re standing at the edge of something we can’t control.

The question isn’t, “Am I afraid?”

The better question is:

“What am I going to do with my fear?”

I can let fear convince me that I need to protect God’s reputation.

Or I can trust God enough to let Him be God.

I can carry the burden of making sure everything works out.

Or I can do my part and leave the results to Him.

I can wait until I feel completely confident.

Or I can take the next faithful step.

Maybe faith isn’t always standing boldly on top of the mountain.

Maybe sometimes faith is simply taking God’s hand while you’re terrified and saying, “Okay. Let’s go.”

Because ultimately, the goal isn’t to become a person who never feels afraid.

It’s to become a person who doesn’t let fear decide where they go.