Fear

I recently made this picture my cover photo on facebook. Then, the Lord decided he would teach me a thing or two about fear. I have been doing my quiet time through a bible app on my phone. The devotional is great. It's called Soul Detox, and its main function is to refocus your thoughts on holy uplifting words rather than impure, nasty thoughts. The devotional gives you questions to focus on and scripture to read to help you detox your soul of these wordly thoughts and words. I saw this quote on pinterest and was immediately drawn to it. I've always been one to be so afraid to try, mainly because I knew I would fail. When I was in the 8th grade I was on my school's basketball team. I was a benchwarmer, and every time my coach would put me in I would play out of fear that if I messed up, he would take me out, which is exactly what happened. I was afraid I would fail, so why even put in a full attempt. As my student teaching adventure begins on Thursday, the devil is constantly on my back about failure with my future in teaching. For instances, this very morning while teaching Junior Church I thought to myself, I am going to fail miserably at teaching, if I make it that far to begin with. As I opened up my bible app before I laid down to go to sleep I gotta kick out of what I read, because basically that God I serve, he knows what he is doing. He's a pretty smart cookie if you ask me.  It started: "there are four types of fears: fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of rejection and fear of the unknown."I thought:" that's me, duh thats me, ugh me too,  and of course geez". If this was a multiple choice test, I'd have to go with E-all of the above, but mostly the last three. I am constantly in a fear of failure with everything, I don't want to disappoint anyone, nor myself. Who likes to fail? Who wants to fall on their face and look like a big loser who screwed up. I don't wanna try so hard and fail at teaching, which leads to that second fear, fear of rejection. I'm gonna face it, I've just gotta suck it up. God faces rejection everyday, everyday that I decide my pinterest app is more important to me then spending time in prayer. (Ouch, I just burned myself.) Nobody likes to fail or be rejected. I think that is why I find it so hard to reach out to others, to truly witness. Because I don't wanna fail at it. I want to succeed and bring that person to the Lord, nor do I want to be rejected, because rejection hurts. We should fear the Lord, yes, but our faith should be stronger than our fear of "stuff". This fear of the unknown thing, yeah it's a scary time right now. Big changes are about to happen. I'm graduating in four months, I'll be an adult and hopefully teaching. It's scary and I don't know what my future holds, but I'm pretty certain the Lord has got it whether or not I choose to let him handle it with out trying to take control. I just started the Explicit Gospel, and so far so good. Chandler told a story about a trip he took with his family. They were in their mini van and his daughter piped up and said "i think we're lost, Dad are you lost?". Sounds pretty silly doesn't it, but that is exactly what we do when we let the fear of rejection, failure, and the unknown take over the faith we have in God. I mean God knows everything, everything and he is so powerful. Not only is he all of this, but he cares about me and loves me, so he isn't going to let me fall to hard. So why should I not live by the question brought on by the picture above, because the God of the universe is on my side. Not that I should go try and fly or become the next Amy Grant, but I need to let go and trust in the God I serve.
Stop fearing the unknown and trust in his plan.
Stop fearing rejection because he faces rejection everyday. Take action and be bold in my faith, because he faced rejection for me.
Stop fearing failure because he has great plans for me.
Stop fearing loss because he loves me and is my comforter.

2 Timothy 1:7
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline."