Sunday, June 15, 2014

Fear Is One Of The Greatest Barriers To Coming Alive


Fear is one of the greatest barriers to coming alive.  It’s not fear of evil or being scared of big bugs that show up in your bathroom uninvited.  Fear of the mundane is a great obstacle that we must overcome.  It’s an aggregate of little things like not telling your boss what you think of an idea because of the imagined consequences.  It’s the not blogging about an issue because of backlash or not preaching a message because people may leave your church-in droves.  Every one of those decisions keeps us stuck in the grayness of not living.

There’s a call to wisdom involved in the process.  It’s going to take some inner fortitude to choose truth and life over status-quo.  There are people that have enough spine to do it and they do it Type A style.  They leave a trail of dead bodies in their wake as they live a life of coming alive.  I’m not so sure that is worth the trade-off.  I prefer living bodies and encouraged people. I’ve got to have somebody in my corner.  I start with God saying, “Perfect love casts out fear.”  I don’t know all that means but I know He’s in my corner.  My wife’s in my corner too.  She gives me encouragement to be alive, and, she let’s me know if I’m going Type A rather than walking in grace and truth.


Have you ever thought about that Thoreau quote, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away?”  The man’s companions are keeping up a routine pace; same, same, over-and-over, same, same, over and over….That’s what we’re up against.  There are few that will come alongside us when we choose life.  Few will salute, many will slander and insult.  Naïveté is sometime a good thing but on some end you must know that fear is the companion of most mankind.  Choosing fullness over fear will not make you popular but it will make you come alive. 

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