Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Colossians 3:5
“Every fear is a mask for an idol. Sit long enough in the quiet and let the fear get close enough — what seems like your worst nightmare — and then let your hand flash out like a fireball of fierce redemption, rip that flimsy mask off, and name the fear for what it is. Break your idols and you break free of all your fears.
So I will go on crushing all of your life-absorbing fears to a fine powder because this is the deal: I want to be better at letting go of you than letting go of joy. I don’t have to worry about what’s up ahead because Christ is the head of everything. And I don’t have to fear what’s around the next corner because Christ is already there too.
We don’t have to abide in our fears because we can abide in our Father. There’s believing it and then there’s abundantly living it: Fear is a liar and love hands out keys. Love is infinite and love can’t ever end, and if love doesn’t ever run out, what is there ever to fear?
There will still be love when the worst happens, and when the hope doesn’t happen. There will still be love when everything’s crumbling, and there will be enough love to rebuild. There will still be enough love to keep breathing, to keep believing, to keep being and being brave.
For this I know: Fear can be what we feel, but brave is what we do. And there’s enough brave in me to believe that though the the world is broken, there is light getting in… That though the busted road ahead may head through the dark, there is more than abundantly enough love around every bend that will carry more than I can imagine…”
Ann Voskamp in The Way of Abundance: A 60-Day Journey into a Deeply Meaningful Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018) 69-70.
As I reflect on that which is abundant, I realize that the best way to help people grasp it might actually be pointing out the obstacles to it. Fear comes into view as a barrier, but I think it’s not the problem but the symptom of the problem. Or, as Voskamp put it, “every fear is a mask for an idol.”
Related to generosity, people who store up treasures earth because they fear not having enough for the present or for later in life, reveal their idolatry to money. Think of how God sees that. It would be like fearing we won’t have enough oxygen to breath so we must bottle the air around us to sustain us through tomorrow.
So life is full of twists and turns. Perhaps you are facing a struggle right now? Should you, motivated by fear, stockpile money to try to navigate an uncertain future? Or is the better approach, the only life-giving path, to stop merely believing that having Christ is having everything you need and start living like it is true.
I’m resting in Sydney (pictured above) this weekend with friends, Tom and Jaime Schell. In a rigorous season of travel, I could fear poor health, having insufficient resources to care for my needs or my family, or even calamity. I find the only solution is abiding in the love of Christ, the only source of abundant life and strength for each day.