Don't fear, but trust.

I just finished re-reading Beth Moore's book So long Insecurity. I am hoping to do a group experience with some teenage girls and I wanted a refresher of the book before hand. The first time I read the book the thing that spoke to me most was the fact that the most repeated command in the Bible is "fear not". I think we all would have thought it was "do not sin" or "love one another" but nope, it's "do not fear".  Think about that. The one thing God says over and over again is DO - NOT - FEAR. We live in a society plagued with fear. We fear everything from the big stuff like loosing a loved one to the little stuff like bacteria. It seems the more we know the more we fear. If no one told us they did a study of the bacteria found on the shopping carts at Wal-mart would we all be grabbing those anti-bacterial wipes and wiping down the handles? If we didn't read the newspaper stories of children getting lost or kidnapped would we be giving them "the stay with me so you don't get lost or kidnapped" lecture every time we went to the store? We live in a scary world. Between terrorism attacks, fires, floods, tornadoes, tsunamis, cancer, diseases, sex-traffickers, car accidents, loosing a job, a cheating spouse and the list could go on and on. There are a lot of things to fear. But God says "fear not". He says nothing in this world can separate us from His love. He will see us through any crisis.

So this time as I read it what spoke to me is trust. Do we really trust Him? or have we put conditions on that trust? Do we trust Him to prevent our worst fears from happening? Then what happens if one of them does happen? Do we still trust God? This morning I thought of two examples of extraordinary woman who trusted God no matter what. The first is MaryBeth Chapman. I read her book Choosing to See and was amazed at how God supplied her with the grace to get through what I think is every Mom's worst fear - the death of a child. And I don't know about other Moms but I was always afraid one of my kids would get hit by a car. That they would let go of my hand and run in front of a car or that the big brown UPS truck would not see my kids playing when he drove up.  This is MaryBeth's story. Her youngest daughter was hit by a car driven by her son and she died. Oh how I cried when I read her story. But she made it through to the other side of grief and still trusted in God. Plus she was able to be used by God to show others that we as Christians aren't immune from hardship but we have a God that will carry us and give us the grace we need to see another day. The other woman I thought of was Michelle Dugger from 19 kids and counting. The cameras were recording when she went to that doctors appointment to find out the sex of the child she was carrying. Only instead of happy news they were told there was no heartbeat. I will never forget her and her husbands tear streaked faces when they heard that heartbreaking news. But what did they say? "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Wow. That's trust. Yes they grieved but God gave them grace.

Both of those examples were about the loss of a loved one but what about other fear? Loosing a job or a cheating spouse? A child that's on drugs or your diagnosed with  terminal disease? Are we still going to trust God? Many people have their faith shaken during times like this. Maybe that's why we are reminded to "stand firm". Either God is good and He is faithful and He has enough grace and mercy to carry us through the hardest of times or He's not. I believe He is.