‘You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You…’
Isaiah 26:3
Fear is a normal part of living. And the most successful and confident people you know experience it. The difference is they refuse to be ruled by fear because they know that, when it gets out of control, it can paralyse you. The Bible says, ‘…fear hath torment…’ (1 John 4:18). Neuroscientists at Yale University discovered that patients who expected to experience an electric shock had anxiety levels similar to those who responded to the real thing. Researcher Elizabeth Phelps writes, ‘A lot of our fears and anxieties are learned through communication. If someone tells you to be afraid of a dog, then the brain responds as if you actually were.’ In other words, our brains don’t know the difference between real and imagined threats. This goes a long way toward explaining why the National Institute of Mental Health reported that almost twenty million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders.
Someone who’s perfectly safe, but has a fear of being robbed, suffers just as much as someone living in a situation with a high risk of robbery, or someone actually in the act of being robbed. Because our brains don’t discriminate between emotions that are real or imagined, fear can dominate our lives, and it’s just as devastating as physical injury.
Psychologist Marilyn Barrick said, ‘For the most part, fear is nothing but an illusion. When you share it with someone, it tends to disappear.’ So share your fears with God and watch them begin to disappear. The Bible says, ‘You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on You!’
Is 65-66, 1 Thess 3
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