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During Lent we have been examining how our fears and anxieties keep us from living in step with the Spirit. As I said in the sermon last week, “Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” If all our thoughts are channeled through our anxieties, there is no way that we can be open or sensitive to the Spirit. Therefore, we miss what God wants to do in and through us.
This was so important for understanding how Christian ministry moves forward, that the Apostle Paul, when he was giving some key mentoring words to his protegee Timothy, said that as followers of Christ we are not “given a spirit of fear, but of courage, love and self-control” (2 Timothy 2:7). In this, our theme verse for Lent, we are encouraged to lean away from our fears and into the security of the Holy Spirit’s gift of courage, love, and self-control (we will address that word some this coming week). If we want to see progress in our spiritual lives it helps us to understand where our fears and anxieties direct us more than the Spirit of God.
Our fears and anxieties are often deep seeded in our lives. Even those of us who do not consider ourselves anxious people, often are much more directed by our fears than we like to admit or than we are even aware. Our fears drive us in certain directions in life as we seek to avoid feeling vulnerable and lost. Our relationships, the way we spend our time, and even our spiritual lives are often more shaped to help us avoid that which causes us anxiety. We don’t like feeling anxious or vulnerable, so we guard ourselves from that at all costs.
To face our fears and to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, we need to seek some self-understanding. So, as we study this verse and the temptations of Jesus, and as we go through the season of Lent, we are being called to look squarely into our own fears to determine what those fears are and how they shape us. Without doing that we won’t be able to keep in step with the Spirit. Understanding how we are “wired” can help us to understand, name and face our fears and therefore open us up to the Spirit of God.
Studies point out that our personality (the mask that we wear) is formed by our basic desires (what it is that makes us feel alive and loved) and basic fears (what it is that makes us feel the most vulnerable and lost.) Our basic fears are shaped by where we have been wounded as young children or emotional places that we have experienced that we want to avoid at all costs. It makes sense that we seek out what we most desire and do our best to avoid what we most fear. These two usually work in partnership with each other and are the opposite sides of the same coin. We seek to live in ways that offer us the assurance of love and life, and that avoid that which we fear the most. We act in a way that makes us feel loved AND at the same time masks our vulnerability.
If we are spending all our time seeking to avoid that which makes us feel vulnerable and lost, we are channeling our thoughts and actions through those anxieties. If we are only pursuing that which makes us “feel” loved, we are not opening ourselves to the Spirit of God and the love and freedom that comes with the Spirit of God. God has not given us those fears, we have found those ourselves, we created them and therefore created much of our personality to avoid feeling those fears. As we seek to keep in step with the Spirit, we need to surrender into God’s good love and grace, and it is there that we find the courage, love, and self control that we need to face our fears.
