“For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you’” (Isaiah 41:13, NIV).
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said many things that we remember today. Concerning the attack on Pearl Harbor he said, “Today is a day that will live in infamy.” Another of his more memorable quotes was, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!”
Many people think that FDR’s address to the nation about FEAR was in response to the fears of engaging in World War II, but that is not the case. In fact, he said this long before the war – it was in his 1933 inaugural address during the darkest hours of the Great Depression.
Long soup lines, rampant suicide, families separating to survive, it seemed as though all hope was lost. In his fatherly tone, FDR was trying to tell a weary public that what they were afraid of was a lack of material things. He wanted to convince them that it was “a nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
In other words, FEAR is a concept, and a concept is not something that should hold people back. Instead, we should remember that we are a people who are blessed and are always in the path of HOPE!
Nineteen hundred years before FDR, Jesus asked His disciples something similar. “Why are you so afraid?” And Jesus asks each of us the very same question today, “Why are you afraid?” We all have fears of some sort. A fear of failure, fear of being disliked, fear of people who try to impose their unhealthy will upon us – essentially, our fears are born out of NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE WHAT’S COMING NEXT.
But there is One who DOES KNOW what’s coming. That is our Heavenly Father and He has our backs. He prepares a path for us. He leads us from the powerhouse of His Perfect Love. The Apostle Paul said, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
If we are willing to SEEK God and TRUST God by placing our lives in His hands, then there is NOTHING WE SHOULD FEAR. Jesus Christ cuts to our core and replaces fear with HOPE. So don’t give up hope; the best is yet to come!
David McCall
Executive Pastor
