Culture often says to conquer fear by mastering it. But what if you don’t need to master it?
Fear can’t take anything from you. It can only tell you stories and receive what it convinces you to hand over.
And most of the time, we give it more than we realize.
Fear shows up any time you’re close to something meaningful. That’s not a flaw, that’s often confirmation.
But at some point, we started treating fear like a signal to stop instead of another sign post along the way.
There’s a moment in Moses’ story where God tells him to lead his people out of slavery. Moses is 80, unsure of himself, and afraid of public speaking. He tells God all the reasons he can’t do it – his past, his weakness, his fear.
God doesn’t reassure him with comfort or confidence. He just basically says, “Go, I’ll be with you.”
That’s it. No motivational speech, just a promise that he’ll be present.
The fear didn’t leave, but Moses stopped letting it convince him to give it control.
And that’s the shift – fear doesn’t have to go away for you to move forward, you just have to stop giving it the authority to decide what you do.
Here’s what I’ve noticed:
Fear is very real. But it’s not a flaw. It’s part of being human.
Fear grows when we give it energy by obsessing, avoiding, or trying to outsmart it.
But you don’t have to argue with fear to move forward. You just have to see it for what it is and keep going.
Fear feeds on control. The more you try to reason with it and manage outcomes, the louder it gets.
Peace doesn’t come from having a plan, it comes when you decide that it’s okay if you don’t have one.
What if instead of overpowering fear, you just stop giving it the right to decide what you do?
Fear will ask for what matters to you. But you don’t have to hand it over.
What causes people’s lives to fall apart when it seems like they had it all together?
Obviously, there a million reasons why people have affairs, leave their faith, or abandon their families.
But regardless of the trigger, the root cause can always be traced back to something pretty simple: they lose perspective.
Perspective is the ability to see an entire picture of what’s important and what’s not.
When we lose perspective, our affection, time, energy, and resources start going to things they have no business going to.
When that happens, we’re placing the heaviest weight of our lives (affections, belonging, etc.) on something that’s not foundationally secure.
If work, for example, is not a foundational aspect in your understand of life, then placing inappropriate weight on your work will eventually cause internal friction.
Your mind knows what is supposed to be important (from your upbringing, your beliefs, your sense of social belonging, etc.) yet you’re not acting in accordance with that.
Cognitive dissonance can cause a person to embrace actions that go against their character in an attempt to justify conflicting beliefs about themselves.
When your perspective slips, you stop seeing the full picture, and you start focusing on things that altar your beliefs.
When your beliefs start to drift, you experience cognitive dissonance (i.e., “why am I thinking like this?”)
If you linger in that cognitive dissonance, you’ll eventually act in accordance with your beliefs to alleviate the internal friction.
And it’s all traced back to losing perspective.
So if you want to keep your life on track, guard your perspective like your life depends on it.
But here’s the thing: perspective isn’t lost all at once. It’s a slow drift over time.
So how can you keep your perspective in check?
It’s simple, just not easy.
According to Scripture:
Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1:1-2)
To “meditate” means to allow your inner dialogue to be saturated with Scripture.
Which means you have to both sit with it and make room for it to sink in.
But here’s the problem:
When you focus on work more than God, you’re in trouble.
When you focus on family more than God, you’re in trouble.
When you focus on anything more than God, you’re in trouble.
When busyness keeps you focused on everything except God, you’re in trouble.
These things pull at your heart and shift your perspective.
We’ve come to a place where we do not tolerate “unproductive” time. And it’s led to our perspective being shifted to anything other than God.
There’s a reason God said, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Because you have to be still to know.
“Knowing” is perspective. Being still requires rejecting the demands to zoom into the micro-idols all around us.
Where your investment goes is where your security is.
So guard your heart by guarding your investment – your time, energy, focus, and affection.
And slow down enough for your heart to come back to a true perspective.
And, in the words of Jesus, “If you hold to my teaching [the Greek word means to abide, dwell, or stay with it for a long period of time], you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
What we do with the desire for control is what will determine whether or not fear grows inside of us.
We can do one of two things:
Be willing to sit with the discomfort of what’s uncontrollable without trying to fix it (which is REALLY difficult)
Run in circles chasing a solution until our brains go haywire with stress, anxiety, and panic
Unresolved pain will always lead us to option B.
A person with an open wound has to give up control to a doctor to get healed.
Hiding the wound until it gets infected would cause unnecessary pain, anger, fear, and irrational behavior.
Fighting for control leads to the opposite of what you want.
Release is simple, yet counter-intuitive:
Practice release in the small, mundane things, and start storing up positive outcomes.
“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart…” (Luke 6:45)
Memories drive behavior.
Give your brain micro-experiences of releasing control throughout your day, and start storing up positive outcomes (not all will be positive, so more reps are better).
With a memory bank of positive outcomes, releasing control will feel less and less like a death sentence.
And over time, you’ll see that life and healing go hand in hand with release.
I used to think anxiety and panic attacks only happened to people who had mental health issues.
Turns out, we pretty much all have some form of mental health issue.
1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year. (And I think the other 4 people were in denial.)
Of those who experience mental health illness, anxiety and depression are by far the most common.
And at the pace we’re all going these days, it’s not if but when you’ll experience feelings of anxiety.
If you’re going through anxiety, depression, or panic attacks, know this:
You are not crazy and this will not last forever. Take my word for it.
I know what you’re feeling.
The first time I felt a panic attack, I resisted it. I tried to shake it off, but it only made it worse.
In the aftermath, I researched everything I could to figure out how to stop it from happening again.
And I came across something that stuck with me:
You only beat anxiety when you stop fighting it.
So I stopped fighting and started noticing it instead.
When it showed up, I didn’t try to fix it. I tried my best to not label it as good or bad. I just noticed it.
As hard as it was, I just let the discomfort be there without trying to fix it.
Like watching a wave come in, then go back out.
I learned that peace doesn’t come from avoiding anxiety. It comes from letting go of the need to control it.
A certain amount of stress is part of life. Anxiety comes with caring deeply. There’s no version of life on this side of eternity where those things disappear.
But you can get better at not running from them.
And when you do, they slowly lose their grip. And slowly you find freedom in the release.
I walked through this reality, wrestling with releasing control to God, for years.
Then last night, panic showed up again.
Not the band. The band would’ve been much cooler.
This was the old familiar feeling of a panic attack.
It was 2:30 am, and I woke up to use the bathroom. I had just had a dream that I can’t remember, but I do remember I woke up with a slight pit in my stomach.
It was fear that something was coming. Maybe it was sickness, maybe it was just the expectation of something bad.
It’s wild how expectations can create realities.
I laid back down and I could feel the thoughts coming.
The internal dialog went something like this:
“There’s a pit in my stomach. Am I getting sick?”
“I’m not getting sick.”
“But what if…”
“I’m not. Go to sleep.”
“If I am getting sick, this is the beginning of hours of misery. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“That’s right. If it’s coming, it’s coming. Nothing I can do about it.”
“Now my nose is stopped up. It’s hard to breathe. I can’t get a full breath…”
“Calm down. You’re fine.”
“Oh no, I really can’t get a full breath…”
“This is temporary. Sit with it. Ride it out. It’s just a wave of anxiety. It can’t do anything to you.”
“I feel like I’m going crazy.”
[at this point I feel the wave of butterflies start in the middle of my stomach and shoot out to my entire body]
“Here it is. The panic is coming…”
“It can’t do a thing to me. Thank you Lord for being right here.”
[I’m laying on my stomach and I feel God say to turn over and lay flat on my back with my arms out and my legs fully extended.]
“I give everyone and everything to you, Lord.”
[I start box breathing for a minute, then because my breaths are rapid, it freaks me out more that I can only breath for 2 seconds in and 2 seconds out. So I stop box breathing and keep releasing control to God.]
“I give it all to you, Lord. You’re in control. My body and my life is in your hands, not my own. Let what comes, come.”
I laid there for a few minutes facing the panic without trying to control it. Just noticing it and sitting with it.
At that point I felt what I can only describe as a calm discomfort.
The next thing I remember is waking up at 5:30 am.
Panic came and the panic went. And just like every other time, I was fine. It didn’t do anything to me.
If I had been sick, running with spiraling thoughts wouldn’t have helped a thing.