By Your Side

Fear. It's completely irrational. I've known this for much of my life, but this truth has become more real to me over the years as I've dealt with my son Zachary. For those of you who know him, Zachary is not afraid of much. In fact, he's one of the boldest 8 year olds you may ever meet! Nonetheless, there is something that scares him to death: thunderstorms.

Zachary begins to cry and will not leave my side during a storm. There is nothing logical that I can say to him that calms him down. We pray, we talk, I explain statistics about lightning strikes...nothing works, except....for me to stay by his side.

Interestingly enough, someone (with a lot of spare time!) has compiled a list of 530 known phobias. I must admit, there are some crazy ones on the list! How about...amathaphobia: the fear of dust or homoliphobia: the fear of sermons (not touching that one with a 10-foot pole!)...or numerophobia: fear of numbers (I definitely have this one!!). Find the full list here.

While our fear may not be as outlandish as some of the ones on the phobia list, we all struggle with fear at times. We fear losing our job or getting a life-threatening disease. We fear financial ruin or losing a good friend. Satan uses fear to terrorize us and keep us from living in peace. Whatever your fears are, I want you to know that you can overcome them with God's help.

Through my experience with Zachary, I've learned that overcoming fear does not come once we arrive at some logical understanding to the reason behind it. Instead, we beat our fear when we come to the place where we realize that God is with us and we can trust him to protect us. This is exactly why Zachary calms down when he's by my side.

Are you struggling with fear today? Draw near to God. You will find that He's right there by your side and He holds your life in his hands. Here are some great scriptures about all this: 2 Tim. 1:7 and 1 Jn. 4:18.