"Be Not Afraid"

As some of you may know, we just added a new member to our family--a mixed breed dog named Jayda who we adopted from a shelter and is afraid of EVERYTHING. Hissing cats, barking dogs, crunching leaves, moving shadows--you name it, she's afraid of it! Just about the time she was starting to relax with us, something happened that set her back several days but had us laughing so hard at the impossibility of ever recreating the events that occurred.

While my husband and Jayda were walking in front of our neighbor's house, a squirrel climbed up the down spout and ran across the roof right above where they were walking. The squirrel had a big green tomato in its mouth and just when it was parallel with our dog, the tomato slipped from its mouth and went careening down the roof where it bounced off the gutter and landed square on Jayda's head causing her to jump, yelp, and take off running. My husband thought it was so funny, he called everyone in the family to tell us the story! Jayda was not so amused.

Isn't that just the way it is with life sometimes? Just when we think we've got it made and start strutting confidently along, somebody beans us in the head with something that sends us scurrying back to a place we think is safe where no one can hurt us. And if we would take our cue from my new dog, we would stay in that safe place for an extended period of time, not taking a chance that something else might cause us to be frightened.

Fear is mentioned in the Bible 326 times, almost one for every day of the year. God knew that being afraid would be our own worst enemy and chose to address it so many times, in so many ways. Over and over again he says, "Be not afraid." So where do you think Satan will attack us the hardest? Where our greatest fears are, of course. Some think the answer is to never put ourselves in a situation that Satan might be able to use. My answer is just the opposite and I don't say this because I am such a courageous person. I say this because I have learned over the years that serving the Lord will bring me so much farther than cowering from Satan's possible attacks. I have learned that you don't deny the problem; you deny its authority over you. Ambrose Redmond says, "Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that there is something more important than fear."

So get out there and serve the Lord...but watch out for squirrels with tomatoes!

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7