Fearless

--> “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)
David had plenty of reason to be afraid. Few men in history have had giants, kings, armies, even entire nations of people trying to kill him. Yet David didn’t let fear control his life. He knew it, felt it, but didn’t surrender to it. How was he able to withstand the daily terror of running for his life?

David’s confidence was in God, specifically expressed in Psalm 27 by three word pictures: light, salvation, and a stronghold. And because God was these three things to him, David had the confidence to say, “Whom shall I fear?” Why these three pictures? What do these three things have to do with David not being afraid of anyone or anything? 

To answer this question, I asked my small group what things they afraid of. Specifically I phrased it this way: “What are some fears that have marked your life to this point?” I had a hunch that their answers would reveal exactly why David trusted God for light, for salvation, and for a stronghold. 

My hunch paid off big time:

• “I fear I will disappoint my family, that I will fail as a father and a husband.”      “I’m afraid that something bad will happen to my kids.”
• “I sometimes wonder if God will really save me, or that I’ve messed up so bad He will abandon me.” 
• “I wonder if today will be the day I die.”
• “I worry… What if something happens to me that I can’t handle?”

As everyone shared, I jotted down generally the fear they expressed: failure, abandonment, security and safety, fear of the unknown. As I looked over the list, my suspicions were confirmed…

 

Next, I asked the group how people typically handled fear. I told them I didn’t want “Sunday school” answers here. We all know how we should handle fear, but how do we usually handle it? Sometimes we react in anger when we feel threatened and lash out. Other times we seek to control our surroundings by insulating and isolating against even the possibility of being hurt.

 

It got deep, I can tell you. We hit some nerves to be sure. The Holy Spirit was uncovering some things that needed to be faced and dealt with at the cross of Christ.

I turned to Psalm 27:1 and read the verse, “The LORD is my light and my salvation… the LORD is the stronghold of my life.” I asked the group, “Why those three things? Of all the ways David has described God to in the Psalms, what is it about these three descriptions that makes David be able to say, ‘I don’t have to fear anything or anyone’?’

 

I told the group my theory: I believed that all the fears we expressed fell into one of three categories – fear of the unknown, fear of harm or danger, and fear of being vulnerable and exposed. These three categories applied across the board: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. My hunch at the beginning was that these three word pictures David used – light, salvation, stronghold – addressed these three categories of fear perfectly.

Light.  
What does light do? It illuminates. It reveals. It exposes. It dispels darkness. When you walk into a dark room, you have no idea what you are walking into until you turn on the light. As soon as the light comes on, you can see what’s there, you can know the truth about your situation. Because God is his Light, David can know what’s really true – about his life, about himself, about God. He doesn’t have to try to figure it out himself, always wondering and second-guessing, “Did I make the right decision? Did I do the right thing?” He can know what’s true and walk in the security of that knowledge: “Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.” (Ps. 27:11)

 

If one of our greatest areas of fear is the unknown, God will be our Light and reveal the truth. We don’t have to fear not knowing anymore! Jesus told His disciples, ““I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life… If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:12, 31-32) Free from what? Fear and the bondage it brings! Look, Christ faced down death and won. If we put our trust in Him, “of whom shall we be afraid?”

 

Salvation. 
What is salvation? The dictionary defines salvation as “a source or means of being saved from harm, ruin, or loss.” In Psalm 27 David describes the things that threaten to harm him – assailing enemies, armies encamped against him, war and violence, false witnesses defaming his character, even being abandoned by his own parents. If anyone needed saving, it was David!

 

But what was David’s reaction to all this? “My heart shall not fear… yet I will be confident.” (Ps. 27:3) David’s confidence was not in his own strategy or skill or ability. David’s confidence was in God. “The LORD is my salvation.”

 

One of the greatest fears we all share is the fear of being destroyed with no one to rescue. We fear death, we dear harm, we fear destruction. And not just physical threats; some have gotten into such an overwhelming financial burden of debt, they fear it will destroy them and their family. Some are held in bondage to addictions to food, drugs, alcohol, pornography, sex, money, success, that they are ruining their lives and see no way out. Others are being destroyed from the inside out by their own bodies, racked with sickness, disease, or infirmity. We need a Savior! “The LORD is my salvation.”

 

Now does God always heal in this life? Does God always make our difficult circumstances go away? No. But God offers salvation nonetheless – not always from something, but always through something. We have the sure promise of a Holy God that this life is not all there is. Those who trust in Him will see the Kingdom, where there is no more sorrow, sickness, pain, or suffering. Forever.

 

When the apostle Paul was addressing the suffering of persecuted Christians in the first century church, he encouraged them with this truth:

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed… So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Cor. 4:7-9, 16-18)

David expressed it this way, 

“[What, what would have become of me] had I not believed that I would see the Lord's goodness in the land of the living!

Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the Lord.” (Ps. 27:13-14, Amplified)

The Lord IS our salvation, both in this life and the life to come. Let the world do its worst. In mercy God will deliver us, or in mercy He will sustain us in the midst of our suffering. But the Kingdom is coming. And those who trust Him will be there. “Whom shall I fear?”
 

Stronghold. 
A stronghold is a fortress. High walls and ample defenses. It is stocked with provision and built for protection. Inside it, we are safe from all enemies.

 

Another area of fear we all share is of being exposed and vulnerable. We fear revealing our true selves to anyone because they might reject us, and that rejection is too painful. We all find that out the hard way, don’t we? Our response is to retreat into a fortress of our own making. Like Adam and Eve, we will build it out of whatever is laying around – sticks, leaves, debris. Fragile things these homemade strongholds.

 

The truth is – if you really want to get down to it – is that we don’t know how to build a stronghold; we only now how to build a prison. But we call it a stronghold because it seems to work. It keeps out everything that might hurt us and protects us from being exposed for ho we are. What we don’t realize is that we aren’t keeping anything out, we are just keeping ourselves locked inside.

 

This expresses itself in a number of ways in our lives: 

·      The Poser: a carefully crafted persona that we think everyone will like because we have believed the lie that the true us – the one God made for His glory – is not good enough. We dare not risk rejection of our truest self, so we invent one based on what we think the culture (or our friends or parents or whoever) want us to be. The problem is that it is a lie. Lies take an enormous amount of spiritual, emotional, and mental energy to keep up. Eventually, they collapse under the weight of our own lives and the result is devastation.

·     The Tyrant. This is the person who seeks to control everything and everyone as a means of protecting himself from pain. If he can foresee and prepare himself against every possible eventuality and possibility of hurt, and take the necessary steps to prevent it, then maybe he will not have his worst fears come true. The over-protective parent. The domineering husband. The domineering wife. The manipulative friend. The demanding boss. The workaholic. These are just a few of the self-made strongholds that become prisons of fear.

·      The Loner. It stands to reason that if I never open my life to anyone then no one can hurt me. I can never fail if I never risk. I can never be rejected if I never offer. So he checks out. Life just rolls by and he passively watches from the sidelines, numb to its pleasures as well as its pain. He seeks to preserve his life by never living it. When he gets to the end of it, he realizes what he has done and lunches into eternity in utter despair.

 

David sang,

“For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;

he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.

And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me,

and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;

I will sing and make melody to the Lord.” (Ps. 27:5-6)

So how does that work? What is the difference between hiding in a prison we made and a fortress God provides?

 

The best answer I have ever seen is in 1 John 4:16-18)

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

John draws a direct correlation between the love God has for us and our fear. What he is saying is essentially this: “Look, if God knows the truth about you – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and still loves you in spite of all that, what do you care what anyone else thinks about you? If you don’t have to fear the rejection of God at the judgment because of what Christ has done for you , then why would you fear the judgment or rejection of anyone else? Who else matters?”

 

We can live freely, love openly, and offer our true selves with wild abandon, because in Christ we are accepted by the God who knows us best and loves us anyway. His love is the stronghold of our lives where fear is kept out by His perfect love. The key that opens the fortress to us is in the word abide. We don’t use that word much in our culture. A modern translation might be “to move in an live there.” We make it our home. We settle there and stay. How? Glad you asked…

 

Look again at 1 John 4:16: “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.” A lot of us have heard that Jesus loves us.  Many even accept intellectually the possibility that that might even be true. But it’s something else altogether to truly believe it. Belief always results in a change of some kind. If we say we believe something, we must either adjust our lives to align with that belief or else admit that we don’t really believe it after all.

 

To believe the love that God has for us – to rest the full weight of our lives on it – is to move into a new neighborhood. We pack our things and leave behind that homemade shack of sticks we have called our fortress, and move into the sprawling freedom of being loved and accepted in Christ. Now make no mistake, there is work to be done. There are things that are going to have to change. That’s why John said that His love must be “perfected” in us, meaning it has to be gradually brought to its maturity, its intended state. That’s a life-long, ongoing process. But it is also an expression of His love because “the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” (Heb. 12:6) His correction means He loves you and has accepted you!

 

So it doesn’t matter what anyone else says or thinks, or how they react to your truest you. If you are in Christ, He will be your defender. The LORD is the stronghold of your life. You are now free to live, to love, and to offer all you were created to offer. Fearlessly.

 

Isn’t that good news? Don’t we all want that kind of life? Can I say with David, “Because the LORD is my light, my salvation, and my stronghold, I don’t have to live in fear anymore!”