Fear and Prayer

First in Five Part Series

When I feel fear, which is often, I am learning to ask a simple question.

Do I fear whatever it is more than I fear God?

The fear of God is essential for spiritual growth. The goal should not be to make it go away simply because, whether we like it or not, being finite, prone to illness, injury, death and failures of all sorts, all the time, we will have fear as our default setting. It is a part of life.

When fear is the dominant emotion we are experiencing at the moment, as it continues pressing us down and expands past our ability to ignore any longer, we will experience (if we don’t choose to do this voluntarily) our knees buckling. Eventually it becomes difficult even to breath. Panic is setting in, and suddenly, blasting past the panic emerges a cry from deep within our souls, like an air raid alarm siren, calling for help in the night. This is what real raw prayer looks like.

So fear is a call to prayer.

In the context just described, the purpose of prayer is to move our fear to God and let him carry it. At the same time, in return, he gives us a sense of his glory, honor, power, goodness and righteousness.

If this isn't happening then we think we are praying when, in reality, we are only giving lip service to praying. It takes a good deal of time and intentionality to really get to know God and receive anything of spiritual value in return.