Tag: fear

Posted on

Loving God the Most: Making God Our Emotional Refuge

“Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” – Psalm 62:8

Where do you go with your strong emotions? A lof of times, they just run around in our head. They keep us from important duties, people, and fun. They cause problems with our health, our relationships, and our work.

Emotions need an outlet. We often seek an outlet in other people: withdrawing from them, attacking them, or complaining to them. We often seek outlets in busy-ness, trying to getour mind off of these things or solve them. We sometimes seek an outlet in trying to escape our issues, like endless hours of Netflix or alcohol. We often seek outlets in stres-reducers such as eating, exercise, sleep, planning, and so on.

Sometimes these things help. Sometimes they do not. Sometimes things gets worse. Sometimes our attempt to deal with our emotions hurts the people around us.

The Right Refuge for Our Emtions
The Psalms in the Bible give us a different picture of how to deal with our emotions. What the Psalms teach us is that emotions are not intended to remain on the horizontal plane. They are meant to go vertical. We are meant to resolve them in God.

The Psalms have a word for this. God is our refuge. God is an emotional refuge: “pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge” (Psalm 62:8). Continue reading “Loving God the Most: Making God Our Emotional Refuge”

Posted on

Five Reasons Why It Is So Hard to Love

Everybody thinks about the love they need. Few think of the love that others need.

Most of the songs we enjoy are about our own need for love and not about the love others need. I was trying to think about a song that was about the joy of loving others. My mind went to Jefferson Airplane’s “Don’t You Want Somebody to Love?” Then, I read the lyrics. The song is more about a person who has made a wrong romantic choice about the author of the song. Sure enough, Darby Slick had just experienced a breakup before writing the song. The person who is addressed is being rebuked for choosing the wrong person. They messed up. Not as noble as it first may sound.

The problem is that we all have trouble loving others. Parents may show real love and concern for their children but moving beyond that is very difficult. Why is loving others so hard? Let me give five reasons.

1. Our natural perspective is to see ourselves first. There’s nothing we can do about that. We see things from our own perspective. We see our own needs. We see our own inner world and no one else’s. We are always present to ourselves. There is a natural focus on self that is simply impossible to avoid, but it creates an obstacles to seeing the perspective of others. It will require more work.

2. Our natural self-perspective becomes exaggerated. We not only have a natural and legitimate focus on self, but it becomes illegitimate in all of us. We worry too much about ourselves. I would suggest that this is rooted in our alienation from God and our tendency not to trust Him as the source of love and provision. Without this anchor for our soul, our anxiety about our own needs runs wild. Continue reading “Five Reasons Why It Is So Hard to Love”

Posted on

I Was Scared in March 2020. Here’s What Happened and What I Learned.

There is no question that I was scared in March 2020.

As Covid-19 began to spread out over the world, I was scared of the suffering and dying that could take place from this awful virus. I heard the reports from Italy and saw how quickly it could take over a community. What would happen if, or probably when, it came here? I thought.

I was scared at would happen to our economy. As March went on and people began to stay home, what would it mean for our way of life? Would it lead us to a Great Depression? A friend told me it was unclear what was going to happen to our banking system because nothing like this had ever happened. So, what was going to happen?

I was scared for our communities. As Covid-19 began to spread, the leaders in our church made certain decisions that we believed would protect our community. Not everyone agreed. Covid-19 became a significant source of controversy and got entangled in our political polarization. This was an issue that cut through people on the conservative side of the spectrum. What would be the result? I wondered. Would this tear our church and other churches apart? Continue reading “I Was Scared in March 2020. Here’s What Happened and What I Learned.”

Posted on

Community Building: Humble Respect (1 Peter 2:11-17)

[Listen to an audio version here.]

In Seattle’s so-called autonomous zone, they claim they have eliminated the need for cops. Looking closer, you find that they have what they call “sentinels.” These are people, sometimes armed, who enforce basic rules and try to keep order. So, whatever they say, they have replaced the cops with . . . their own cops.

House churches are similar. They say that they are just informal gatherings. However, I’ve always found that one person becomes the de facto leader or pastor. They are just churches meeting in a house, whatever they think of themselves. They haven’t escaped structure or organization or being an institution. They simply emphasize meeting in homes.

Why do I bring this up? Here’s my point. All communities will have authority structures and hierarchy. Continue reading “Community Building: Humble Respect (1 Peter 2:11-17)”

Posted on

How Risky Is It, Really?

Bears are much scarier than cars. You will pass hundreds of cars, if you drive through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You may see a bear, but you very well may not. I could only find one instance of a bear killing a person in the GSMNP (on May 21, 2000). However, in 2019, Nine people were killed in car wrecks in the GSMNP.

Some things are scary that will not harm us. Some things will harm us that are not scary. Actual rather than perceived risks to life and health are what we should be most concerned about. So, how do we get past what is scary but what is not risky? How do we learn to take precautions when things are risky but not scary? In other words, how can we be sure that we are doing the right things to keep us safe and healthy? That’s what David Ropeik’s book, How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts is all about (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010).

What Ropeik does is try to help us see what makes things feel risky or scary to us. Then, he provides advice on how to get better at evaluating actual risk.

Ropeik suggests that there are eleven things that make people, situations, or things more scary.

  1. Trust. When trust is low, fear is higher. For example, if we don’t trust our government, what they tell us to do feels scarier, even if it is not. The converse is also true as well.
  2. Loss. This is complicated, but if the potential loss is great, then it feels scarier, even if it is not a great risk. Losing a house to a tornado feels scarier than having credit cards, even though the latter is more likely to bring you to financial ruin.
  3. Control. If we feel in control, we feel safe. Airplanes are much safer than automobiles. However, in an automobile, we feel more in control. Continue reading “How Risky Is It, Really?”
Proudly powered by WordPress