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  Hope: Living Fearlessly in a Scary World

  Copyright © 2021 by David Jeremiah. All rights reserved.

  Adapted from What Are You Afraid Of?, published in 2013 by Tyndale House Publishers under ISBN 978-1-4143-8046-9.

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  ISBN 978-1-4143-8047-6

  ISBN 978-1-4964-5504-8 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4964-5503-1 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-4964-5505-5 (Apple)

  Build: 2020-12-18 20:22:29 EPUB 3.0

  Dr. Ken Nichols is a biblical counselor and communicator whose friendship and partnership in ministry reach back more than thirty-five years. Wherever he has been, you will find people whose lives have been healed because of his ministry. Over the last several years, we have talked often about the subject of fear, and he was the first to suggest that I write a book on the topic. Here it is, Ken. It is dedicated to you. Thank you for your encouragement!

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Hope in the Midst of the Storm

  Chapter 2: Hope after Failure

  Chapter 3: Hope during a Financial Collapse

  Chapter 4: Hope amid Serious Illness

  Chapter 5: Hope When Facing Disaster

  Chapter 6: Hope after Loss

  Chapter 7: Your Ultimate Hope

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Introduction

  You are asleep in your bed when your alarm shocks you awake. You pick up your phone and see the headlines filled with news of approaching thunderstorms, overnight killings, fires, stock-market plunges, government scandals, and car wrecks. Instead of jumping out of bed, you pull the covers up over your head. You know what a fearful world we live in, and you dread facing all the challenges of the day.

  But maybe your morning fears are not in the news; they’re about your job. You live in constant fear of getting caught in the downsizing trend. Or you’re apprehensive about a business deal that has your career on the line.

  Maybe your deepest fears lie at home. Can you meet this month’s mortgage payment? Does your marriage seem shaky? Are your kids worrying you? After a recent service at the church I pastor in Southern California, a young soldier who had just returned from Afghanistan wept as he asked me to pray for him. He feared that he might be losing his family.

  Might. That’s the word that’s haunting him. Our greatest fear is the conditional might—the threat of what might happen. Fear trades in the market of possibility. Or even impossibility—for fear is the tyrant of the imagination. It imposes itself upon us from the shadows, from its hazy mirror of maybe.

  There’s no question about it: we live in a world that is often a scary place to be. When we face these fears that prompt us to pull the covers over our heads and retreat from the world, what will we put our hope in? Will we exert our energy in wishful thinking, crossing our fingers that our circumstances will change? Will we hold our breath in the hope that luck will go our way this time?

  Biblical hope is not wishful thinking. It’s not a lucky chance. It’s not ungrounded optimism. No, it’s a rock-solid belief in the character of God. That’s not to say we are guaranteed rosebushes without thorns or a life free from tragedy or disaster. But because we know that God is all-knowing and all-powerful and for us, we can face down our fears and trust the outcome of our circumstances to Him.

  Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The antidote to fear is faith. And faith gives us hope in the midst of whatever scary thing we face. When the apostle Paul was giving counsel to Timothy, his young protégé, he knew Timothy was afraid of something—probably of his assignment to lead the large church in Ephesus. Timothy was raised in a small town in Asia Minor, and Ephesus was the big city. Paul himself had spent three years in Ephesus, building up the church there. It was led by a strong group of elders, yet false teachers were causing trouble. And Timothy was supposed to go in and be the leader of the whole thing. What young pastor wouldn’t have felt fear at the prospect?

  So what did Paul tell Timothy? “Your fear is not from God. What do come from God are power, love, and a stable mental attitude” (2 Timothy 1:7, my paraphrase).

  Paul knew that when we get God’s perspective on the source of our fear, we can set aside what is not from Him and embrace what is. In all my years of following Christ, studying the Bible, and pastoring well-intentioned Christians, I have yet to find a fear for which God does not have an answer. And the reason is simple: God Himself is the answer to all our fears.

  Think about it—fear is almost always based on the future. Sometimes we’re afraid because we know what’s coming in the future. But more commonly, we’re afraid of what we don’t know about the future. We’re afraid of what might happen. For instance, the Gallup organization asked thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds what they were most afraid of. In descending order, the top ten fears of these teens were terrorist attacks, spiders, death/being killed, not succeeding in life/being a failure, war, heights, crime/violence, being alone, the future, and nuclear war.[1]

  Notice that all these fears are future focused, and all are merely “maybes.” These teens may encounter none of them. Whether the future is just a minute from now (you’re waiting on a doctor’s diagnosis) or five years from now (you worry about having enough money for retirement), fear’s home office is the future.

  But what is the future to God? To Him the future is now! We live inside time while God, who made it, lives outside it. We know relatively little about the future, while God knows everything about it. All the events in our lives occur in two time frames: past and future. (The present is a continuously fleeing, infinitesimal moment that becomes past even before we can define it.) God, on the other hand, has only one frame of reference: the eternal now, in which He sees and knows everything, including the future.

  That’s why God is the answer to all our fears. If God is good and loving (and He is), and if God is all-powerful (and He is), and if God has a purpose and a plan that include His children (and He does), and if we are His children (as I hope you are), then there is no reason to fear and every reason to hope, for God is in control of everything.

  I know—that’s good theology, and you pro
bably believe it. But you still have fears and apprehensions and a hollow place in the pit of your stomach, either sometimes or all the time. The great author Edith Wharton once said that she didn’t believe in ghosts, but she was afraid of them. It’s one thing to know something with the mind, and another to believe it with the heart.

  How do you help a little child face her fear of the darkness? First you appeal to the mind. You turn on the light and show her there’s nothing scary in the room. Then you help her attune her heart to what her mind has accepted. This is the process of faith, for all of us. We accept that God is in control, and on that basis, we shift our burdens to His perfect shoulders.

  But what about our shaky future? Pessimism doesn’t work, because it’s another form of mental enslavement. Optimism may have no basis in reality. The one way to walk with hope and confidence into an unknown future is to stake everything on the power and goodness and faithfulness of God.

  To understand why God is the answer to all our fears, we must understand what the Bible says about fear. And it says a lot. It tells us more than three hundred times not to fear. “Fear not” is its most frequently repeated command. The word afraid occurs more than two hundred times, and fear more than four hundred. And lest you think our Bible heroes were fearless, more than two hundred individuals in Scripture are said to have been afraid. And not all these were the “bad guys”; many were the main characters—David, Paul, Timothy, and others.

  Biblical heroes were regular people who had to learn the same things you and I have to learn—to drive out fear by increasing their knowledge of God, to shift their focus from their present fear to their eternal hope, to replace what they didn’t know about the future with what they did know about Him. They had to put away childish things (being afraid of everything) and grow up in their faith and understanding.

  I wrote this book because I see fear as a real and present danger in the body of Christ. Many Christians are not living lives free of fear, and there can be serious consequences when hope is absent.

  Jesus came to “proclaim liberty to the captives,” and I believe that includes those held captive by fear (Luke 4:18). He also says that truth is the key to freedom (John 8:32). And here is the truth: God is good (Psalm 119:68), God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and God has a future filled with hope for His children (Jeremiah 29:11; Romans 8:28-29). God is a refuge and a fortress, a shield and a defender for those who trust in Him (Psalm 91:2-4). For those reasons, and more . . .

  You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,

  Nor of the arrow that flies by day,

  Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,

  Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

  A thousand may fall at your side,

  And ten thousand at your right hand;

  But it shall not come near you.

  PSALM 91:5-7

  As you read this book, my prayers are that you will grow in your conviction that God is the answer to all your fears, that as you look to the future you will see nothing except His power and love guarding your every step, and that you will find the truth that sets you free to live the hope-filled life God created you to enjoy.

  [1] Linda Lyons, “What Frightens America’s Youth?” Gallup.com, March 29, 2005, www.gallup.com/poll/15439/What-Frightens-Americas-Youth.aspx.

  CHAPTER 1

  HOPE IN THE MIDST OF THE STORM

  * * *

  Do not be afraid of sudden terror, nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes.

  PROVERBS 3:25

  When the Andrea Gail left Gloucester Harbor in Massachusetts on September 20, 1991, and headed into the North Atlantic, no one could have known that this fishing boat would never be seen again. Only a bit of debris ever turned up, and the six crew members vanished forever.

  In his book The Perfect Storm, author Sebastian Junger immortalized the fate of the Andrea Gail. A film followed, featuring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. But these stars, big as they are, played only supporting roles. The real star was the storm itself—a terrifying, relentless oppressor born of fierce wind and mountainous waves.

  It was meteorologists who named this cataclysmic tempest “the perfect storm.” I might not tend to use the word perfect to describe something so terrible, but once you understand the meteorologist’s usage, “perfect storm” makes perfect sense. It is merely a vivid way of saying “worst-case scenario.” In the case of the Andrea Gail, it was the simultaneous occurrence of the toughest weather conditions possible.

  Three deadly elements came together in October of 1991: a front moving from Canada toward New England; a high pressure system building over Canada’s east coast; and the dying remnants of Hurricane Grace, churning along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Strong weather was coming from three of the four points on the compass, all of it converging on the little Andrea Gail.

  On their own, warm air, cold air, and moist air are hardly noticeable. But when wind patterns force them together, the result can be lethal. The last radio transmission of Billy Tyne, the captain of the fishing boat, came at 6:00 p.m. on October 28, 1991. He reported his coordinates to the captain of his sister ship, the Hannah Boden, saying, “She’s comin’ on, boys, and she’s comin’ on strong.”[1]

  The popular book and movie brought the term “perfect storm” into common usage, but the concept is as old as humanity. People have always had to deal with the convergence of multiple rough circumstances. So much can go wrong so quickly that we shake our heads and say, “When it rains, it pours.”

  We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Your child gets sick, and your car breaks down on the way to the doctor. All the while it’s pouring rain, and your spouse isn’t answering the phone. One or two of these difficulties aren’t so bad, but when they arrive together, they can form quite a storm.

  As frustrating as such storms can be, much worse can happen. Today, in our faster, more crowded, and more complex world, a few little squalls can quickly become “the perfect storm.” When multiple conditions converge and threaten critical areas of our lives, such as finances, relationships, jobs, and health, we question how much more we can endure. Somewhere there’s a point at which we reach critical mass. Once there, we wonder whether we will stay afloat or go under like the Andrea Gail. Knowing that could happen strikes fear into us.

  The fate of the Andrea Gail demonstrates two specific kinds of fear that we all experience. The first is that gut-level, adrenaline-drenched fear that the crew felt in the midst of the storm. They were afraid because their lives were on the line. This kind of fear is beneficial; it’s a necessary instinct for survival. No doubt the fishermen of the North Atlantic feel a little surge of that fear every time they leave port. One poor decision in the face of threatening weather could mean death. But that doesn’t stop these men and women. Reasonable fear is a healthy, normal part of the job description. If they couldn’t handle it, they’d be in some other line of work.

  But there’s another kind of fear that can immobilize us completely: the fear of fear itself. Fear in the midst of the storm is instinctive and beneficial. Fear of a storm that could happen is not. It’s an intrusive emotion that can lead us to a greatly diminished life. The imagined fear becomes so vivid that we no longer distinguish it from reality, and for some of us, that fear becomes so debilitating we can hardly get out of bed in the morning. Though the sky is clear, we’re devastated by thoughts of rain. Inside a storm, at least we can look the beast in the eye. But with the fear of fear, the imagined monster is always just on the other side of the door, looming large, even though it doesn’t exist.

  Everyone must face fear, but for the believer, its fangs are drawn in because we are protected by an overarching umbrella of hope. Nonbelievers must contrive coping mechanisms, all of which are ineffective. Fatalism (“we’re all doomed”) doesn’t work. Existentialism (“we’re all clueless”) leads nowhere. Optimism (“hey, it’s all good”) lets us down because it’s a lie. It’s not all good. There are things
in life worth fearing.

  We need a perspective on fear that takes into account the perfect storms of life but also reassures us that there’s a safe harbor within reach. We can’t put away all fear, but we need not live as its slaves.

  That’s where Jesus Christ comes in. As we put our hope in Him, this world and its emotions look different in the light of His goodness, power, and wisdom. Fear is simply a fact we must deal with in a fallen universe, but in the Bible we learn that fear can be managed. In God’s Word there is a wealth of guidance on dealing with storms, perfect and imperfect.

  The Probability of Storms in Our Lives

  When evening had come, [Jesus] said to them, “Let us cross over to the other side.” Now when they had left the multitude, they took Him along in the boat as He was. And other little boats were also with Him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling.

  MARK 4:35-37

  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all relay the story of a perfect storm in the lives of Jesus’ disciples. On that night a quiet boat ride turned into a terrifying brush with death. While Matthew (8:23-27) and Luke (8:22-25) cover the basic facts, Mark’s version of the event is the most detailed (4:1, 35-41).

  The Gospels record that Jesus was near exhaustion, and His twelve disciples were reeling from the rigorous training He’d been giving them. The crowds had been overwhelming. Sick people, craving His healing touch, had flocked to Jesus on every street. The disciples stood in awe of their Master’s miracles and were astonished that He expected them to perform miracles too. Their lives were being turned inside out.

  Now Jesus was speaking near the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The crowds began to press in so hard that He was almost shoved back into the water. He climbed into a boat, pushed out a few feet, sat down, and continued teaching (Mark 4:1). By the time He had finished, it was evening. Since Mark devotes almost thirty verses to the event, it must have been a significant teaching session, lasting several hours. Jesus must have been exhausted. The crowd, however, was not about to leave. Desperately needing rest, Jesus and the disciples simply remained in the boat and set sail for the eastern shore, where Jesus sought to minister next.