working from fear by faith
I love to read. I especially love it when I find a book that includes a bunch of my favorite things weaved throughout the story. I’m in that kind of book right now and I feel like I am pacing myself because I don’t want it to end. Does that sound familiar to anyone else? It’s one of those $1.99 books that showed up on my Kindle. Although I must admit, I did just purchase the paper copy so that I can have it on my shelf. I’m realizing that part of the reason I like to have books that sit on my bookshelves is so that I can be transported quickly just by walking by and glancing at its spine. One look can immediately take me into either some far away land or someone else’s story and I love it!
But back to the book I was telling you about…it’s called Surprised by Oxford.
It’s a memoir that tells the story of a woman who is studying abroad at Oxford University and finds herself on a journey that leads her right into the arms of Jesus. Contrary to many of the scholars around her, she finds that loving and believing Jesus with her life is the smartest thing she’s ever done.
And, most of the story is taking place in Oxford, which I totally love!!! I had the opportunity to go there 10 years ago and will be going again next spring and it’s one of the places that I have been in my life where my heart felt at home. Something about the ancient buildings, the atmosphere of learning and the quaint pubs where pints are shared around conversations that are inspiring and stretching, makes my heart happy. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to study there and take in the atmosphere of the place! See, I can hardly talk about it without getting all sidetracked about how it makes me feel.
So, about that book…haha…one of the pieces that I am enjoying are the conversations that are taking place around her spiritual journey. At one point, she's talking with a friend and there were a couple of things that he said that resonated with my own story. The first one was this,
“Fear lies at the unexamined core of who we are. Faith grows from the surpassing of fear in spite of it’s presence. It’s not the denial of fear, but rather a “working” from fears that faith, by it’s very process itself acknowledges the fear and in fact uses it to engulf the fear itself transforming it into the most powerful, rather than debilitating force there is: love.”
Whoa. Seriously, this resonates with me so much because this is so much of what the counseling process (which I have talked about in other posts) has been like for me. From the first call I made to go to counseling and every single time I walked into that office, fear was right there with me. I was working from my fears, by faith, at every turn. As I sat in that big leather blue chair, for hundreds of hours, I would look my fears in the face and by faith, bring them out into the open with Jesus and another human, trusting that God would use it to bring me into wide open spaces. Naming the things that happened to me as well as being open and honest about the defenses I was using to cope in my everyday life, over and over again, is the process that God used to shepherd me into the freedom I live in today. This practice of “acknowledgment and engulfing” was, and continues to be transformative in me. I have been trained and am now fairly skilled in the application of this process and continue to use it when that familiar feeling of fear makes its way into my heart. I’m able to put a pause on it and have a look at what’s happening in me and why. That’s where the ground for transformation is made. It’s in the pausing, paying attention to my heart and rather than stuffing my feelings or going into automatic mode, I can listen to my fears and allow love to have its powerful way in me and through me. This rhythm was hard won for me and I honestly doubted whether it was even possible for me to get here. Now, I’m delighting in it every day and praising my Jesus for the work He has done and continues to do in me, day by day.
God did not give me a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love and a sound mind.
(2 Timothy 1:7)
The second quote this friend said to my ‘friend’ in the book is this,
“We all struggle regardless of what we believe. But it is what we believe that determines the outcome of the struggle.”
Oh my word that is so good and true!!! Life is full of struggle. Pain has no boundaries…not race, not gender, not socioeconomic class, not personality type…there is no boundary big enough to keep pain from entering in. It’s just how our world is today, after the fall of God’s intended design. Sometimes it feels like there’s more pain in the world than good. But as I’ve said before, just because something feels like it’s true, doesn’t mean it is.
Our God is moving and working and pursuing and redeeming all over the place. And, in the words of CS Lewis…
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
When I think about my story, the pain that was written into it as well as the journey towards freedom, this has really been true for me. As I navigated through my teen years, my life was expressed in the extremes. What I “saw and heard” was from the vantage point of trying to be seen and heard so my pain made itself known through reckless living.
After I married Mike (age 20) and we came into relationship with Jesus, I was able to see and hear more. The eyes of my heart had been opened to a different kind of Kingdom and although I still felt like I belonged to the kingdom of darkness, He continued to speak a different word to me. This new voice gently and patiently spoke truth to my inmost parts. Offering me more and sewing the seed of desire for more in me as I grew in my relationship to Him, through His word, prayer and relationship with others. And when I finally took that step into focused therapy, I grabbed His hand and held on with everything I had!
You see, I had enough truth and experience of who He is and who I am because of Him built into the foundations of my belief system, so my struggle was able to withstand the depths of the pain it took to break free from the lies that were entangling me. My belief system was rooted and established on the Rock so the winds and the waves, although they crashed over me, did not destroy me.
As I type these words I’m overwhelmed with emotion. It is only by His grace that I was able to survive, not only the pain of what happened to me, but the process it took to put my fragmented soul back together. This kind of work could not be done by humans alone, it was my cooperation with the hands of the Divine Mender who healed my broken heart.
So, as I come to the end this book which has transported me across the globe to Oxford, I can see that the outcome of my struggle is full of life because of my deep belief in the One who gives life. As well as my courage to trust those He surrounded me with, as they listened to me, cried with me, prayed with me and spoke words of life over me when I didn’t have the strength to do it on my own.