This is a great article I ran across today. Hope it helps.
2 Timothy 1:7 ” For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (ESV)
If you have maintained any leadership position, then good ol’ fear has more than likely influenced your decision making. Fear of how things will play out. Fear of what others think of you. Fear of what others say when you are not around. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of being a failure. If any of these sound familiar, then you can bet that fear is a foundational problem, preventing you from leading in strength.
- Fear distances you from reality.
When you operate in fear, you operate from a perspective void of reality. Fear creates scenarios that have not happened, with conversations that have not taken place. Fear assumes to know the outcome, and forces you to imagine a sort of rectification to compensate for the best outcome.
- Fear conjures up lies.
When you let fear drive your life, you give birth to a multitude of lies. Lies about yourself, others, your circumstances, your future, your family, your marriage, your work. Fear will wreak havoc in your mind, as most of it is built on half truths, sugar-coated with excessive falsities.
- Fear dominates your thoughts and increases defensiveness.
When fear drives your thoughts, you will find yourself spending most of your time preoccupied, battling demons inside your head. You will be skeptical of anyone and everyone, and your level of defensiveness will rise. You will have restless nights, and operate mostly on autopilot. When leadership demands so much more, how can you afford letting 60% or more of your thoughts be taken up by fear-driven outcomes? Your worth comes from being fully alert, not being half-dead.
- Fear will cripple you and your ministry.
When you fear, you cannot trust. When you cannot trust, you cannot lead. When you cannot lead, you are ill-equipped to guide those around you. Remember one thing: no matter what situation you face, you will always enter into it with some level of fear. No matter what situation you go through, you will always leave it with a measure of fear. Fear is there, but when you let it overtake your commonsense, and start predicting your future, then you will find yourself in troubled waters.
- Fear is arrogance.
Fear is a false prophet, and is in opposition to God’s spirit of love and self-control. When fear drives you, you are willingly opposing God’s sovereignty over your life. In fact, you are saying, “Let me worry about my circumstances. I will feel much better if I can control the outcome.”
- It is never as bad as it seems.
How many times have you feared something, went through it, and then looked back in awe of your presuppositions and misconceptions? How many times have you wrongly judged or blamed someone, simply because you feared the outcome? Truly, if God is for us, who can be against us?
Operate from faith, with courage, in self-control, out of love.
BWT
