adventblog25

 What is fear?    Im guessing that if you ask that question to most people they will tell you that fear is a response to danger and that it is something we need to have in order that we can keep ourselves safe.  Most people will tell you it is not a pleasant feeling. Some might say it can be overwhelming.  In our modern world we have done what we so often do with things we dont want to confront head on - we re-invent and modify by renaming.  (Remember when global warming suddenly became 'climate change'? The enemy is very clever at subtly changing how we think about things by renaming them) We have watered down the language to try to make fear less scary - anxiety, worry, panic attacks, phobias, OCD,  acute shyness , nightmares, poor mental health - these can all be terms the world uses to disguise the fact that what we are really dealing with is FEAR Is fear really a natural response to scary things?  Has God created a fear response in us so that...

Over the summer something unusual happened. One Sunday morning someone in our congregation came up for prayer. I happened to be on the prayer team so asked what is was she'd like prayer for and she said she was about to go on holiday and was really terrified, highly anxious, super stressed. I asked why. She said she just got really scared when doing anything out of the ordinary. She then said she had always ' suffered from anxiety'. When she said that, something triggered in me and I got really cross. Not cross with her. Cross with the lies which were causing her to be full of fear all the time about everything. I had a chat with her about fear, I prayed with her. She stood listening open-mouthed and said she had never heard anyone explain fear like that. She went off on holiday and actually messaged me half way through to tell me she was having a great time. Two weeks later I was at Summer Madness. Youth festival with 2,000 teenagers from every sort of church background ca...