Lessons on Fear
The theme of the summer is based on this scripture from Samuel (for those who weren't at chapel, the scripture is 1 Samuel 3:2-10) and it’s taken me all summer to really delve into it and learn that I really do need to make myself ready to listen for God’s call. I still haven’t really processed my whole summer, but as I start to piece the little nuggets of it together, one of the themes that bursts to the surface is what I like to call lessons on fear. Little pieces of information that help me understand why I fear and what to do about it. If I’m stuck on worry or fear, I’ll never hear God’s call.
I used to take swimming lessons when I was little. One time, we were standing at the deep end and they wanted us to jump in and learn to float or something. We all jumped and I remember sinking straight to the bottom, still holding my nose, confused at why I wasn’t floating. But I don’t really remember any kind of fear. One of my instructors reached down, pulled me up, and I grabbed a hold of the side of the pool. But the thing that strikes me about the memory is, like I said, that I don’t remember ever being afraid. It’s actually a memory that makes me smile when I think of it.
It’s hard to recapture that innocence. How was I not afraid that I was sinking to the bottom of the pool? I get afraid over a lot less than that now. As Jeremy drove me to the airport for my first workcamp I told him how scared I was. He told me something that stuck with me the rest of the summer. My first nugget of help.
There was this movie that he had watched the week before at camp called Facing the Giants. It was done independently by a church so it wasn’t of the highest caliber but the message was good. It’s about a football team at a Christian academy that has a losing streak for years. In the clip he told me about, they’re doing this drill where the players have to carry another player on their back, upside down, and crawl across the field. They’re on their hands and feet but their knees can’t touch the ground. They’ve finished the first part of the drill and one of the top players makes a comment that it doesn’t matter what they do because they’ll never beat the team their up against the next night. The couch makes him do the drill again, blind folded this time, and says he has to go to the fifty. He makes the player promise to give his best. The kid starts moving and the couch is giving him encouragement. But as he goes you start to realize that he’s not stopping at the fifty. The couch pushes him and yells encouragement all the way to the endzone. He’s yelling, “give me your best! You promised your best! Don’t you quit on me!” Every time I started to sink into that mode of fear this summer, I thought of that. “Don’t you quit on me!”
As I moved through the summer, I was confident that I was prepared, with God on my side, to face anything that was thrown at me. But a small, niggling part of that confidence, was fear. Am I prepared enough, am I ready? What if this goes wrong, or that goes wrong. I don’t think Jeremy knew at the time that he would be my inspiration for the rest of the summer in one car ride, but he said something else that made me stop and think. I told him was still nervous and I said, “what if I forgot something.” Straight faced, he looks at me and he says, “you did.” Then he added, “but it’ll be okay.” That was kind of a relief, actually to be told straight out that I did, in fact, probably forget to do something but that it was going to be okay.
Throughout the summer, I had several chances to attend several Sunday church services around the country. I looked at these as check-in points to see what and where God was directing me. What piece of advice he had this week that would get me through the next week.
Every sermon I heard this summer seemed to be on the same thing: Fear. The first sermon was good and made me think. The second time I heard a sermon on fear, I thought, that’s strange, what a coincidence. The third time I thought, “Okay, I get it and now I’m listening.”
One of these messages was at NYAC. I think it was Greg D-L------- who quoted it. He said “worry is a misuse of imagination.” I’ve always thought of myself as a creative person so this really struck a chord. What else could I be doing, making, imagining if I wasn’t using up that brain power on worry?
Another nugget came from Pastor Joel’s sermon on the one Sunday I was able to attend Highland Ave this summer. He was talking about the story of Jesus calming the storm and one of the verses, that I’m sure I’ve heard a dozen times really struck me this time. Matthew 4:40, Jesus stands up and says to his disciples, “Why are you such cowards? Have you no faith?” I felt like he was talking to me.
Many of you know Pastor Gilbert R------. He was my on-site coordinator in LA last week and I had the great fortune to hear him speak twice in one week. If any of you have ever heard him speak, you know he has a talent for grabbing your attention and holding onto it through a message. I will just list a few nuggets I got from him.
“Do you know why a windshield is so big and a mirror is so small? The windshield is your future and the mirror is your past.”
“If you’re stuck on ugly, that’s your problem. God didn’t make ugly.”
“Don’t put a question mark where God put a period.”
Also, my last Sunday of workcamp, I got to hear Pastor Jody R------ preach as well, Gilbert’s son. These are the words I ended my summer on and that will stick with me as well. Jody said, “God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.”
All this is not to say that I was consumed by fear this summer, but worry comes along with any kind of job that involves event planning, I would say. The fear of the unknown. Always having a plan B, C, and D. So, I wasn’t constantly afraid all summer, this was just one of my big take-aways. I re-learned just how important prayer really is and, even more so, listening for God. How convenient. I spent the summer telling my youth to listen for God, teaching them how to hear his voice, and in the end, I helped myself also to be “Ready to Listen!”
Peace, Rachel
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