Why Fear Can’t Stop You

I wake as if from a different world.  Dreams of tests and running in a competition I am struggling in.  Caring about tripping, worried about falling.  Looking around me, fearing, what will others think of me?

I crawl to my secret place, pajamas still on, coffee in hand. Batting at the sky, asking the God of the Universe what this all means.

Then I find Him.  Two different Bibles propped up to search meanings…

Yet instead, His whispers brings clarity.  His presence fills the empty places hindering me from running…Stronger.  Faster.  More fearlessly than ever before.

“Where is your approval?”  The words tug at me.  And I see faces of people I have never met.

“Why do you fear falling?”  The connections seem obvious between the two questions.

But then a third whisper floats across my head….

“So what if you fall?  Christ fell.”

My mind grips for what these words mean.  Who fell?  Not Christ!?  I peddle backwards in an attempts to disqualify this voice in my head.

But then, my mind turns to Calvary.  A cross.  A man.  Jesus, weary from His journey to His death.  The soldiers pick a man.  A stranger from the crowd.  He bares the weight,  takes hold of the wood, our precious Savior held within His hands.

And I see it.  This beautiful picture of God.  Me.  Us.  This model, for how we must live our lives, unafraid to fall.

And I start journaling tirelessly….

We fall, which forces us to need others to help us up…so others can enter our journey.  He fell to model His handing over of His cross, to a people carnal.

We are meant to sojourn together.  None of us carrying the weight of our crucifix alone. We are meant to UNITE together.  What we carry becoming lighter.

In the falling, there is joy.  For instead of a cross, high and lifted up, on a hill somewhere far off.  We get to grip, touch, taste the fullness of the price He paid to save us.

In this sharing of the cross.  In this, fearless falling.  There is a hope that God will never leave us, halfway to our destination.  We were meant to touch the very wood of the afflicted.

And if we trip, God promises to never leave or forsake us.  He will help us carry our crosses.  He will bring in others who will carry what is too heavy, to laborious for us.

And it is in this partaking…this journey up Calvary, that the road get’s steeper, our crosses seemingly heavier, and often the opposition stronger….

Yet it is then….

• We become nearer to the glory that awaits us.  
• We can taste ever more the fullness of the veil parting.  
• We can touch the very essence of what our Lord went through.  

And to be like Him, to share in His identity, is the very fullness of what Christ died for….even if a complacent, comfort-loving-world, tells us differently.

And I hear a whisper again, on the couch of my secret place….

“Let yourself fall…just get back up.  Let yourself be scorned by the crowds (if need be)…that is the way.  That is what Christ experienced.”  

“Do you expect an easier road to Calvary that what God incarnate experienced?”

And often, isn’t it, the louder the shouts of men…the closer to the cross we are?

• A world adores soldiers, warrior, the religious sitting pious….but what about the humble servants?
• People exalt those who fight, defend themselves, create opposition….but what about those who stay silent in trust of an invisible God they can’t witness?

We are of those who follow Christ…who die to ourselves, who take up our crosses and follow His model of a holy life.  

And I stand from the couch of comfort, coffee cup empty, pajamas ready to be shed for an outfit to conquer my day….

And I am determined….

I will not shrink back when hard times come, when rains fall, when the cross becomes so heavy I cannot stand it….because that is when our deliverance is most near.

We must carry on.  We must stand, even if we fall over and over and over again.

We are bond-servants, willingly tied to His plans and purposes.

And nothing can stop us if we commit right now to keep on moving, keep treading up our Calvary mountains…(whatever that is).

Falling can’t stop us.  Fear can’t stop us. Steep hills, dirty roads, and opposing people can’t stop us.

We follow Christ.  And that is enough.  For in our Crucifixion, is the resurrection power most alive in us….

And I want to be alive.  More.  Daily. Moment by moment.  Hour by hour….

Don’t you?

(Linking with Barbie, Michelle)