Why Are You Afraid?

Jesus posed this direct and probing question to his disciples in Matthew 8:26, when in the midst of a ferocious storm taking place all around them, he simply asks them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”

We live in a time of great fear. We live in a time when psychiatrists tell us that ordinary children are more fearful today than psychiatric patients were in the 1950s.

Fear has the ability to grip our hearts, to rob us of our joy, steal our happiness and take precious relationships away from us.

Fear however, never accomplished anything. It never composed a great symphony, it never built a great nation, it never pulled a family from the depths of despair and poverty. Courage and faith did that.

Jesus poses this very probing question in the midst of a storm that Matthew sought to describe as simply being “great”. It was no ordinary storm, it was epic, it was massive, and it was in the Greek described as “seismos”, meaning it was of earthquake proportions, it was a storm that was shaking them to their very core.

Yet Jesus had chosen this particular time to find a place to lay his weary head and take a nap! This wasn’t, at least in the eyes of his disciples, exactly the best time for the master to be laying down somewhere sleeping.

You see we all live lives, that at times causes situations and circumstances to conspire together and create the atmosphere for fear to seize our heart and grip our senses.

Jesus would warn us in John 16:33, “In the world you will have tribulation”.

Life will cause you to question everything, life will cause you to question every circumstance, life can cause fear to overwhelm your heart, however it is not the absence of storms that sets us apart, it is who we discover in the storms of life, an unstirred Jesus Christ.

You see fear corrodes our confidence in God’s goodness. Fear creates spiritual amnesia. It dulls our memories of the past victories God has wrought. It tends to make us forget what God has done and how great he truly is.

Fear is dreadful. It sucks the very life out of your soul, causing one to curl up in a fetal position waiting on the proverbial shoe to drop, but Jesus responds to fear by simply saying, “Fear not”.

If Jesus had an oft-repeated phrase, it was “Fear not”. 

“Don’t be afraid. You are worth much more than many sparrows” Matt. 10:31 NCV

“Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven.” Matt. 9:2 NASB

“Don’t be afraid. Just believe, and your daughter will be well” Luke 8:50 NCV

“Take courage. I am here!” Matt. 14:27 NLT

I could go on and on, with passage after passage, but I think we get the point. 

Paul admonishes Timothy in 2 Tim. 1:7, "for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control."

The reason we don’t have to fear is he is near, and if he is near, he is still the master of the wind and the calmer of the seas!

Just a few ramblings from a pair of Cheeks in Owasso again!

Thanks for reading today!