How to Fear Wisely—What Are You Afraid of Today?

How to Fear Wisely—What Are You Afraid of Today?

Posted on by Michele Morin

I awoke at 3:00 a.m. with the remnants of a dream taking up every square inch of my brain space. Never mind that it was only a dream. At 3 a.m., dreams are more real and more frightening than they deserve to be.

I laughed about the dream in the morning, and it made a great story, but, more crucially, it reminded me of all the things I have feared in my life that never actually came to pass. Fear is powerful, and when it enters the room, it has a way of dominating the conversation, the decisions we make, and the way we respond to the other people in the room with us. We saw this on a global scale in 2020 with the pandemic, and we’re bearing witness to it now in an election year.

John Donne [pronounced dunn] had the dubious privilege of facing fear in a “dress rehearsal” for his death. He got to try on the feelings that come with encountering our mortality—and then lived to tell about it. His doctors diagnosed a 17th-century plague with a dire prognosis, but, unexpectedly, he recovered and lived another eight years.

Donne’s name may possibly call to mind some of his most famous quotes:
“No man is an island.”
“Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
“Death be not proud…”

Donne is not as well-known for his meditations on suffering, but Philip Yancey has distilled these into a 30-day devotional, rendering the archaic language into a more modern manner of expression. The book’s title is a play on words, Undone, layering the author’s name with our very human tendency to come undone in the presence of fear and death.

“Nothing had prepared me for John Donne’s raw account of confrontations with God.” @philipyancey in #undone via @TheRabbitRoom

Fear always seems to beget more fear, and in his writing, Donne warned himself (and us) not to “let my own fear prevent me from receiving from… God the assistance and consolation that I need.” He prayed instead:

O God of all true sorrow and true joy too, of all fear and all hope too, as you have given me a repentance not to be repented of, so give me a fear of which I may not be afraid. Give me tender and sensitive emotions, so that as I joy with those who joy and mourn with those who mourn, may I also fear with those who fear.”

No Fear in Death

Death and all its nefarious instruments (accidents, cancer, illness, aging) are certainly still our enemies. They give us reason to fear while we live in these mortal bodies, and yet Christ took on a body like ours so that “through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

This phrase from a favorite hymn summarizes the believer’s position:

No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me.

With the believer’s verdict of “no condemnation” and with “the record of debt that stood against us” nailed to the cross, our future is secure. We need not fear death. We need not be afraid of fear, and, furthermore, we have a message of hope. We are free to “fear with those who fear.”

A Salutary Fear

Moses had met with God face to face, so he spoke from a unique platform when he said to the people of Israel, standing “afar off”:

Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.”

Exodus 20:20

Moses’s message is all reassurance:
Fear God that you may fear wisely and well.

God would not deal with his own special people as he had dealt with Egypt.
The “thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking” were certainly a sign of God’s fearsome power, but it was a power for good, employed for their redemption—if they would only fear displeasing God more than they feared their enemies,
more than they feared the boredom of a daily manna menu,
more than they feared the counter-cultural novelty of worshiping an invisible God in a land of polytheistic pagans.

The admonition strikes home for all of us living in the shadow of an unknown expiration date. Managing a chronic condition that feels like a part-time job keeps me mindful of my mortality, and it’s also teaching me to manage my fear with an eye to John Donne’s prayer, “Give me, O Lord, a fear of which I may not be afraid.”

As long as our address is on Planet Earth, there will be an abundance of reasons to fear. Given that, may we choose to fear God more than we fear anything else.

May I ask? What are you afraid of today?
Does the knowledge that God has defeated your greatest enemy impact your impulse to fear?

“Do not fear,” said Moses, “for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you…” Fear God that you may fear wisely and well.

And Now Let’s Talk Books…

Let’s transition from a 17th-century plague to a recently written COVID memoir…

If the angsty racial tension and mask drama of that season have receded in your memory and you are ready for a gentle reminder, Tiffany Eberle Kriner puts her collection of memories at your service. In Thought, Word, and Seed is a genre-bending view from a farm under construction in which the unceasing labor of field and fence and forest gives way to Kriner’s “reckonings” at the intersection of literature and life. (Unfortunately, some of the works she quotes from use language that would never have been sanctioned at the Bible camps of Kriner’s youth!)

Kriner’s story is grounded in the land and the work of Root and Sky Farm, but her theological musings travel the world. As a long-time gardener and rural dweller, I identified with many points of her story, but I had to work hard to keep up with her literary criticism and musings on obscure (to me) books and authors. That’s not a bad thing for this aging brain, but it’s a factor for a reader to consider.

Even so, as the author “sharpen[s] [her] loppers and prays for everything,” she models a faith that looks for beauty amid the honeysuckle brambles and truth amid the tangle of our culture’s complicated narratives.

Holding You in the Light,

Tiffany Kriner “sharpen[s] [her] loppers and prays for everything,” modeling a faith that looks for beauty amid the honeysuckle brambles and truth amid the tangle of our culture’s complicated narratives. @rootandskyfarm @eerdmansbooks

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It’s available for free at YouVersion. Simply CLICK HERE to get started!

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To add this free resource to your pursuit of biblical literacy, simply CLICK HERE. There, on Substack’s website, you’ll find a prompt that looks just like this image for Living Our Days with Michele Morin. Over on that site, simply enter your email and then click on the purple “SUBSCRIBE” button.

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I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees. If you should decide to purchase any of the books or products I’ve shared, simply click on the image, and you’ll be taken directly to the seller. If you decide to buy, I’ll receive a few pennies at no extra cost to you.

Many thanks to Eerdman’s Publishing Company for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.

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Published by Michele Morin

Michele Morin is a Bible teacher, writer, reader, and gardener committed to the truth that women can become confident Christ-followers and students of God's Word. She has been married to an unreasonably patient husband for thirty-plus years, and together they have four married sons and a growing fleet of adorable grandchildren. Michele loves hot tea and well-crafted sentences, poems that stop her in her tracks, and days at the ocean with the whole family. She laments biblical illiteracy and advocates for the prudent use of “little minutes.” She blogs at Living Our Days, and you can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

16 thoughts on “How to Fear Wisely—What Are You Afraid of Today?”

  1. I have lots of fears and sadly/ accidentally have passed many of them onto my kids without meaning to. My youngest is struggling with driving and I can practically see him break out in a cold sweat at the mention of driving so I’m calmly trying to talk him through and how to overcome them just one step at a time. I’ve learned a lot of positive self- talk through the years and how to set aside those fears I am not at all in control of and just have faith it will all work out alright in the end.

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  2. This issue of fear is something we del with and we all know what the bible teaches us. We are all guilty of projection and I know for me it never turns out the way I thought it would.

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  3. I guess fear is a natural reaction that stems from the survival instinct. Sometimes it feels as though the world we live in now is increasingly dangerous and thus fear is a rising sensation. At my advanced age I fear less and less for me but I am more inclined to choose to err on the side of caution anyway. I counsel my heirs to choose regrets wisely. And I pray for deliverance from evil, protection from tragedy and for grace, to cover those things myopia does not allow me to see.

    Michelle I tried clicking on the photo of Kriner’s book but it didn’t take me to the sell site.

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  4. Michele, I absolutely love Donne’s works. Never got enough of it in college, and oddly my brother and I were just “quoting” him 2 days ago, as we continue processing our grief in the face of our mother’s death and his wife’s death 8 months apart.
    The opening quote on your picture for the blog post is priceless.

    Have you read Yancy’s book? I saved it to my wish list, but some reviews suggest it’s disappointing. Would love your take on it.

    Funny, while I don’t “fear” death, I can experience crippling fear in life, at the thought of circumstances not turning out as I desire…..

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Hmmm… I wonder why they are disappointed? I got the book hoping for an intro to Donnie’s thinking on suffering and
      A smidgen of Yancey’s interpretation—and that is what I got!
      And I think I have the same take on circumstances and disappointment. Well said!

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  5. Fears do seem to magnify and pop their ugly heads out in the dark. I think wounds for our past play into our fears because they remind us we’re vulnerable. I have a few Scriptures that calm me when I wake up in the night with that dark feeling.

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  6. I’ve enjoyed some of Donne’s poetry. Yancey’s book sounds like it’s worth a look to be able to take in more of it.

    Even though Christ’s death and resurrection have taken the sting out of death, and heaven is a wonderful destination, I do still sometimes have fears. I think of it kind of like childbirth. I looked forward to having the baby, but I dreaded the process. Probably the biggest fear is going sooner than I want to. But I try to remind myself that on the other side, I’ll think myself so silly for having wanted to delay. Someone once said we’ll receive dying grace when it’s time to die, not before. I try to keep that in mind and not worry about it now.

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