Fear and Faith

But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” (Mark 5:36 ESV) Fear can be crippling. It can have multiple negative affects on the body in many areas, physically, emotionally, psychologically, etc. I have come to believe that the greatest fear is the fear of the unknown. This is one of the reasons we all fear death, we've never died before. We've never been beyond life. This is seen in the healing of Jarius's daughter.  Jesus knew their fears and the biggest problem with fear is that it can't coexist with faith and without faith a person cannot please God. (Heb. 11:6) When someone has something medically wrong with them, the hard part is going through the discovery stage. When someone is missing the hardest part is just knowing if they are ok. In Paul's encouragement to his son in the faith he shared, "for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." (2 Timothy 1:7 ESV) So we come to the mean time and there is almost always a mean time. What do you do? Just like fear crushes or eliminates faith, faith eliminates fear. But we cannot stop there. Just to tell someone to have faith is not enough, you must discover where faith comes from. Again the Word of God answers that question as well. So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17 ESV) So we must go to the Word to grow faith. As a person saturates themselves in the Word, sincere prayer will almost always follow. Many religions discuss faith, however only Christianity gives the believer tangible evidence of how faith is obtained. God is so complete, so precious, even in times of crisis the truth shines through. As I write this our son has missing missing for almost a month. This is what the Holy Spirit is showing us and we hope it is an encouragement to you.