HOW TO HAVE A HAPPY HOME
Conquering Fear in the Family Helps Build Happy Homes
Bev Robinson
I have had a difficult time with writing about fear in the family. In talking with Ras about this I realized part of my difficulty was I took it on myself early in life to not let fear overcome me. I tended to be a tough little kid. Not until I became an adult and understood what the Scriptures taught about faith did I learn how to really combat fear.
I know there are women who are afraid of their husbands and probably some men are afraid of their wives. There are children afraid of their parents or other adults. With bullying so rampant in schools now there are children afraid of children. One time years ago a lady in our church stopped me in a grocery store parking lot to ask me about a teenage son because she was afraid of him. I was amazed
The main fear I have had through the years has had to do with my children. I wanted them to make right choices and I wanted them to be treated well. But when those fears come, I go to the Scriptures to feed my faith. I also claim the promises I received for them at different times in their lives.
One of my favorite passages of Scripture that combats fear is in Philippians 4.
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7 (NLT)
Within this Scripture is the remedy for worry caused by fear. When we are thankful to God with our whole heart for the things he has done in the past there is no room for worry or fear.
The next two verses in Philippians tell us how to maintain peace in our lives and not give into worry or fear.
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:8-9 (NLT)
Sometimes you can be fearful about something and not really know how you became so fearful. If you have the fruit of fear, there is a root of fear that came somewhere in your life. God showed me such a root one time.
In the first paragraph I wrote that early in my life I determined I would not be fearful. As a result there were not many things that made me fearful. But there was one thing that occurred in my life a few years ago that puzzled me. I became afraid to stay by myself at night. I was ashamed to say anything about it and for a long time I didn’t. Ras would have to be gone out of town some nights and I would awake at every sound and have to get up and go check it out. This didn’t make sense to me. I prayed about it but for a while got no answer. God finally showed me the root and what to do about it in an unusual way.
Occasionally on my day off I go see a movie. I didn’t know anything about the movie I chose. I looked it up on the internet and it was rated very high with audiences, but not the critics. I don’t even remember the name of the movie. If I had known more about the movie I would not have gone to see it. I like mysteries, but not like this one.
When I got in the movie I found out it was about a girl who had been kidnapped and put in the bottom of a deep hole deep in the woods. She escaped and told the police. They couldn’t find the hole so they didn’t believe her. Her sister moved in with her. One day she came home and her sister was missing. She went to the police, but they didn’t believe a crime had been committed. This girl discerned that the same man who had kidnapped her had also kidnapped her sister to lure her out to the hole from which she had escaped. She set out alone to find the sister. She found the man’s hut and pictures of other girls he had kidnapped, thrown in the hole and killed.
As I got to this part of the movie my heart began to pound and I started to jump up and leave the movie. The Lord told me to sit still that He had something to teach me. It was all I could do to stay seated but I did. The girl found the hole. The kidnapper came up behind her and pushed her in. He got down in the hole to kill her and she rushed and pushed him down, climbed up out of the hole on the rope ladder on which he had come down. She then shot him dead. She went home and found her sister bound and in her basement. She wrote a letter to the police telling them where the hole was and that the kidnapper was in it.
Remember I told you at the beginning of this article that as I determined as a child not to be afraid. I never went through anything that scary, but I had similar things happen to me as a child. The Lord told me after it was over that I would be like that girl in the movie outwitting the kidnapper. He would show me how to take care of myself, much as He had done when I was a child. My response was, “yes, I believe you Lord.” He had shown me the root of the fear of my being alone and fearful at night. Do you have a fear that is caused by a root in your life? Maybe you are not even aware of it. God will show you.
The right kind of fear is the fear of God, which is not a cringing fear. It is being in awe of Him and respecting Him to the point of obdience to what He says, no matter the circumstances.
Ras and Bev Robinson Blog 