faithfully fearful.

Today I dug up stumps. Not just stumps of some recently planted tree that hadn’t had time to root down yet, but rather the stumps of massive, quite well aged trees whose roots were deeper and wider than the area of the garden itself. I offered to dig them up for my parents when they continued to moan for weeks about it and half way through I realised the reason why there were moans, weeks worth. 

“Sometimes when serving others it may fell like you never should have offered but remember God isn’t looking for people who He can serve but He’s looking for people to serve alongside Him.”

There were three stumps. I started by choosing the one I thought looked least complicated and began to dig. An hour flew by and I had managed to free it enough I could get it out. So I went straight to the second expecting it to be exactly the same. It wasn’t long after beginning that I realised it was nothing like the other stump. This one had massive roots and I couldn’t dig wide enough or deep enough to find the ends of them. 

Although now would be the perfect time for God to bring up the whole ‘stay planted in the church’, or ‘the deeper the roots the more fruit you shall bear’ but He didn’t. Instead He brought up fear.

It was during the third hour of digging I heard the Lord ask, “What is your biggest fear?” My automatic answer, which I tell everyone who asks, was crossing roads. Don’t laugh. I’m not making it up. I genuinely fear crossing roads. If I had to walk 3km to cross at the traffic lights or pedestrian crossing I would because I’m totally chicken about crossing roads (get it). But apparently this didn’t sit well with God, so He said “Not quite”.

“God doesn’t ask us questions to find out the answer, He’s God, of course He already knows the answer. He asks us so we can find the answer.”

It was at this point I gave up on the second stump and decided to try the third, hoping the change of scenery would make me feel better about digging. I took one glance at the stump and walked away. I could tell how much greater the roots of the stump were before even digging so I went back to the other stump to continue and think about my fears.

Death? Snakes? Rejection? No. While they all held some fear in them I knew these weren’t my biggest fear. Then I heard God say “Do you fear doing life without me?” And immediately I said no. Now hear me out. I don’t mean I think I’d do alright without God I was just so sure that my love for God would never end and I would never do life without Him, so I had no fear of doing life without Him. It was then it hit me. My greatest fear was that I would fear the enemy (devil) so much that my faith wouldn’t be enough to stop me betraying God.

“Now fear the Lord and serve Him with all faithfulness.”
 Joshua 24:12a

Woah. I have never thought about this but it was so true. God then spoke to me and said “The devil tries to dig up Christians and pull them out from their faith. You need not fear Him because you are becoming like that third stump. The devil looks at you and your fruit and instantly knows how deep your roots go, he knows how they are continuously growing deeper and longer so turns away like you did when you saw the third stump. Yes your flesh may fear the evil he does but he fears my spirit in you, so let your spirit be sound. He will try to dig you up but you are in a season of preparation. It's seasons like this that will root you deep enough that he won't be able to find the ends of your faith, no matter what he uses to try dig you up.”

I was kind of grateful that God didn’t just help me find my greatest fear and leave our conversation there but He gave me the reason why I should no longer fear it. It says in so many places in bible “Do not fear for I am with you” but today I saw how God truly has the victory so why should we fear? Have you ever thought about your greatest fear? Well I challenge you to pause, find it and then give it to God to give you victory over it so you can truly trust Him and no longer fear, for He is with you.

There’s no longer a need to be fear-full so step out and into being faith-full.