Madison J. Caplinger

Honesty Hour: recently I’ve been very hurt by someone. Someone I thought would never let me down. For a race of which God has said “it is not good to be alone,” we can be really bad at living together. It caused me to wonder why God made us relational creatures if all we do is hurt each other.

I’ve found in my own life an interesting phenomenon in which hurt turns into fear. Fear of being hurt again. Fear of trusting someone again. Fear of opening up. I’ve gone so far as to think to myself “I’d rather die than hurt like this again.”

So I’ve lived terrified just long enough to see that it is no way to live. Fear is exhausting and anxiety-inducing like no other state of mind can be. Yet I felt that the fear is what kept me safe. I thought that if I remembered how I’d been hurt, I could keep it from ever happening again.

One restless night I laid in bed dwelling on this when God gently reminded me of the words of 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound mind.” To live in fear is to step into a snare laid by Satan himself. God calls us not to fear, but to step into the power he gives. If God is for us, and Heaven awaits us, what could there logically be to fear?

By no means am I saying that I, or you, will never struggle with fear again. Just when we think we are invincible, Satan finds new ways to attack. But the good news is we don’t have to. We can be rescued from our fear, even if it comes as a whisper in the middle of the night.