Isaiah 8:12-13, “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But YHWH of hosts, Him you shall honor as holy. Let Him be your fear…”
How we fear and what we fear reveals whose we are.
When the wolves of an Assyrian invasion (as in this passage), or of a financial collapse, or of a divided culture, or of cancer, or of loss, etc. etc…when various, fear-inducing wolves encircle the sheep, those who HAVE a shepherd and KNOW their shepherd are not thrown into the same dismay (or desperate search for a solution) as those who deny Him. Instead, they throw themselves on the Lord, they acknowledge that He is sovereign, that He is in control, that He is the one they “fear,” and—in Christ—that He is the one who has passed through and endured the fullness of every one of Fear’s threats, and has transfigured them ALL into glory and joy by His resurrection from their depths.
Fear works by threatening some horrible future…but what Fear always neglects to mention, is that—whatever horrible future may be in store—God Himself has already been there in our place in Christ on the cross, and so God Himself—whose presence is heaven—will meet us in whatever darkness He may ordain. Because Christ bore all darkness on the cross in love, Fear cannot threaten a future darkness in which Christ will not meet us in love…and because the resurrection transfigures the darkness of the cross into the beauty of God, Fear cannot threaten a future that will not—ultimately—sing the Glory of God and serve the relieved and weeping joy of His people’s souls.
So then, Christian, today (or tomorrow, or this week, or this year) when Fear snarls at the gates…may we FIRST not succumb to the culture’s pressure to fear what they fear…No…we fear what our Shepherd tells us to fear, and that is God alone….and SECOND, may we not be whipped into a chaos of reactionary self-defense in the presence of Fear’s threats….instead, may we cast ourselves with hope-filled abandon on the one who ordains, embraces, and overcomes everything that Fear threatens.
