Week 10 Sunday
Week 10 Sunday
The Fourth Enemy: Fear
Psalm 27:1-5; Proverbs 29:25; Matthew 8:26
We have looked at three of the fifteen enemies of the human personality. We now come to the fourth: fear, worry, anxiety.
Almost every evil is some perverted good. Fear, worry, anxiety are perverted good. There is an instinct within us to look ahead, to plan, to think about meeting possible situations before they come. This capacity of foresight is probably one of the basic reasons for humanity’s rise beyond the animal. The animal has only a limited capacity to foresee; humans have a very great capacity to foresee. So the animal stops at a dead end, and humanity marches on to infinite goals.
That capacity to foresee and foreplan and forestall is the power that lifts us out of the “is” into the “can be”; it is the secret of progress. And as such it must be cultivated. Without it we sink back to the animal. The will to live must be projected not only into the “now” but also into the “to be.” We must master today, and we must master tomorrow. Jesus commended this: “Well, the master praised the dishonest factor for looking ahead; for the children of this world look further ahead, in dealing with their own generation, than the children of Light” (Luke 16:8 Moffatt). A lack of intelligent planning makes us the prisoners of today instead of the pioneers of tomorrow.
Christians, above all others, are people of the long view, the long purpose, and the long plan. They plan how to live today, how to live tomorrow, how to live forever. And they plan this for all people, for they have not only the long view; they have also the wide view. They think in terms of the world as a whole. The idea that the Christian is a lackadaisical simpleton looking at the moment, afraid to look at the morrow—a human ostrich with his fearful head in the sand of today because he is afraid to look at the morrow—is false. We are to love God with all our minds, and a part of the mind is foresight. Therefore, the Christian must cultivate this quality of intelligent planning.
O God, you have taken long views. The millions of years of history tell us you are working out your long-range purposes. Help us catch the sweep of your mind and the glory of your purposes and become a part of them. Amen.
Week 10 Monday
Anxiety as Asset and Liability
Proverbs 14:27; 19:23; Luke 21:26; Hebrews 2:15
We saw yesterday that Christians care about the past, the present, and the future; they are not lotus-eaters. The fact is that we care more than anyone else, for we are in the process of being sensitized on a world scale. This is our greatest asset. It gives us drive, direction, and determination. It makes us progressive people. All other things being equal, Christians should be the most progressive people on earth. We are awakened in every fiber of our being, and we are people of the open road.
But if this awareness is our greatest asset, it may also become our greatest liability. The fact that we are sensitive and aware to ourselves and to all people may make us worry. If so, then our light has turned to darkness. For worry and anxiety and fear can block the whole process of progress and paralyze and disrupt the personality.
Up to a certain point, fear may make a surgeon more skillful and careful lest he or she cut in wrong places, but fear pushed beyond a certain point could paralyze. There is a healthy fear that gives us skill and drive. There is an unhealthy fear that takes away both skill and drive; it inhibits us. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10); but, “I was afraid, and went and hid your talent” (Matt. 25:25). Both are profoundly true; there is a fear that is wisdom, and a fear that makes one bury life talents.
Fear, like any other drive, has to be brought under control and used for constructive purposes. Out of control, it turns into worry and anxiety and becomes destructive to itself and others. “Fret not—it only leads to evil” (Ps. 37:8 Moffatt). Or, as another version puts it, “it tendeth only to evil-doing” (ASV). Its whole tendency is destructive rather than constructive. Jesus says this new life is often “choked with worries” (Luke 8:14 Moffatt). The probabilities are that fear, worry, and anxiety are the greatest single trinity of evils a person can take into life. We must root them out at all costs.
O God, I fear the fear that gets rootage in my life. I am anxious about the anxiety that infects me. I am worried about the worry. Give me deliverance from them. Help me complete freedom from any cramping inhibition and fear. Amen.
Week 10 Tuesday
Fear and Disease
Psalm 37:1, 7-8; Job 3:25; John 14:1, 27
A doctor said to me, “Fears are the most disruptive thing we can have.” And all life bears this out. I know a lady who is in mortal dread of germs. She stays inside her house, the prisoner of her own fear, lest she meet one. She doesn’t realize that the fear itself is ten times more deadly than the germ. Besides, if she had a confident attitude toward life, germs would probably not get a foothold in her life; her very confidence and faith would act as an antiseptic. Her fears become a growth culture for the germs she fears. “Because I was afraid of something awful, and it arrived; what I dreaded came to me,” said Job (3:25 CEB); that was not chance, but cause and effect.
A teacher had a basic fear that brought on a stomach ulcer. When she got rid of the fear, she got rid of the ulcer. Doctors wanted to operate on a friend of mine for cancer or ulcer of the stomach. The facts were these: After he had failed in business, worry had stopped the gastric juices. When he saw the cause and surrendered his worries to God, he gained thirty pounds in two months.
A YMCA secretary came up to me at the close of an address and said, “I am an illustration of what you have said. I’m tense and worried and bear on my mind all the troubles of the world. Hence I am fighting stomach ulcers all the time.” He will never be well until he relaxes and surrenders all those strained worries to God.
Dr. Felix Cunha says that “the incidence of stomach ulcers goes up and down with the stock market.” Investigation showed that when the Dow Jones averages on the stock market skidded down, the number of businesspeople with upset stomachs went up. Worry would bring an over-acidity of the stomach, and that in turn would upset the digestive tract.*
People in biblical times saw the connection between worry and disease: “Banish all worries from your mind, and keep your body free from pain” (Eccl. 11:10 Moffatt).
O God, my Lord, I see that in my inmost being I am made for confidence and trust and not for worry and anxiety. You have fashioned me for faith and not for fear. Help me then to surrender to what I am made for—faith. Let me this day walk forth in confident faith, afraid of nothing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* See “Stomach Aches Barometer of Business Conditions” (Eugene Ore.: The Register-Guard, July 19, 1940). http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19400719&id=kW0pAAAAIBAJ&sjid=o-gDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6740,5994399, accessed May 5, 2014.
Week 10 Wednesday
Fear Is Costly
John 7:13; 9:22; 20:19; Romans 8:15
Sometimes fears are not basic, but marginal. Even so, they can upset the rest of life. A woman went through surgical operations, a fire, even chased out a burglar from her house with a gun; and yet her life was tormented with the fear of what her neighbors might say of her. Here was a marginal fear that pushed out a basic courage.
A woman had a fear of having a cancer. Her mother had one, and she kept saying, “I am just the image of my mother. I’m so like her that I am going to get a cancer as she did.” As a result of this brooding fear, she was afflicted with constipation. There was this difference between her and her mother: the mother had ten children. The woman had none! Said the doctor, “She will never get rid of that constipation unless she gets rid of her useless fears.” Her useless fears had tied her up not merely physically but also mentally and spiritually—a tied-up personality, of which the constipation was a symbol.
A young minister began to complain of tightness of the chest, and developed a hacking cough. The doctors found no physical reason. Then he began to complain of severe pain in the lower bowel, saying he had a cancer there. Examinations by several doctors found nothing physically wrong. He resigned the ministry and sat around moping and groaning most of the time. His mental health was giving way under the strain, and yet he was basically sound. It was the fear that was upsetting him. The fear itself was the disease. For fear is sand in the machinery of life.
A woman sent a friend of mine to buy gladiolus, but being tightfisted, she repented of the impulse to buy such beauty. When my friend returned, the woman was in an agitated state of mind. She went to bed ill and was in the hands of doctors for weeks, spending a hundred times as much on doctors and medicine as she had on the gladiolus. Fear is costly.
My Lord, I see that fear is indeed costly. It is so costly I cannot keep it. But I cannot easily get rid of it, for it has put its roots within me. Help me tear it up root and branch. Or have you a better way? I follow. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 10 Thursday
Homegrown Fears
Psalms 31:13; 53:5; Luke 8:26-31
Fear attacks the digestive system in a great number of subtle ways. A mother had a daughter who was shy. Wanting her to “come out,” the mother arranged a party for her, against the daughter’s will. The daughter was afraid of people, and before the party she became violently ill and went to bed. Never again did the mother try to get rid of fears in this frontal-attack method. She built up confidence in other ways.
Some friends brought a man into one of my meetings. He was afraid of crowds, suffering from ochlophobia. When he got to the door, he tried to run away. But they insisted and took him in. During the whole service, he sat full of fear, with perspiration rolling down his pale and clammy face. At the close, he said, “I’m glad to get out of here.” The fear of crowds was an obsession. But there was nothing to fear except his fear. That fear was a disease.
At one of the maneuvers of the West Point cadets, some students, for a prank, put some chestnut burrs under the saddle of a horse. The cadet riding the horse was thrown twenty-five times on a twenty-five-mile ride. The experience filled him with fears and shock, so that he became a wreck. His glandular secretions were so upset by the shock and fears that he could not move when placed in a certain position. If he was stood up and his arm raised, he could not put it down. Only by a course of mental training, which helped him past the fears and shock, did the youth return to normal health.
In World War I, one of the amazing discoveries made by the doctors during the draft examinations was that so many perfectly healthy young men had all their lives been convinced that they had heart or kidney trouble or some other malady, and had feared to undertake arduous occupations for that reason. With very few exceptions, said one doctor, their fears had been started by hearing symptoms discussed at home. They were homegrown fears.
To implant fears in the minds of children is a crime against the child. Parents try to rule the child by fear, and then fear rules the child.
O God, our Lord, we have filled your world and our hearts with fears—needless, devastating fears. Help us, we pray you, to find release from these fears and power over them, for they are not our real selves—they are an importation. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 10 Friday
Physical Effects of Fear
Proverbs 29:25; Ecclesiastes 12:5; Luke 21:26; 2 Corinthians 7:5
The physiological effects of fear and worry have been scientifically studied. Doctors have put a tube into a patient’s stomach and measured the effects of states of mind on the stomach secretions. The secretion of hydrochloric acid often doubled during states of worrying. One man was found to be worrying because a fellow worker had died unexpectedly, and he had an obsession that he would share the same fate. His stomach trouble had started after this worry began, and after he had tried to conceal it from everyone—even his wife. The stomach of another sufferer showed rushes of acid when he was telling how his wife dominated him. One sufferer even had a flow of the extra acid when sound asleep but dreaming of his troubles.
A young man had been jilted while church bells were ringing. Ever after whenever anything was mentioned connected with the church, such as the name “bishop,” he would be upset.
Another young man was afraid of crowds, and so did not want a public wedding. Three times he fainted before the wedding could take place; the fourth time he fainted after it had taken place. Two things emerged as the basis of his fainting: fear of crowds and fear of being dominated by his fiancée, who was very insistent on going through with the public ceremony. The fainting after the ceremony came as the result of fear of domination.
A man who had worked faithfully and long to get a promotion in his office was so upset when the turning point came, which would decide whether he was to be office superintendent or not, that when he actually got the promotion he was unable to take it, for worry had so upset his heart that he had to go to the hospital instead of to the superintendency. Worry and anxiety snatched the prize from his hand and left him a broken man.
A doctor who suffered from stomach ulcers told me that worry and fear produced more stomach ulcers than any other cause.
O God, I see that I, too, have lost much of life’s fullness and power on account of worry and fear. I see that I cannot rise to my full powers until I have shed all fears and forebodings and march forth to meet life in triumphant faith. Help me do this. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 10 Saturday
The Effect of Fear on Animals and Children
Isaiah 8:12; 11:6-9; 35:4
Fears and anxieties upset the animal kingdom as well as the human kingdom. When bad dogs are around cows, the cows will often refuse to give their milk; and even when they do give it, that milk, fed to calves, will cause colic. So “milk from contented cows” is no mere slogan; it is a necessity. One pastor, who treated his Jersey cow well and had a real affection for her, found that the babies of the neighborhood brought up on the milk of this cow thrived in a way in which other babies did not. Treating the cow in a Christian way had produced a better quality of milk.
A chicken fancier told me that after the Fourth of July, with its explosion of firecrackers, many eggs had to be thrown out, for candling showed blood spots on them that had been produced by fear. The same thing happened when an airplane flew very low over the chickens. The father of a friend of mine was a chicken fancier; when he died, the hens would not lay for a long time until they got used to the new keeper. They were frightened and worried. Experiments show that superior turkeys cannot be raised unless they are treated kindly and are in the charge of one person who always dresses in a certain way. A stranger frightens and worries them, and they become stunted.
If worry and anxiety can stunt chickens and turkeys, they can stunt children as well. A schoolteacher told me that when she is worried and upset the children do not study well, and they quarrel with one another. The scholastic level is lower on those days, and it goes up when she is inwardly harmonious.
We have spent a week on the effects of worry, fear, and anxiety; and perhaps some of you have had a growing fear that I would continue too long with the discussion of the effects of anxiety, instead of going on to think about the remedy. I have no apology, for the first step in the remedy of fear is to see fear as the fearsome thing it is.
O God, now that I see, and see clearly, the devastation that worry and fear can bring, I would turn with eager heart and mind from the devastation to the deliverance. Oh, give me an expectant soul—a soul that believes deliverance is at hand; I have but to take it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.