Prayer To Keep Me From Fear When Times Are Hard

Fear Not: How to Stop Feeding Fear and Overcome It

Prayer To Keep Me From Fear When Times Are Hard

Fear grabs our attention. It gets us ready to fight—or flee. Whether we mask our fear with macho bravado or slink away to seek refuge, it can have a powerful effect on our thinking, decisions and actions.

A healthy fear can keep us from harm. But too often fear keeps us from doing what we want—or need—to do. Sometimes it provokes us into wrong or dangerous responses. Biblically speaking, fear can contribute to obeying—or disobeying—God’s law.

Why does fear seem so pervasive in society today, and what can we do to control it?

Fear now

Increasing troubles in the world and our neighborhoods can make us feel we are living in a fear zone. Politicians and hucksters of every stripe play on our fears for their own benefit, but that doesn’t mean the underlying dangers are not real.

Terrorism, mass shootings, spreading warfare, violent crime, disease epidemics, natural disasters, deadly animals—all of these are in the news and too often in our entertainment and our nightmares.

Some high-profile dangers we tend to overplay ( fear of sharks, flying and mass shootings), while other much more common killers we tend to downplay ( auto accidents and germs). Many of the things we fear never happen to us, and even when they do, all our anxieties and worries generally have done nothing to protect us.

The Bible does not minimize many of the things we fear. In fact, it shows that the world will become more dangerous and frightening as the end times approach.

But it also shows how we can deal with our fears—both the good and the bad.

Fear of the Lord

First, the good fear.

The Bible does promote an exceptional fear—a reasonable fear that actually allows us to eradicate all the deceptive and destructive fears. This healthy awe and respect for our Creator puts us on the path to spiritual knowledge and wisdom (Proverbs 1:7; Psalm 111:10).

Study more about this foundational biblical teaching in our article “Fear of the Lord: What Does It Mean?”

But many other fears do not have good results.

Feelings, phobias and real fears

Our temperament and experiences can contribute to the unique set of phobias and fearful feelings we have. Traumatic events early in life can etch pathways of fear into our brains. Feelings of insecurity can intensify natural human tendencies, the common fear of public speaking.

Do we have to just live in a constant state of anxiety, punctuated by flashes of sheer terror?Experts often suggest fighting irrational fears and phobias with education to change our thinking and practice dealing with the anxiety-producing situations. Many books and online resources have been written about combating specific phobias and anxieties. (For more about this important subject, see “Coping With Anxiety” and “Dealing With Anxiety.”)

But what about the rational fears—the real troubles facing our world that we often have little control over? Do we have to just live in a constant state of anxiety, punctuated by flashes of sheer terror?

Fear vs. faith

The Bible instructs God’s people many times to “fear not.” God does not want us to be debilitated by fear.

For those who have the proper awe and respect for God and who strive to obey His commands, God makes some wonderful promises:

  • “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
  • “All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children. In righteousness you shall be established; you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near you” (Isaiah 54:13-14).
  • “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?” (Jeremiah 32:27).
  • “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31).
  • “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
  • “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).
  • “For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we may boldly say: ‘The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?’” (Hebrews 13:5-6).

As we grow in the faith to believe these promises, we can increase our ability to turn our worries over to God.

Consider the following biblical principles and examples in your battle with fear:

Go to God with your fears

We can ask God for His strength and peace. David, a man after God’s own heart, faced many frightening situations. After escaping one terrifying incident in the midst of Philistine territory, he wrote, “I sought the LORD, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4).

The apostle Paul, no stranger to fears himself (2 Corinthians 7:5), gave this advice and reassurance: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ” (Philippians 4:6-7).

Seek God’s Spirit

God gives His Spirit to those who repent and are baptized (Acts 2:38), and one fruit of His Spirit is peace (Galatians 5:22). Paul also said it is not “a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). God’s Spirit empowers us to control our thinking and to do the right things for the right reason.

For more on applying the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, see “How Do You Know You Have the Holy Spirit?” and “Fruit of the Spirit: Peace.”

Grow in faith

Our trust in God is His promises and His faithfulness. The Faith Chapter, Hebrews 11, is full of stories of men and women who grew to believe that God would do exactly what He promised. Their trust in the faithful God helped them face their fears and act in faith. It helped them wait patiently and courageously endure terrifying trials.

The greatest example is Jesus Christ Himself. “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

the faithful people of old, we should focus beyond this fearful world on the positive future God has in store. We can also meditate on and appreciate the comfort and peace God gives now.We can ask God for more faith (Luke 17:5; Mark 9:24).

We should then act on that faith in obedience to God, since “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20).

If our focus is on God’s Word and His eternal promises more than the temporary physical circumstances, we will increase our faith and decrease our fear.

For more on this, see our article “How to Grow in Faith.”

Focus on the positive

the faithful people of old, we should focus beyond this fearful world on the positive future God has in store. We can also meditate on and appreciate the comfort and peace God gives now.

Paul directed our thinking toward the positive: “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

He also often extolled the importance of gratitude: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

See more in “Christian Meditation” and “Thanksgiving and Your Mental Health.”

Perfect love casts out fear

On our spiritual journey we must never forget our foundational fear of the Lord—our reverence for Him; our recognition of our dependence on Him. This proper perspective should lead to appreciation and praise—and a deeper love of the God who has given us everything we have and ever will receive. He loved us so much He even gave His own Son!

So our relationship with God grows on that foundation. “We love Him because He first loved us,” John wrote (1 John 4:19).

What does that love do? If we follow His steps and let Him live in us, we will not need to fear the only thing worth fearing: God’s day of judgment (verse 17; Matthew 10:28; see our article “What Christianity Gets Wrong About Hell”).

As a result, fear is conquered. John summed up the ultimate goal this way: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).

We can go to God with our fears. We can seek more of His Spirit. We can grow in faith in His ability to defeat anything that threatens us. We can find comfort and security in His loving care.

The fear and loathing of this age will be replaced with love and rejoicing forevermore!

For more understanding of what the Bible teaches, see these related articles:

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Источник: //lifehopeandtruth.com/life/christian-living/fear-not/

7 Ways to Overcome Your Fear of the Unknown And Get More Life

Prayer To Keep Me From Fear When Times Are Hard

Last Updated on January 8, 2019

The fear of the unknown can be hard to describe because all the feelings and thoughts around this fear are in our head. These negative feelings and thoughts create mental blocks. It is these mental blocks that influence the way in which we live our life and if let loose can have a detrimental impact on us living our lives to the fullest.

When we choose to live with our fear of the unknown, the choices and decisions we make do not serve us well. Any decision we make based from this fear will not be a decision that will move us forward in life.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela

Living your life to your fullest potential can only be achieved when you have come face to face with your fear of the unknown. But this is not an easy thing to do. It is a bit more complicated than just choosing to ignore your fear of the unknown. To be able to conquer your fear of the unknown, you have to be committed to making the changes within yourself and that is where it gets tough.

There are many layers of emotions that are associated with your fear of the unknown and overcoming this fear requires you to dig deep to find the courage to actually step into the unknown. This is not what your fear of the unknown s. All those deep-seated limiting beliefs will be resisting and fighting back because your actions will be challenging them and questioning their existence.

There is an extreme form of the Fear of the Unknown which is a phobia called Xenophobia.

Xenophobia is when some people have irrational thoughts and beliefs about people and situations that they perceive to be strange or foreign. Essentially it is the fear of anything that is beyond their comfort zone.

People who are Xenophobic tend to have a fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures or strangers. They also have a fear or dis of people who are culturally different from them. Their behavior can be extreme and violent; The Klu Klux clan is made up of people who are xenophobic. Since the abolition of slavery and even today they have committed violent crimes of hate.

We are not xenophobic. We do not commit violent crimes toward other people because of our fear. We do however let our fear of the unknown rule our lives.

If we listen to our fear of the unknown, we choose to live our lives in our comfort zone rather than taking up the opportunity to step out into the unknown.

It is when you step out into the unknown that you truly start to live your life to the fullest.

How to Overcome Your Fear of Unknown

To overcome your fear of the unknown is a personal journey that never really ends. However if you live your life controlled by your fear of the unknown and want to break free then here are 7 strategies that will help you on your personal journey of transformation. Where you are living life to the fullest and you are no longer controlled by your fear of the unknown.

1.Understand Your Fear

“Fear of the unknown… They are afraid of new ideas… They are loaded with prejudices, not based upon anything in reality, but … If something is new, I reject it immediately because it’s frightening to me.” What they do instead is just stay with the familiar. You know, to me, the most beautiful things in all the universe are the most mysterious.” Wayne Dyer

Fear is not unique to you. Fear is part of our human DNA and so it is not unusual for you to feel fear when you are stepping out into the unknown. Our brain is hardwired to prefer negative consequences to uncertain outcomes. Our brain does not us stepping out into the unknown or living in a world of change.

However, as Wayne Dyer says in his quote above; our fear of the known is not reality. Our fear of the unknown is just a whole pile of self-limiting beliefs what we think may happen and not on what is our reality.

Accept that you have fearful thoughts but don’t let these fearful thoughts paralyse your life.

2. Find the Cause of Your Fear

Our fear of the unknown is part of our DNA and is an essential part of our survival. There is fear that will protect you and heighten your senses to threatening situations. This is a good fear to listen to. Then there is the fear that paralyzes you and stops you from living life to the fullest. This is the fear that you need to understand why it exists within you.

The fear of the unknown is made up of many thoughts and beliefs that result from negative experiences. If you have failed in business or you feel you have failed in life and have low self-belief, then your fear of the unknown will be heightened and wanting to protect you.

When you are faced with the opportunity to step your comfort zone, spend some time analyzing the cause of your fear of the unknown. Once you have identified the cause of your fear, then brainstorm ways to minimize risk and ways in which you can cope with the hurdles you may face.. Then go to Strategy 3

3. Question Your Fear

We all know that our fears are not reality. The fear of the unknown is our perception of what might happen in the future. The future has not happened and this is where you take your fears to court and question them.

For example ask yourself the following 3 questions;

  • a) What evidence is there that supports my fear of the unknown?
  • b) What are 3 examples where I have successfully coped with uncertainty?
  • c) What evidence is there that I will fail and my fear of the unknown will be right?

I am sure you come up with many more questions, but always remember your fear of the unknown is not reality. – so question it and move forward.

4. Accept Failure as an Option

“The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.” Gordon Parks

An underlying cause of our fear of the unknown is our fear of failure. This is especially true when we are about to embark on a new journey that will take us our comfort zone.

If you really understand your fear of the unknown and have looked at realistic risks in regard to stepping your comfort zone, then you just have to accept that failure could be an option.

If you cannot accept that the possibility of failure is an option, then your fear of the unknown will convince you to stay put in your comfort zone.

Remember ,your fear of the unknown prefers that you don’t do anything and live with regret than step out and possibly fail.

If we take away the idea of failure and use setbacks as experiences to draw lessons from, there will always inevitably be a positive outcome at some point in your journey.

5. Ride the Wave of Fear

It’s fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that-it’s all illusion.

“Unknown is what it is. Accept that it’s unknown and it’s plain sailing. Everything is unknown-then you’re ahead of the game. That’s what it is. Right?” — John Lennon

Anything we try in life that takes us our comfort zone comes with lots of discomfort, disruption and feelings of uncertainty. This is guaranteed and you will not be able to avoid the disruption of change in your life.

However, once you accept that over time, the discomfort will subside, then riding that wave of fear becomes a lot easier. Talking to someone about your feelings is one good technique to managing your fear. Also, exercise and mediation help to slow your thoughts down and keep your mind focused on the present not what may or may not happen in the future.

6. Embrace Change

The one thing that is a constant in our lives is change. We live in a world of constant and at times disruptive change. The more we resist change, the more it will persist in our lives.

Accept that you cannot avoid the effect of change in your life. Also accept that change is not to be feared by you. The more you open up to the concept of change, the more resilient and courageous you will become.

Resisting change keeps you in a place of discomfort and that’s where your fear of the unknown s to be. Your fear will keep you paralysed in a bad situation because it is what it knows best and where it can control you.

Stepping out and embracing change will open you up to a world of opportunities and growth. Change will become a fact of life that you will embrace and successfully manage

7. Mindfulness – the Key to Quieting Your Mind

“To quiet the mind is not to eliminate thoughts, but to soften their hold us” — [email protected]

Your fear of the unknown is created by your thoughts and self-limiting beliefs that are all held in your mind. For some of us, these thoughts and beliefs have been in our minds for many years and have a huge influence on how we live our lives. In fact, our fears keep our minds very busy with self-talk and thoughts spinning around 24/7.

These thoughts and beliefs will not go away over night. It takes commitment and work from you to retrain your mind so that you have peace and successfully manage the noise of thoughts in your mind.

Mindfulness is a practice that I believe is the best strategy to managing an overworked and busy mind. Some of us mediation as a tool and some prefer to take walks however whatever strategy you choose, make sure the context of practise is to be mindful and present.

“To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.” – Deepak Chopra

If you want to learn more about mindfulness, try this article:

Meditation Can Change Your Life: The Power of Mindfulness

To live your dreams and embrace life, you have to be fearless and willing to step into the unknown. There is no other way to live your life to its fullest potential. Listening to your fear of the unknown will only result in a life where you live in discomfort and dissatisfaction with life.

The 7 strategies are tools that you can use to help you overcome your fear of the unknown and become the courageous person you were born to be. Go live your life to the fullest. Embrace change, ride the wave of fear and experience life to the fullest. You will not regret it – that is a promise!

“By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become child with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us.” — Alan Wyatts

More Resources to Help You Conquer Fears

Featured photo credit: Nicole Harrington via unsplash.com

Источник: //www.lifehack.org/347868/why-fear-the-unknown

Why Your Fears Won’t Come True

Prayer To Keep Me From Fear When Times Are Hard

Fear doesn’t work the way we think it does. I’ll teach you something cool about fear that you can start putting to use right away.

When something scares you, you usually just have an aversion to the notion of that thing. Just the thought of making certain phone calls, confronting certain people, or making certain commitments makes the butterflies bubble up.

This is the point where we usually back down, and distract ourselves from the thought of it by checking email or doing some cleaning or organizing that suddenly seems important.

Quitting my last job to go traveling was something I was afraid of for a long time before I did it. It was a very small company, my boss had been good to me, and I knew it was going to be a blow that came nowhere. The thought of it made me nervous, and I decided to put it off till the next day, ten or twelve times.

Most fears keep us at arm’s length that: we back down at just the idea of doing something nerve-wracking. The fear has done its job — to keep us from going there — and so we don’t look any closer at what it is we’re really afraid of about that idea.

If you do look closely at almost any fear, it’s always a specific moment you’re fearing. A moment with awful feelings in it — awkwardness, pain, shame, guilt, horror, angst. Life unfolds only in moments, so what else could the problem be except some of the moments that you might run into?

Ultimately that’s all you are ever fearing: moments that you believe will force you to experience feelings you really don’t want to experience. If you really break it down there’s nothing else that drives us but the appeal of feelings we want to experience and the fear of feelings we don’t want to experience.

Whatever the feeling is, it’s a feeling you’ve already experienced at some point in your life. You couldn’t be afraid of it if you hadn’t.

The longer we live, the more nasty experiences we have, and the more fears we carry around. But we forget that it’s really acute experiences we’re trying to avoid, and instead we let entire categories of actions and notions get dismissed from our lives, because they represent those experiences.

The cat who was afraid of grass for all the wrong reasons

We had a cat who was afraid of the front lawn. She would creep up to it, sniff it a bit, then tear across it she was being chased.

I watched her do this a few times before learning that my Dad had once turned on the sprinkler hose while she was lying beside it.

After that, to her the lawn was a bad place, because it represented the threat of a terrible experience she didn’t want to have again.

She got over it, probably after accidentally having a few good experiences around the lawn. Animals are probably better at forgetting this stuff. Humans cling to fears because our thinking is so hopelessly lost in symbols and categories. We hold onto this idea that we can fence off the painful areas of life if we’re careful enough.

They aren’t all big things. There were so many foods I didn’t eat for years just because my first run-in with them was bad one. I didn’t eat onions for a second time until I was an adult, just because I ate a piece of raw white onion when I was little.

I didn’t recognize that there are a million different ways an onion-eating experience could actually go down — after all, who eats large chunks of raw, white onion? — but I had already cordoned off “onion” as a no-go zone for me, because I refused to ever subject myself to the burning, acidic experience of my first close encounter with an onion.

Onions in all forms became fearsome symbols of that lone, unbearable experience, and so I steered my whole life clear of them. This is the distance at which we normally detect and respond to our fears — from far enough away that we don’t really understand what it is we’re fearing. I was fearing the return of a single, awful moment I had when I was a kid.

One day more than a decade later, I bit the bullet and tried something with onion on it, because it was either that or eat nothing. And I had a different experience. It wasn’t bad. “Onion” came to symbolize a much better experience.

What you fear can’t really happen

What I’ve come to realize is that all my fears of the future are actually fears of the past.

Each of us has a whole bank of awful moments in our memories, each of which are so painful that we can’t accept that we could experience the same pain again.

If the thought of something you want to do rouses fear in you, think: what is the experience — the feeling — I’m actually fearing here? You don’t have to psychoanalyze yourself and try to figure out the childhood memory it comes from, but it doesn’t take much thought to identify the precise experience you can’t bear to risk happening.

By obeying our fears from arm’s length, we end up cordoning off enormous areas of possibility. Life is inescapably risky and painful, not to mention 100% fatal. So don’t think you can dodge pain, awkwardness or by backing down from something a bit scary.

The real bad stuff isn’t going to be something you had the foresight to worry about anyway. From Baz Luhrmann’s famous speech: “The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.”

Now, of course there are all sorts of unpleasant scenarios that can happen. But there is no way you can cordon off enough of life to eliminate the risk of pain, and that’s what our fears are trying to do.

And I can tell you, as somebody who’s been a lifelong master cordon-offer, building all those walls will guarantee you way more pain than almost anything else. There’s no better way to limit your skills, experience, personal power, income and prospects. How do you think people get stuck in jobs and relationships they know are killing them?

What you fear, whatever horrible scenario you think you’re avoiding — it isn’t going to happen anyway. Similar outcomes may happen, but it will never unfold quite you expected, because that would make you a genuine psychic.

The difficult phone conversation you’ve been putting off: there is no way it will go down exactly you expect it will. It will take a different line, a different tone, either slightly or entirely. But your fear, as it is, will not come true.

Whenever you notice you have some unnerving scenario brewing in your mind, remember one inalienable fact — no matter what scenario you’re picturing:

This is not the way it’s actually going to go down.

It can’t be, because you can’t predict the future. All situations are far more complex that you can possibly calculate, and fear has a way of completely screwing with your higher faculties. Whatever horrible moments you’re afraid of, they cannot match the way the situation is actually going to go down.

Fear of the future is fear of the past. You can’t fear the future because you don’t know the future. You’re just deathly afraid that certain parts of the past will happen again.

Next time you travel to somewhere new, either a new city, a new neighborhood, or even a new building, try to picture what it will be — what it will look , what it will feel to be there.

No matter what kind of information you have about it, your imagined impression will be wrong. Because you’re building it only with what’s already in your head.

What it’s actually built of, what it actually looks and feels , is not there in your head so you just can’t get it right.

This is what fearsome thoughts are made of: stuff that’s already in your head — experiences you’ve already had, and categorically not experiences you’re yet to have. You can’t know the moment you’re afraid of, because it doesn’t exist yet. So your fear cannot come true.

Whatever happens, the form it will take will be different. It might be bad, it might be good. It might open a door for you you never knew was there.

But I think we typically over-fear by default. Time and time again in my life I have been surprised at how easy and rewarding most of these scary propositions end up being when I go ahead with them anyway. When they really hurt me is when I keep them at arm’s length, untackled, where they stalk me and mock me.

Those dreaded conversations, when I finally take them on, never turn out quite I thought. I’ve rehearsed long tangents of tricky conversations that never happened. I’ve even flow-charted intimidating phone calls in my head — if he says A I’ll say B, if he says C, I’ll say D.

This is almost always useless. He never says A, or C. That’s because whatever I’ve predicted, that’s not the way it’s going to go down. Because I’m just chicken, not psychic.

I can guess at what’s going to happen, and of course I’m apt to guess that something terrible will happen, just so that I can convince myself it’s a dangerous action to take and I can feel justified in relieving myself from the responsibility of doing it. It lets me off the hook for the moment, and I gain another roaming spectre in my life and another long-lasting no-go zone. Well done.

Fear is fun

When you feel fear, take that as a reminder to bring curiosity to the moment. Something new is on the other side of it. If you act in spite of the fear, something exciting is going to go down. Nine times ten you’ll end up gaining some situational benefit, and ten times ten, you’ll feel stronger immediately.

And maybe there is a passing unpleasant feeling that will come with it. It’s probably a good trade-off anyway. Some of the best prizes in my life have come just on the other side of something I was afraid of, and they didn’t end up being difficult or painful at all. They were so close to me the whole time, and I would never have known what they were offering.

Even if the situation does unravel into a debacle of some kind, if you can remember to keep that sense of curiosity alive throughout it, if you can drop the insane hope that you can control things by fearing them, if you can keep your sense of humor close by, it can actually be amusing to watch everything fall apart.

Think of what a powerful notion that is: fear is fun.

Have fun today.

Photo by Jonycunha

Источник: //www.raptitude.com/2011/03/why-your-fears-wont-come-true/

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