Fear and finding out what faith is….

I have always been what polite society calls “a worrier”. I know it by its more truthful name… an addiction to fear. I have spent most of my life afraid. From bugs and snakes to my children dying or my husband leaving me, I’ve imagined the worst and stood paralyzed with fear that the “worst case scenario” would occur. Coming to Sanyati was hard for me. Not necessarily the “saying yes to God” part- I mean, who’s ever said no to God and won that argument- but the 9 months of build up till we left were excruciating. 9 months to worry and fret, 9 months to imagine if “horrible” happened there. Our first month settling in at Harare and Sanyati, I was so jumpy, my own shadow could have sent me up a tree. During that same time, I remember one night driving home with Ryan from Kadoma after a supply run, our girls sweetly sleeping in the back seat. We were talking about all the fear I was in. God has wired him differently- I am sure partly for my sanctification- and he struggles to understand or fathom how fear could run my life so much. As we drove home, he began to talk about how it is hard for him to understand my problem with fear because to him he just takes the problem or “what if” and accepts that it could happen and then tries to make wise choices based on all the possibilities. His words made my head spin and my heart ache. How could he accept the “what if”- esp. if the “what if” was horrible? How could he find peace in that moment of everything falling down? I knew God was at the center of that peace, but struggled with not being able to get there with Him.  I mean, how do you just turn off fear?  As I pondered our talk later that night, God began to click stuff together in my head. Often in my life I have found freedom after accepting reality...what if fear was the same way? What if I chased the fear down and refused to let it control me and instead controlled it. What if I accepted my responsibility in the situation and then literally let the rest be up to God and trust Him with it. I began to walk through several of the re-occurring fears in my head… for example: fear of snakes- First I have to do my part and use the wisdom He’s given me to be careful where I walk and pay attention to what’s around me, but after that… and this was huge… if it’s God’s will for me to get bit then I will. Reality is that if it’s going to happen I can’t stop it, but I know that God never does anything that isn’t for my good or His glory so in the end I can still trust Him with His decisions. I began to fully understand that God not only made all of creation, but He is also still in charge of it. NO PART of His creation is allowed to take 2 steps towards me without a nod from Him. That was comforting to me- that God is indeed sovereign over all He has made. It then occurred to me… and this was huge too… that if the horrible “what if” happened- God would still be there, not abandoning me at the first sign of trouble.  If all the worst case scenarios that swirl in my head actually came to fruition, I need not fear because God would still be there in the middle of it with me. Ahh, the peace that brought! God will NEVER leave me or forsake me! Around the same time, one of the team members was complimenting me on my faith to come out and serve in Sanyati. It touched my heart. As she spoke I began to see- that’s what faith is, doing the fearful… taking the first step into scary and realizing He’s on the other side too. It made me think of that Indiana Jones movie where he has to cross the chasm but there is no bridge. It wasn’t until he took the first step out that he realized that the bridge had been there all along. That’s what faith in God is to me- taking the first step out to realize that God has been there all the time and is still there supporting me.
Coming to Sanyati was scary for me, but learning that God completely has me has made it totally worth the cost. I don’t know that I could have learned all this in America. There seems to be such a false sense of security there. Self-reliance as "the American way" seems to deaden our senses to the reality that “horrible” could happen there too. It seems easier in some ways to trust God here in Africa… there is no sense of security here that a random bad day couldn’t kill. I pray all these lessons here are applied firmly by God to my heart…. that I never forget how reliant I am on God for EVERYTHING- from food, to electricity to the health of my daughters…that I never forget that God has me, in the good times and bad… that HE is in charge and in that I can rely and find rest. Wow, the sovereignty of God, the faithfulness of Him, and the faith that is required to follow Him.
Rashel