Have you ever dealt with fear? You don’t need to answer that for I know we all have and we all do and we all will continue to do so. However, when dealing with fear, I am finding, it doesn’t need to own me–freeze me into a state of helplessness.

The topic of my devotions for today seemed to center entirely on fear. To be honest with you, I’ve hated this word all of my life. It did nothing but own me for much of it. I cannot ever remember a moment in time when I didn’t fear my dad. My earliest memories of him start with fear: fear of him coming home from work, fear of the games he wanted to play on us, fear of the fighting and wrestling matches he wanted me participating in, fear of his anger, temper, beatings and verbal criticism, and the list goes on. As I grew into the understanding of what my brother was doing to me sexually and its impact on me, I feared what my life would be like if anyone ever found out. Another fear I had was the fear of telling dad it hadn’t stopped and my brother would get a beating even worse than the one “I caused” when I told dad the first time at a younger age.

My adult years were gripped with the fear that my profession and my community would learn of my past and I’d lose my opportunity to be a part of education. What community or profession would want someone like me working in it? I write all of this demonstrating my fear of fear and my hatred for what it did to me.

My devotions were pointing out that fear of God is not like fear defined by man and continuously used by Satan. Fear of God is a reverence of Him. It is knowing God enough to surrender any of fleshes fear to Him knowing the love He has for you and me conquers any of fleshes fears. I don’t deal with fear as I have in my past, but I sure loved this message of today. It reminds me why I want to share my story so that others don’t need to deal with fear throughout their lives as I have. Our God conquers fear and motivates us beyond it!