Fear is something that all people struggle with. If you Google “fear”, the first definition that pops up is an unpleasant emotion caused by something or someone that is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. So fear, by definition, is caused due to uncertainty of outcome.  Notice in the definition that fear is not caused by a foregone conclusion, but something that is “likely to cause”.  Fear is caused by the rocky soil of an uncertain future.  When it is framed like this, it creates space for all of us to be honest with ourselves and say, “I am fearful” at times.  Or, to be put more bluntly, I do struggle with fear.  All of us struggle with it to a certain degree because the future is uncertain and unknown to all of us. Fear can be a root to a lot of anxiety, anger, and can even be expressed outwardly in very harmful ways.  The root of all of those things is the same, the unpleasant feeling caused by the possibility of future pain or threat.  But God hates that we feel this way. The Scriptures are covered with God actively commanding us to do things and not do things.

What’s interesting is that when you survey the totality of the Bible, there is one command that pops up quite a bit:

When we remove any noise of commentaries, sermons, and just look at the words of God we see a clear picture.  We do not need to fear because:

Fear comes with the absence of visibility of the future. What if God provided us visibility and intimacy into the one who knows the future?  This is the power that comes from exploring sola scripture (scripture alone).  Our circumstances may change for the worst, but our God does not and we do know that regardless of the future his consistent voice says, “I am with you.”