Fear can be like a shadow creeping up and over you, but what do you fear the most? Understanding what you fear the most can bring assurance.
It was a simple wire bridge on a confidence course. Not very high, the three-wire bridge was a challenge for some and not for others. When I was a pastor to a group of people with serious mental illnesses, we would go away for weekends to a campsite with a confidence course.
People would climb to the top of the 2-meter-high platform. Then they would look down the wires to the other side...
Fear can be like a shadow creeping up and over you, but what do you fear the most? Understanding what you fear the most can bring assurance.
It was a simple wire bridge on a confidence course. Not very high, the three-wire bridge was a challenge for some and not for others. When I was a pastor to a group of people with serious mental illnesses, we would go away for weekends to a campsite with a confidence course.
People would climb to the top of the 2-meter-high platform. Then they would look down the wires to the other side about 15 meters away.
Taking the first step onto the single wire was hard. Afterward, you would stretch your hands to the wire on the left and the right and then creep across.
The trick was to keep an eye on where you were going and not necessarily where your feet were landing.
Others would be speaking encouragements, and some would hold the wire still for you, but this was the walker facing the fear of what?
- Falling?
- Failure?
- Injury?
- Humiliation?
It was the brain saying that this was dangerous. That it was different from normal walking.
It was the brain doing what it was supposed to do. Protect you.
But what if you did this three-wire bridge every day? That it was part of your daily commute?
You would eventually get very confident because the brain had been trained to accept living outside the norm.
When the worst thing you could imagine happens, and you survive and possibly even thrive, a new understanding of security grows in you.
If you fear drowning, then learning to swim helps calms you.
Perhaps it’s cancer, but as you go through the dark valley, you come to new places to experience God’s closeness.
Maybe you have feared a relationship breakdown, but going through it, you learn new trust and experience God meeting you in new ways.
You realize how much fear has controlled your life
You probably don’t know what you fear the most. It’s buried away in subconscious land and will only surface when your lifeboat begins to rock, and water comes in over the side.
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