Fear Factor

Several weekends ago I went to a seminar called Refuse to Be a Victim. The purpose of the seminar is to make people more aware of their surroundings in order to avoid becoming a victim of some kind of violence.

I consider myself pretty careful. I lock my doors as soon as I get in the car. I don't run errands by myself at night. Things like that. I think God gives us common sense and we need to use it. But as careful as I am, I don't consider myself fearful.

I trust God to take care of us. If I ever do have a twinge of fear, I immediately say a prayer and trust that God is going to control the situation.

Well after this little 4-hour seminar, I left fearful. And I didn't like it. I said to myself, "I need to go home and read my Bible." It's my security blanket.

And it was the one thing that was left out of the seminar. Expectedly so, since it is a program of the NRA. I don't have issue with that. But it was a fellow Christian teaching it. So while I appreciated the information, I can not get away from the fact that although I certainly think we should be careful and aware, etc., we should NOT live our lives in fear. As followers of Christ, we know Who is in control!

An opportunity arose last year for the men in our Sunday School class to take some men from the Coalition bowling. These were men going through one of their programs. Our guys were going to pick them up and return them at the end of the evening. One of the men was so worried about "something" happening. If people didn't serve because something might happen, we'd have no missionaries overseas or downtown!

Please hear me...I am not a careless person who will stop on the side of the road to help any and every stranger. I wouldn't go to the Coalition and pick up a homeless man by myself to bring him to church. I don't let my kids play outside unsupervised. We don't run with scissors or lollipops in our mouths!

But there has got to be a point when we, exercising appropriate caution and listening to the Holy Spirit, put our lives completely in God's hands and trust Him to take care of us in any circumstance.

I think my sister-in-law put it best when my brother was in Papua New Guinea last month. She said, "Being in the ministry is the safest place for us to be in."

Well said, Kara!

(My handsome brother with the natives. He bought the bow and arrows from that gentleman after it was used to kill dinner!)