Fear and God's Mission

Wednesday 28 September 2005 at 10:06 pm I was doing a Bible study on John Ortberg's "If you want to walk on water..." and we came to the chapter on fear. It's a good chapter. In the course of the study I asked of anyone could think of a Bible story where fear played a large part. One person said that it was hard to think of one where it didn't. He was right. The more I thought about it the more I realized how often we find the main obstacle to God working out his mission in a particular circumstance was the fear of his servant. Abraham was afraid that God couldn't/wouldn't do what he promised. Jacob fleed from Esau fearing for his life and his future. God had to work very hard to convince Moses the he should go before Pharoah and make this ridiculous demand. In each case God's servant clearly had good reason to fear, but in each case the real issue in terms of the forward movement of God's plan was the fear of his servant. Comparatively, Sarah giving birth and plagues in Egypt were easy. God just did those thing, but where God wrestled with Abraham, Jacob and Moses was with their fear and reluctance. I have something to learn from that.