Advent Day 4

Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. (Isaiah 8:12-13)

The goal of the Christian life is not to live fearlessly. Rather, it is to have the right kind of fear.

We live in a world rife with fear. The very air we breathe is thick with it. Everywhere we look, we hear people crying, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” It is the cry of the world, telling us that the universe will come crashing down if our preferred political candidate loses the race. It is the cry of our hearts, insisting that we won’t be okay if our social media post doesn’t perform well enough. It is the cry of the devil, whispering the toxic lie that our failures disqualify us from God’s love. Fear is everywhere: fear of judgment, fear of death, fear of failure, fear of war, fear of environmental disaster, fear of the past, fear of the future, fear of rejection. The list goes on.

The Christian response most often given to this problem is simple: Choose faith over fear. The problem, though, is that––left to our own devices––we’ll always choose fear over faith. Our default setting is not dependence but independence. In other words, faith does not come naturally. Since the fall, our hearts are hard-wired to distrust God. There’s a reason “Fear Not” is one of the most common phrases in all of Scripture. Even the bravest Christian warrior will lose courage in the face of an enemy big and scary enough: enemies like sin, death, and the devil.

Bravery, then, is not the solution. So what is?

The prophet Isaiah says, “Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy; he is the one you are to fear…” (Isa. 8:12-13a). God is reassuring his prophet that the fears infecting the people hold no staying power because God is bigger and stronger than them. Moreover, in Jesus Christ, the one who has tied up the strong man (Matt. 12: 29), God has demonstrated his solidarity with us. Our fears died with Jesus at the cross. He is for us, and “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31b).

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