One of the common motives for praying to God is fear. We pray for health
because we fear sickness. We pray for prosperity for we fear poverty.
We pray for companionship because we fear loneliness. Whether we know it
or not, most of our prayers have an element of fear in them. I believe that there is a good sense of fear. Like the fear of a flying bullet. Some fears help us preserve our life.
But when fear takes over and makes self-preservation an obsession, fear now direct our lives.
Would you trust a person ruled by fear? Would you invest your money to a fearful businessman whose only goal is to preserve your money and not make it grow? Would you trust a fearful manager to run your business who is always afraid of making mistakes that he could not make decisions? Or would a soldier trust a coward to look over his back in the battlefield?
No?
Could it be possible that God withhold his blessings to us because of our chronic fearfulness?
Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter;so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.’
His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant and gather where I did not scatter?Should you not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return? Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten. (Mat 25: 24-28)
The problem of being filled with fear is that we become crippled in life. Because of fear, we burry our talents and ourselves thinking that would protect us. The problem with being buried is that you cannot really do anything, not even move. Buried people are dead people.
Christianity is not for the coward. Being a Christian is a risky business. Just look where Jesus ended up. Hanging on the cross.
Life is not for the coward as well. Life demands risk. To live is to love. And loving someone is always a risk.
If God granted you your prayers, what would you do with it?
If God granted you the partner you have been praying for, would you love her? Or would you cage her because of the fear of losing her? Would she make you a loving and joyful person? Or would she make you a miserable obsessive and jealous person?
Until one learn what it means what really means to love and learn to let go of his fear of loneliness, the gift of a partner might just end up as a curse, for you and most especially for her.
If God granted your prayers for wealth, would it make you giving or greedy? Would that wealth be shared to the poor, or be locked up?
Fear is like a black hole. It sucks everything inside oneself. You are always looking out for yourself that you forget to look at others. We become obsessed with having a (false) sense of security is that we forget to live. Most especially we forget to love.
Until we overcome this kind of unhealthy fear in ourselves, we are unfit stewards of God’s Providence.
Why?
Because we stop being stewards and become thieves. We grab for ourselves what God has entrusted to us to give away.
Until we learn to deal with our fears, we will always be stuck. Buried.
And Providence might be delayed or worst, denied.
So let a bigger faith overcome our big fears.
Let us remember that there is a perfect loving God who loves us.
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”- 1 John 4:18
Our fears may be many and enormous.
But God’s love is bigger.
Infinitely bigger.
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