Letting Go of Fear

By Adrienne Woodland

This year’s fast has been particularly challenging, especially when it comes to my thoughts and expectations. I was excited to begin these two weeks of consecration and rededication. But my expectation on how Day 1 would go was completely shattered due to an unforeseen mishap. I did not expect to fall on ice, injuring my arm and spending part of the day in the emergency room in excruciating pain.

Now, in Week 2, I’m wondering if I am striving for perfection to say, ‘Ha, I did it!’ Or am I striving to go deeper in my relationship with God? In the pursuit of perfection, we can end up checking all the boxes and still find ourselves just skating on the surface in our relationship with God.

Maybe the problem isn’t striving to be perfect, but rather fear. Fear of failure, fear of falling short, fear of losing things you hold dear. Fear that if you don’t get it right, God won’t love you.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV).

“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” 2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV).

Fear has held me in my house for the past week. Fear of falling and hurting myself again. But I’ve also been afraid of going deeper in my prayer life. So, staying safely in my home and away from house-to-house prayer has kept me comfortably at the surface.

But God can find you right where you are. He brought house-to-house prayer to me via Zoom. And I was reminded of the love of God I feel every time I fellowship with my Detroit Church family.

After that Zoom prayer, I realized I have been down on myself because I haven’t been ‘perfect.’ I’ve been down because challenges have come, altering the plans I had in my head. I finally had to realize I need to extend myself grace. And I also realized that fasting and consecration is a daily walk. Each day we will face hurdles, but we can only overcome them with God. If we count on doing it by ourselves, we will fail every single time.

Now, I was finally ready to face my fear and go deeper in the Lord. To those depths where you’re weeping and fully exposed. To the place where you can no longer hide behind protocol and checklists. It is the place of true surrender. This is the place where you realize you are nothing and can do nothing without God.

This is also the place where you feel His love like a warm embrace. He encapsulates you with the comfort that only He can give. This is where He tells you how He fearfully and wonderfully made you and how much He loves you. This is the place where you get a chance to see yourself through His eyes. Oh what joy! Oh what peace! To be in the secret place of the Lord!

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you” Psalm 91:1-7 (ESV).

An Assured Hope

By Sierra Phelps

“God, I don’t like today”: my five-word prayer that ended as soon as it began on day 6 of this fast. I knew it was day 6, because it was also typically my sabbath day; but now it became a fasting sabbath day. I felt frustrated, needy, and vastly uncomfortable, because who told me to ever think that the practicing of spiritual disciplines was to me and not for me through Him? I wrote sloppily with a disgruntled frown in my time with our Father saying:

“I wish I was talking to you from a better standpoint; like how I felt on Wednesday, when I was so happy and grateful that I could eat Triscuits. Now I feel like I’m trying too hard to present a posture that I do not yet have. Is this why the fig tree was cursed? False presentation of a budding harvest within its leaves that was not present within its fruit? Are these the feelings associated to what the psalmist means when He commands His soul to praise the Lord as a mode of self-encouragement (Psalms 10:1-2; Psalms 103:21-22)

 or 

am I trying to impress you with my filthy rags of “goodness” or “faithfulness” perceived through my eyes as if they’re yours? Search me, God, and know my heart...”

In one of my favorite tracks from Glory Hour, Victory Boyd says, “I don’t have to pretend like everything’s okay. That’s not what Jesus meant when He said to have faith,” so what did you mean, Lord?

In comes the very vivid image of my Supergirl shoes. When I was around 8 or 9, my dad would always prefer amusement parks when my sister and I were on our summer vacations. I, not yet at growth spurt age, would often be the bag and sunglasses holder while my older sister and dad rode what seemed to be THE BEST rides; until of course, the Supergirl shoes. My saving grace! Yet, it couldn’t be that easy of a ticket on, right? So, in confirming what I hoped for but didn’t really rest in, I soon discovered that if I went on a tiny demi-relevé (tippy toes), I would be guaranteed to get on the ride. 

In many moments within this time of consecration, he’s shown me my favorite Supergirl shoes when I began to consider the just-right/demi-relevé efforts that I should make to enjoy the ride ahead rather than trusting in the promise of the experience. Through such gentle reflection, in divinely intimate Holy Spirit fashion, the Lord has begun to excavate my heart of false hopes.

Following Jesus place after place in my faith journey has demonstrated faithfulness, but I soon began to see the deceitfulness of my heart worming its way into my ambitions to remain faithful in following. The core of my substantiated faith as discussed in Hebrews 11:1 was connected to the thorn that I have wrestled with since adolescence into adulthood: perfection. Where does the idol of perfection lie?

It props itself up through movements of perceived faithfulness to the naked eye, though slipping you a velvet sacred pouch to drop in your offering of selfishly ambitious-tinged hopes and validation-clad ideas. 

“If I just do this thing right, (i.e., my singleness, roles in school leadership, ministry efforts, etc.), maybe just maybe I’ll be able to rest in contentment because at least I know that I pleased Him.” 

or 

“Maybe both can happen! Who’s to say that my yes to this isn’t a yes in Heaven too- after all, everything I do is for you and to you, Lord.”

“No” was my least-favorite word, and “yes” became my middle-name. Each “yes” raised my relevé to its highest elevation that I even began to lift my chin a bit to receive a promised experience that I could never earn. 

Too often I relent the neediness of my frame, almost as if dependency and utter reliance on the Giver offends the gifts that He’s purposed me for. These few thoughts of my inner dialogue convey deeply to the thorny ground of perfection that strangles the seed of total dependence and trusting reliance in our Father to finish what He’s started within me, for “He who has begun a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6 CSB). 

I have surrendered to the truth that my attempts at completion make all things partially new, because a heart partially committed to the belief that it was finished on the cross will hijack your hope each time you feel ashamed amid the exposure of weaknesses. The word “weakness” in 2 Corinthians 12:9 describes a person who feels weak, distressed, unsettled, or needy. Just like me on Day 6, and possibly how you feel on Day 12. Paul’s words read, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, my power is made perfect in you’” (NCV). 

False hopes often condition us to rejoice in accessing the ride through our meager tippy-toed efforts, rather than embracing the gift of grace through just the right shoes, at just the right time; allowing us to rest in the hope of His love towards us (Romans 5:5).

Lord, help our longing for you to not be a mere tactic to become you, but to rest in the likeness that you offer through the death and resurrection of Jesus, a likeness that is shrouded in grace and cloaked in surrender. Let us not pretend to love the “by grace” element of Ephesians 2:8-9 with a faulty foundation of hope, but instead rejoice all the more in the truth that your perfecting work is found in our imperfect surrender. 

“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness…”