Fear can be a monster. For real! It  can be like a big, hairy, ugly, stinky, towering monster!

As a child growing up in a loving home with my parents and siblings, I had a brief encounter with the monster known as Fear of the Dark. As a young girl, I just knew that there was a monster behind the brown, wooden doors of my closet and under my cluttered twin bed that only unleashed his frightening powers when the lights went out at night. I’m supposing, in an attempt to scare the monster, irritate my throat and frustrate my parents I would SCREAM like my life depended on it!!!!! Needless to say, my daddy or mama came to the rescue. I got over that fear, and now relish rest in the dark.

Fast-forward many decades, and here we all are today grown, or growing up, possibly not dealing with fear of the dark, but potentially struggling with fear of the unknown.

My new struggle dwells in the area of knowing good is coming, and trusting the process of change, while stepping on out anyway. Scripture says God doesn’t give us the spirit of fear. Therefore, when we do get it, because it didn’t come from our Daddy we can send it right back from whence it came. Scripture also says don’t stop doing good because we’ll reap if we faint not. I believe blessings come from the Lord. But stepping out and stepping up to be blessed can be scary. Why is that?

It’s not like we don’t pray for, plan for, believe for, wait on and work toward the things we desire whether they be healing, a new job, marriage, children, restoration, or financial provision. We all want, or should want change for the better. But still, better and the path to get there can be scary. Blessings can have a strange way of making us nervously confident and excitedly cautious at the same time.

There’s something about being a person of faith, making our petitions known to God and announced to man that puts pressure on us, well at least it has on me. Putting a prayer up there, putting our faith out there, trusting it to come to pass, knowing others know what we’re believing for, then having to WAIT on it to actually unfold can be as scary as the time I “accidentally” watched “The Shining” at my Aunt Ann’s and Uncle Ricky’s house in the early 80’s. Scary, I know! 

I’ve learned that the root of my adult “scary” situations is not wanting to disappoint God and taint my testimony (i.e. be embarrassed). I know, that’s whack. Pray for me. I also know Romans 8:28, but who wants to be known as the one who launched out and lost, tried and failed, or thought they heard God say go and He said NO? I certainly don’t.

A lot of what we go through is God’s loving attempt to grow our faith in Him! In the best Gomer Pyle I can muster up, “surprise, surprise, surprise!!!” All that we experience is about drawing us closer to Him.

God has guaranteed us all some amazing promises. He never guaranteed it would be easy, predictable, comfortable or even enjoyable at times, but He has given His guarantee and that’s good enough for me! At the end of the day, His name is on the line regarding our lives, and no monster in a closet or monster in our minds can stop it. We just have to trust, pray, remember what He’s already done, partner with those with a testimony in our area of testing, stay the course and most importantly, do like I did as a five-year-old on 19th Street in Birmingham Alabama’s West End…when we’re scared, just tell our Daddy! (I mean Big Daddy, as in God:) He’s got our back, and the proof of His power to back it all up!

@AngelaMMoore316