Why Am I Afraid?

The Anatomy of Anxiety, Part 5: Why Am I Afraid?

Note: For part one of this mini-series, please visit: http://bit.ly/aHstk. For part two, please visit: http://bit.ly/20R01P. For part three, stop by: http://bit.ly/HAoxI. For part four, drop by: http://bit.ly/1I6XmF.

Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love? Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety.

What Is the Biblical Portrait of Phobia, Fear, and Anxiety?

John tells us that “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love (1 John 4:18).

The word John uses for “fear” is “phobos.” It is used 138 times in the New Testament. Interestingly, the number one New Testament command is, “Fear not!”

In a positive sense, phobos can mean reverence, awe, respect, and honor.

In a negative usage, it means terror, apprehension, alarm, and arousal to flee. In Matthew 28:4, we have a word picture of phobos/phobia. When the Angel of the Lord appears, the guards fear and fall like dead men. Thus here it is used of paralysis of action.

In Luke 21:26, phobos relates to uncertain expectations, terror, apprehension that fears the “What next!?”

In Romans 8:15, phobos has the idea of slavish terror as Paul reminds us that we have been given a spirit of sonship, confidence, and relational acceptance, not a spirit of slavish terror about relational rejection.

Fear of Ultimate Rejection

John is quite specific in his portrait as he says fear has to do with punishment. Punishment means rejection, separation, condemnation—to be left as a loveless orphan, to be abandoned as a helpless child.

To understand John fully, we must go back one verse. In 1 John 4:17, John says that “love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment.”

Confidence is openness, frankness, boldness, assurance, concealing nothing, no hiding, no shame, no fear. It is the courage to come boldly before the throne of grace—because of grace! It is the courage to express myself freely and openly in relationship because I know there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

So What Is Phobia, Fear, and Anxiety?

So, how does the Bible picture and define anxiety, fear, and phobia? We might summarize it like this:

“Phobia is paralyzing apprehension causing me to flee what I fear or to become paralyzed when facing my fear because I doubt my relational acceptance and security, because I doubt God’s grace. My ultimate fear is fear of rejection by God. That fear is the cause of all other fears in life.”

What do I fear?

“I fear God, but not in the sense of reverence and awe. I fear God’s rejection because I refuse to place faith in God’s gracious acceptance of me in Christ.”

Why am I afraid?

“If the God of the universe rejects me, then I’m on my own. And If I’m on my own, life is too much for me.”

Making It Real

Let’s make it real-life practical. Phobia/phobos/fear/anxiety makes me feel like:

*“Life is unsafe. It’s too hard for me.”

*”If I cry out for help, no one will respond. If I reach up to God, He won’t care because He has rejected me. He is ashamed of me and I am ashamed in His presence.”

*”I won’t be protected. There’s no one who cares and no one who is in control. No one is flying this plane!”

*”I am orphaned and left alone because no one cares about me. Therefore, I have to make life work on my own.”

*”But I’m small, childlike, inadequate. I can’t overcome the 800-pound gorilla of life. While I must face life alone, life is too much for me to face.”

So How Do We Diagnose Fear?

Phobias, fear, worries, and anxiety signify my failure to grasp and apply God’s powerful promise of gracious acceptance and protection. Fear and anxiety are caused by my refusal to accept my acceptance in Christ. If I believe Satan’s lying, condemning narrative, then I am left with no option other than trusting in myself. And I am far too small to handle life on my own.

Fear becomes a vicious cycle. Fearing God’s rejection, I reject God’s help, and I end up feeling helpless to face life.

The Rest of the Story: There Has to Be a Better Way

There has to be a better way, don’t you think? I sure hope so!

John gives us that better way when he tells us that “perfect love casts our all fear” (1 John 4:18).

Join us again tomorrow when we examine biblical principles for overcoming anxiety with faith, hope, and healing love.

God's Peace for Our Anxiety

The Anatomy of Anxiety, Part 4: God’s Peace for Our Anxiety

Note: For part one of this mini-series, please visit: http://bit.ly/aHstk. For part two, please visit: http://bit.ly/20R01P. for part three, stop by: http://bit.ly/HAoxI.
Does worry, doubt, or fear get the best of you sometimes? Do you wonder where anxiety comes from and how to defeat it in your life and the lives of those you love?

Then we need a biblical anatomy of anxiety.

Perfect Love Casts Out All Fear

In 1 John 4:18, God tells us that “perfect love casts out all fear”—phobos, phobia, terror, panic, separation anxiety. Such fear involves paralyzing apprehension that causes me to flee what I fear or become paralyzed when facing my fear because I doubt my relational security and acceptance. What overpowers such fear of rejection, separation, and condemnation?

God’s answer is faith in perfect love—perfect agape, sacrificial, giving, grace-oriented love. Anxieties and phobias signify a failure to apprehend and apply God’s powerful promise of gracious acceptance.

Spiritual: Faith in God—Accept God’s Acceptance

We need to help one another to reject Satan’s condemnation narrative—his lie that we are unforgiven because God is unforgiving. We need to move with each other from alienation to communion through reconciliation.

We need to make real in our lives the truth that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. We need to make real in our lives the truth that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. As Martin Luther often said, “sanctification is the art of getting used to our justification.”

I would add, “peace and freedom from anxiety is the art of getting used to our reconciliation.”

Social—Faith in One Another—Trusting My Brothers and Sisters

Since mature love casts out fear, I need mature relationships with my brothers and sisters to conquer anxiety. I need to move from separation to community.

The temptation in anxiety is to do the opposite of what we need—to avoid people due to fear of rejection. Instead, we need to experience our partnership in the Gospel. We need to forgive and accept one another as Christ has forgiven and accepted us.

Self-Aware: Faith in Our Acceptance in Christ

Since mature love casts out fear, I need a mature biblical attitude about who I am in and to Christ. I need to see the new me. This is not about “self-esteem,” or “self-image,” but about “Christ-esteem” and an accurate biblical image of who I am in Christ.

This moves us from the paralyzing terror of nakedness that leads to the fear of exposure and rejection to the bold freedom and confidence that comes when we know we are unashamed and without blame in Christ Jesus. I must face my existential doubts (my doubts about my acceptance in Christ) in order to face, understand, and overcome my specific anxieties, fears, and phobias.

The Rest of the Story

Join us again on Tuesday when we examine biblical principles for overcoming anxiety with faith, hope, love, and peace.

How's Your Spiritual Love Life? Part Three: Religious Affections

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?
Part Three: Religious Affections

Why do we do what we do? What motivates us? Why do we love God or fail to love God? The biblical answers to these questions might surprise you. Join us on a journey of spiritual discovery in our new blog series on How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

We Are Motivated by Religious Affections

The Puritans called our spiritual longings “religious affections.” By “affections” they did not mean emotions, but something deeper. Emotions are reactive; affections are directive. As Jonathan Edwards explains: “Affections are the mainspring of human actions. The Author of human nature not only gave affections to man, but he made them the basis of human actions” (Edwards, Religious Affections, p. 9). Earlier he wrote:

The affections are the spring of men’s actions. All activity ceases unless he is moved by some affection—take away desire and the world would be motionless and dead—there would be no such thing as activity or any earnest pursuit whatsoever. Everywhere the Scriptures place much emphasis on the affections (Edwards, Religious Affections, p. xxviii).

The energy behind life is relational/spiritual. Relationships are fundamentally what move us. As John Owen describes:

Relational affections motivate the soul to cleave to and to seek relationships. The affections are in the soul as the helm is in the ship; if it be laid hold on by a skillful hand, he turneth the whole vessel which way he pleaseth (Owen, Temptation and Sin, p. ix).

Like God, as image bearers, we are persons-in-relationship. Spiritual relationships are the Holy of Holies of the soul because there truly is a God-shaped vacuum in the human soul.

We hunger for God while attempting to keep him far from our spiritual diet. When I worked on a psychiatric inpatient unit, I counseled a young man diagnosed as manic-depressive (what is now called bi-polar affective disorder). He experienced intense mood swings. At times he struggled with bouts of crippling depression, at other times he suffered from incapacitating elation. During one of his elevated periods, I asked him what would happen if he slowed down. “When I slow down, when my mind takes a break, then I languish alone in a bottomless, loveless pit.”

As we worked together, I encouraged him to invite God into the pit and onto the mountaintop. “Whatever you are experiencing,” I shared, “God is there and wants to experience it with you.”

In the ensuing days, weeks, months, and even years, he was able to face his spiritual dread. Though I believe that part of his struggle was physical, I believe that another part was spiritual. In his highs and lows, he escaped God, or at least tried to. All non-biological issues are relational issues, and ultimately spiritual ones. Blaise Pascal describes what occurs when we attempt to quench our spiritual thirst in non-God ways.

What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there once was in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself (Pascal, Pensées, VII, Paragraph 425).

So how’s your spiritual love life? Prayerfully ponder:

*What moves and motivates you to action?
*What desires impel and compel you?
*What are you earnestly pursuing and why?
*What is the energy behind your life?
*What fundamentally moves you?
*What is your soul cleaving to and seeking?
*Who or what is at the helm of your soul?
*What is in the Holy of Holies of your soul?
*What do you fill the God-shaped vacuum of your soul with?
*What do you fill your hungry soul with?
*What is your source of true happiness?
*What are you filling your infinite abyss with?

How's Your Spirtual Love Life, Part One: Great Lovers

How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?[i]
Part One: Great Lovers

Why do we do what we do? What motivates us? Why do we love God or fail to love God? The biblical answers to these questions might surprise you. Join us on a journey of spiritual discovery in our new blog series on How’s Your Spiritual Love Life?

Learn to Be a Great Lover

Often I’ve been tempted to market the counseling program I chair with the hook, Learn to be a great lover! but I’ve always had second thoughts. Too much possibility for misinterpretation. Frequently I’ve been tempted to start a first counseling session with the question, How’s your love life? I never have. Might be misinterpreted.

How’s your love life? Are you a great lover? Want to learn to be one? Keep reading.

Post-modern Christianity careens between the two extremes of fluffy, surface experientialism, and cold, aloof scholasticism. Biblical Christianity joins head and heart. We need a biblical theology that teaches us how to relate.

Changeless Truth for Changing Times

John Calvin, in his classic work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, explains that love is fundamentally what moves us. “God begins his good work in us, therefore, by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts; or, to speak more correctly, by bending, forming, and directing our hearts to righteousness.”

And Augustine, in his now famous quote, notes of God, “Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.”

Great Lovers Wanted

The Trinity marvelously fashioned us to reflect God, relate like God, representatively rule for God, and rest in God. God created us with the capacities to relate. He designed us to love Him with our entire being—worshipping Him as we enjoy and exalt Him. By creation, we are spiritual beings who worship, and, therefore, long to exalt, enjoy, and entrust ourselves to God.

So, how’s your love life? Could your relationship with God use some biblical truth and some resurrection power multipliers? Then come back tomorrow as we share relevant biblical principles for loving God passionately. Until then, prayerfully ponder:

*What do I value?
*What do I pursue?
*What do I treasure?

[i]Developed from materials originally published in: Kellemen, Bob. Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007.