Overcoming fear from troubles

…He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.”

-1 Kings 19:4, NIV

In 1 Kings Chapter 19, verses 1 to 9, Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to tell him that he will be killed the next day. When Elijah heard this message, he was very afraid and ran for his life. Elijah seems to be giving up because of the trouble that is about to come to him – and on his journey in the desert, Elijah sat under a broom tree and prayed to the Lord to take his life, and after that, he fell asleep. Then an angel woke him up and gave him food to eat and water to drink. Elijah ate then lay down again to sleep, but the angel woke him up the second time and asked him to eat because the journey he took was too much for him. Then Elijah continued to eat and was strengthened by the food – and then he continued travelling until he reached Mt. Horeb.

God revealed to me what this event means to us in our lives. First is that the message of Jezebel to kill Elijah translates to the troubles we have in our lives. Our enemy, the devil, uses these troubles to pursue us until we give up and let the troubles we have kill us. And us, we are like Elijah who was in fear because of the trouble pursuing him. Now the tendency is for us to run away from it, and along the way, we also come to the point where we give up and wish that we would just die – like what Elijah prayed to the Lord. But then, God told me that what we don’t realize in these times is that we are still alive. We don’t realize that God is always giving us a new hope when He wakes us up the next morning, and that God also provides us food to renew our strength so that we continue on our journey. This is something that we don’t see when we have troubles – that is because we are always looking at the negative side, which is that these troubles would just kill us.

So now that this has been revealed to us, what then should we do?

First is that we should completely put our trust and hope in the Lord. By this, we could strengthen our hearts because we trust that the Lord will deliver us from our troubles. We must also remember that our hearts are now also being shielded by our hope in the Lord – this is so that our fear from our troubles wouldn’t consume us and kill us.

Second is that we should always realize the grace that God has given to us. If we only realize the grace of God, we wouldn’t be grumbling because of the troubles we have. If we only realize the grace of God, even when we are in the middle of the strongest storm of our lives, we would just always be in the mode of thanksgiving. We wouldn’t feel fear in our hearts, or any negative things – that is if only we realize the grace that God has given us. We must realize that our every breath, every beat of our hearts, and every food we eat is the grace of God.

And lastly is that we should continue to move forward in our journey. We are now guarded from our fear on the troubles we have, so there is no reason for us to stop from our journey. What we could only do is to continue to move forward!

Original link for the photo: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Scared_Child_at_Nighttime.jpg/250px-Scared_Child_at_Nighttime.jpg