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The infection was supposedly gone, but my pain lingered and then intensified. As a twelve-year veteran of chronic illness, I went into the familiar mode I’ve learned to operate in when a strange new health issue barges into my already fragile life: do tons of medical research, try to find the best doctors, write out pages of questions to ask, and—if there’s enough time and energy left at the end of each day—try to stop and breathe for a few minutes.
But after many doctor visits, multiple rounds of (conflicting and unclear) testing, and still no answers, the familiar litany of fears reappeared: How will I live with this severe chronic pain if it doesn’t get better? How can I endure the increasing loneliness of being more and more homebound? Will I be able to keep providing for myself financially? How can I be joyful and courageous when there’s so little to live for and so much to fear?
While each of us has different circumstances, many of us can relate to fearful questions like these (and countless others). Sometimes we can keep them on the back burner of our minds while engaged in work or distracted by other tasks. But when we go to bed, and the lights go out and the room gets quiet, the fears seem to boldly emerge from their hiding places like cockroaches in a dark kitchen at midnight.
The question for us as Christians is this: How can we seek to sanctify the scary places of our lives? In other words, how can the truths of God’s character and works intersect with the terrors we’re facing (or fear that we might face) in a way that comforts, sustains, and empowers us to Christlike living? How can we fight the fear of everything else with the fear of the Lord?
David’s words in Psalm 16 can help us in this regard: “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken” (v. 8). Fears of the future can easily overwhelm us when they occupy the place of prominence in our mind’s eye. When our fears are front and center, they tend to push everything else to the periphery—including the sustaining and empowering truths about our God. Just as it’s hard to see things that are in our physical peripheral vision, it’s hard to see things that are in our spiritual peripheral vision. Therefore, we do well to reorient our vision in a way that puts the Lord always before us, in the center of our mental processes and heart meditations, rather than letting truths about Him be pushed to the periphery.
For the Christian, the truths of who God is, what He has done for us, and what He will do for us are the dominant realities that we must ever set before our spiritual eyes. Of course, that doesn’t mean that our fears are not real or significant. Setting the Lord before us is not an exercise in denying reality but rather a commitment to reorient ourselves to biblical truth. Ultimately, our fears pale in comparison to the fact that we have been chosen by God from the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4), that we are dearly beloved children (1 John 3:1), and that He will preserve us until we go to be with Him for all eternity (Phil. 1:6).
To be sure, this kind of reorientation takes practice, especially when our bodies and souls feel hijacked by our fears. But consciously seeking to set the Lord before our eyes that we might fear and tremble at His past, present, and future goodness toward us (see Jer. 33:9) can help put all other fears in proper proportion—at the periphery, and not at the center.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was troubled in soul in the garden of Gethsemane as He contemplated the horrors of bearing the wrath of God for all the sins of all the elect the next day (Matt. 26:36–46). Yet He submitted Himself to the Father’s will despite the agony He would experience, looking forward to the glorious fruit that His suffering would produce (Heb. 12:2). As we follow Him through fearful suffering to eternal glory, may we set Him ever before our eyes when our fears vie for pride of place. Because of the saving work of our triune God, we can find comfort and strength in the truth that Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 44 so beautifully articulates:
Q: Why does the creed add, “[Jesus] descended into hell”?
A: To assure me during attacks of deepest dread and temptation that Christ my Lord, by suffering unspeakable anguish, pain, and terror of soul, on the cross but also earlier, has delivered me from hellish anguish and torment.
Uncertainty pervades our temporal lives on this earth, tempting us to fear. But thanks be to God, nothing is more certain than our glorious eternal future with Him, freed from all fears except for the soul-thrilling, joyful fear of our glorious God.