Fear

Been thinking the past couple of days about the "fear factor" (again) from Exodus 1 as I'm starting Exodus in my personal Bible study readings.

A new Pharoah comes to power in Egypt and sees all these Israelites running around and this is what he says:

Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.

The fear of losing their slave labor force drives this Pharoah to order that all the Hebrew boys be killed at birth by the midwives.

Our fears have the power to dictate how we behave in our sphere of influence with potential for disastrous or glorious results. There are parents who hyper-over-protect in fear. There are students who are driven by fear of failure to live 24/7 in the library. There are "wildly successful" professionals in every sector of industry and business and ministry and service and non-profit who are driven by deep-seated fears that tyrannize them to work harder, faster, more creatively than others.

To be fear-driven in our motivation as a primary motivator is to eventually be ruined by fear. It has the power to wreck our lives...and not only ours, but the people around us as well. It is a terrible motivator because it does not last, it does not give back life, it only takes it away. Decisions we make out of fear are often poor and hasty, defensive, grasping.

Many of these parents/students/professionals are tremendously gifted people who have allowed their gifts to be hijacked by fear. What if instead of fear moving to hard work and creativity, they (I) allowed the Holy Spirit to enliven these gifts and move me in faith, hope, and love to do the good works God prepared in advance for them (me) to do?

Perhaps in some ways it's impossible to be completely free of fear as a motivator. Perhaps the only real solution is to come to a place of identifying our fears, confessing them before the Lord, repenting of them as they rear their ugly heads, and asking the Spirit to replace our fear-motivated living and working with faith, hope, and love over the course of our lives.