Put Your Faith And Not Your Fears In Charge

“Sing songs of hope so opportunity can hear you coming.”

– Noah benShea

Once upon a time, once again, and forever in our soul, all of us are children who would like someone to tuck us in at night and tell us that everything is going to be go okay. Unfortunately, for too many of us, growing older has come to mean growing to believe that fears are real and faith is a fairy tale. So here, from this child to your child and to your inner child, here are some truths it has taken me a lifetime to learn about fears and faith and the courage it takes to tell the difference.

Feed your faith and your doubts will starve to death.

Life is usually as pregnant with hope as we are.

Fears follow doubt.
Faith follows hope.
Doubt your fears.
Have faith in hope.

Though hope matures to faith, faith never grows old.

Sing songs of hope so opportunity can hear you coming.

Fears live in our imagination. People with large imaginations tend to have large fears. Imagine that.

And yet there is the old tale of the old woman who, after a lifetime of church dinners and socials, asked to be buried with a fork in her right hand. And when people asked, “what’s with the fork?” they were to be told that the woman wanted everyone to know she thought the best was yet to come.

Anyone who thinks it is foolish to bet that the best is yet to come might wonder on the wisdom of betting otherwise.

Too many of us don’t have the courage to suffer happiness.

We become what we look for. Look for hope, and we will look hopeful.

Hope doesn’t always make sense. Often our heart knows what our mind only thinks it knows. Wisdom is more than insightful despair.

Social sanity is not agreeing that we are all watching the same movie but that we are all sitting in the dark. Our common insecurity and doubts make us all neighbors.

Heroes are not people free of fears but rather people who are not framed by their fears. Courage is not the absence of weakness but how we wrestle with our weaknesses

For most of us to turn our lives into a work of art we only have to step out of the fears that frame us.

“I’ve had a lot of problems in my life and most of them never happened.”
– Mark Twain

For many of us with problems – we are the problem.

The disturbing questions in life are no more real than the reassuring answers.

“Most of us are about as happy or sad as we make up our mind to be.”
– Abraham Lincoln

We may not be the masters of our fate. We can be masters of our attitude in the face of fate.

A pearl begins in an oyster as grain of sand that causes an irritation. The oyster’s manner of dealing with this irritation transforms the sand into a pearl. Some of us feel our life will not be right until we rid ourselves of every irritation. But like the fairy tale princess who could feel a pea under a mountain of mattresses, the less discomfort in our lives the more a single grain will be felt. Time and tides will bring grains of irritation into all of our lives, how we respond can transform what bothers us into what enriches us. Problems are often pearls waiting to be appreciated.

Altitude is mostly attitude.

There is no downside on hoping for the best in life. If you’re wrong, you certainly didn’t want to be right any sooner. None of us need to arrive at our sadness any sooner than necessary. Sadness always arrives too soon. Sometimes we come to learn that the sadness we experience is harnessed to the best that’s yet to come. Keep your hope harnessed to your sadness. Hope for the best, and make peace with the rest.

If we want to emulate heroic figures we might remember that honesty in the face of fear is its own heroism.

Bend the word courage to serve your purpose. Don’t be discouraged. Be encouraged. You try. I’ll try. And life will be less trying.

Almost all of us have more fears than faith. Imagine if our fears and faith were horses. Which then would you use for your lead horse to pull your wagon in life? The many horses of fear would be too afraid to know where to go, would be too frightened to take the lead. But if we put our one horse of faith in the lead, than all our fears would follow our faith. Hitch your wagon to your faith. Put your faith not your fears in charge.

Life rains on all of us. Some of us are flooded by a neighboring river, some by alcoholism, some by guilt for what we have done, some by guilt from what we didn’t do. When news of impending floods arrive, some of us give up, some of us pray, and some of us figure we have three minutes to learn to live under water.

Scripture’s weather advisory for the soul is as follows: This is the day God made, and I will joy in it.

“Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.”
– Napoleon

With hope we can face any trouble. Without hope we don’t have a prayer. And prayer is a path where there is none.

Sometimes the only way to get ahead of our troubles is to do what we can do, don’t worry about what we can’t do, and put what’s beyond us behind us. Let go, and let God!

Fear can be a false god. To fear is to worship what you fear.

Hope is the gate to faith, and faith is a doorway to heaven on earth.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us.”
– Nelson Mandella

There are boogey men in the closets and in caves halfway around the world. But nothing makes a boogey man looker bigger than not facing him. Facing fear is the right face to wear when facing any fear. Those who would use their faith to strike fears in others abuse the power of faith to protect their fears and are doomed to implode.

If fears are contagious, so is faith.

Put your faith not your fears in charge.

Sweet dreams.

Noah benShea

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