Hubby passed this small excerpt on to me today, it’s from ‘Encounter God’s heart,’ the Passion Translation. I think it addresses the issue of fear of the unknown, very well: “Act on faith. When fear has chained us within gates of complacency, it’s time to do something radical. To stop cowering behind the questions and put an end to our internal debates. To face the challenges of “What if this or that happens” and find resolve in our courageous answers.

Sometimes we just have to run as hard as we can into the unknown. To stop letting the fear of what may or may not happen hold us back. When we’re frozen in place and faith feels scary, we need to find God. We need to courageously confront fear by taking a risk and moving forward. When we’re not even sure if we’re hearing God, let’s do the opposite of what fear tells us to do. The Lord’s will is revealed when we confront our questions and stop allowing them to hold us back. Faith is courageous!”

Here’s a great suggestion for prayer as well: “Father, You know my heart’s desire is to do Your will. Fear of the unknown has held me back for too long. I’m going to face the what-ifs. And even if things don’t turn out the way I want them to, my praise will still rise. In the fog of uncertainty, I am choosing to act on faith. Amen.”

This past week has been a trying time for some of the people I know and love, and these ‘Encounter Observations’ were a huge blessing personally. Sometimes I’ve found I can get stuck because of fear – the sort of things that come up that we have not experienced before. This week fear has attacked us as a couple, on a number of occasions. We’ve been unable to sleep well, surrounded by a million thoughts. You know about the sort of stuff that seems like you can figure it out. if you just give it some thought… but you never can!  Hubby needs surgery on his right hand and thumb, and the operation is next Thursday. This is a big deal because he is my full-time carer.

Meanwhile, I woke up the middle of the night at 2.00 am one morning last week, totally unable to breathe. I haven’t got Covid, I had an obstructed airway. Yet at the time this happened, I was sound asleep. This was not a fun way to wake up! Hubby leapt out of bed and rendered the Heimlich and eventually, obviously (!), I took some raspy breaths and then I had quite a bit of trouble going back off to sleep again! 

My husband has to go to hospital overnight to have an operation on his thumb, so our lives have been turned topsy-turvy by the hospital preparations, their agendas and timetables, plus wondering if going ahead with the surgery right now, is such a great idea. The surgery is necessary, but nobody is making him have it, it is just the only pain-free door open to us. So we decided to take a risk and move forward, even though it means our lives will become more difficult in the immediate interim, and we are planning a bible trip right after Easter. This kind of stuff is never convenient!

Doing this has shown us things we didn’t know about ourselves. Well yay! Wot fun. The thing I’ve noticed about unforeseen circumstances is that we definitely do not know, what we do not know until these things stop being a theory and become reality. Or the Lord Himself, confronts stuff!  I think that the way to more faith can take making a leap of faith a very hard thing to do. The biggest thing that paralyses me is that we might get it wrong and end up in the land of worse! Like Almighty God can’t see our blindspots and overcome them… sigh … 

Running hard into the unknown sounds great and faith-filled – until you have to do it and you really don’t actually have a clue what will happen! I know many of you reading this have faced this too, and far worse things than I can imagine …  The prayer I included today also helped me to focus in on the real issue – a lack of faith. It isn’t faith if we are certain of the outcome. Sometimes we need someone else to give us the words we can’t find, to express what we are afraid of … I hope this was useful to you too. Fear of the unknown can be paralysing – but the Lord is always here for us – we can’t grow without being stretched! 👋🏻