The Final Word

I typically start out writing this kind of thing for myself, for personal healing, self-discovery. It’s a pattern God has established with me over the years: I write, He responds. Yet sometimes, in the midst of the process, the words take on a life of their own, as if the Spirit Himself is breathing into them, instilling them with a significance more far-reaching than anything I had intended. They are no longer mine; I am compelled to pass them on, in hopes that the freedom I receive can be multiplied. So if you are reading, this is for you.

Fear is a deep, thick, ancient cancer curling around my heart, and it has been slowly strangling life out of me for as long as I can remember. It must be starved out, exorcised, if I am going to move forward, ever begin to truly live. I’ve battled it over and over again, managing to snap some of its tentacles, yet the bulk of it remains – a writhing, seething, toxic mass, putrid and pulsating, poisoning all that’s good, snuffing out feeble sparks of hope with its chill, foul breath.

And yet … fear’s chief power stems from lies and intimidation. It spins webs of worst-case scenarios and skewed realities, attempting to overshadow truth, eclipse light, cripple and paralyze love before it has a chance to bloom, warping it into some twisted sense of obligation and groveling.

It’s fairly easy to write about it when I’m not feeling it – that wrenching, overpowering wave of terror that sets my heart pounding, my stomach clenching, that rips my very soul from its moorings, plunging it – lost and helpless – into a dark unrelenting sea. I’m not feeling it right now, because it is past master of the art of slinking into corners in the basement of my heart, lurking, leering, too slippery to grab hold of and drag into the light. That elusive, all-powerful Light, where we both know full well it would disintegrate into nothing, or shrink down into a shivering puddle, simple to mop up and dispose.

See? Intimidation. The description is horrifying, gut-wrenching … yet strangely overstated, overblown, a gaudy caricature of itself. “And this is what some of you were …” (see 1 Cor. 6:11).

There is power in these words, deliverance and healing. Because, though I have cowered in fear’s face at the height of its reign of terror, its domineering hold on me has drastically weakened. The billowing, blustering all-encompassing threat? A sham, a bluff. A smoke-and-mirrors illusion. A lie, spun by the father of lies out of ropes of sand. The quivering mass, snapping and spitting from the corner? That is fear’s true size and shape.

Light is gaining ground. Fear’s domination has been substantially weakened; its stranglehold long since broken. Love and truth are swelling, spreading, a rush of molten gold flooding into every crack and crevice, setting the darkness aflame with its cleansing, enlivening glow.

The plain, solid work of obedience has been shoring up the foundation laid on my confession in Christ, replacing faulty understandings, reinforcing core promises with repeated exercise, undeniable experience. Trust, contentment, joy, belief – when I choose to walk in the truth of the Word, the blessing follows. Simple and irrefutable, I am watching its fruit multiply a thousand-fold in my life.

What remains for fear? The Master of the Universe holds me by the hand. The power and glory is in the Word – at His breath, the stronghold quakes and crumbles.

I am not naïve in this. Even as the fortress falls, shards and splinters pierce through tender places, worming down into pockets of unknown or unconfessed sin, taking root in unsurrendered ground, burrowing into dismissed or forgotten wounds insufficiently healed. The monopoly is broken, but the battle is not yet won. I have stepped into the Promised Land, yet pockets of resistance await, scheming and unsubdued.

Wise to the still-present threat, I walk confidently forward, eyes fixed on my King. In the reflected light of His glory, the remaining enemy shrinks to its proper size, the waiting battle to its legitimate significance. I find I can truly rest, regroup – even celebrate – though the table He’s prepared for me stands in the very presence of my enemies.

Forward … further up, and further in. Onward, through fields of grace toward lands of glory. Fear may have its day, but those days are numbered. The final word has already been determined, and it is not fear.

It is Love.