By Kelly Balarie
Fear is sneaky, once you let it in, it grows like a weed in your heart, suffocating ideas, hopes and dreams. Then it starts telling you, you aren’t good enough, you’re not like those people, you will never be part of the in crowd. Your skills aren’t good enough. Your art will never measure up, no one wants to hang your work in their home. Why would you even try? Shut up already. Seriously…
Fear has a way of making us shrink back instead of shine, it has a way of making us feel insignificant, like it doesn’t matter, like we don’t matter. The crazy thing about fear is; it’s usually lying to us (I say usually because if you are standing on the ledge of a 27 story high building, with the wind whipping around your hair, you ought to be scared- that fear is real). The fear we are talking about is the one that likes to keep us so preoccupied with nonsense that it leaves no room for reason. Now, I like to think I’m a reasonable person. I can break down a situation to the lowest common denominator, even though once I’ve broken it down, the problem doesn’t necessarily disappear. Why is that? Because fear has it’s clammy little hands in every aspect of our lives.
Fear Fighting by Kelly Balarie, is a book about just that, it’s a book about recognizing fear in our lives and refuting them with the truth. This book is scattered with scriptures, life affirming prayers, stories and testimonies, from the author’s own personal experiences. It’s pulled together a little bit like an old quilt that your gramma may have made. Materials, patterns, and threads that you recognise but have come to a new light in their new life as a quilt, a comforter. This book is a comforter and a guide to the ultimate Comforter, the Holy Spirit, leading us and guiding us gently to focus on Jesus.
When I read through this book I immediately connected knowing that fear can gain a grip that is sometimes uncontrollable and hard to shake. I also know what the Bible says, if you are a reader of my blog, you know I have personally had to deal with some weird unshakable quirky fears -sharks in the bathtub?- anyone?
Kelly brought a concept to light I have never thought about, this concept of waiting versus abiding. When we are waiting for something, it’s like we have no job to do there is nothing we can be doing, we are just sitting, twiddling our thumbs and waiting- but the idea of abiding, abiding in Christ, abiding is “putting matters of God over matters assuaging our restless mind” (chapter 9). So abiding is a heart condition, it’s a condition that you trust God to do what He needs to do for you, and in that time you will cover your fears and your anxieties in his word. You will abide in Him as He works for you. I loved this… We have been waiting for along time to have children, this waiting when you feel like nothing is in your control and it is easier to get angry, easier to let fear take over, easier to ask the questions what if this never happens than it is to hope- Those easier things Allow lies to build and ultimately they become our life truths… we begin to believe them as truth. But Abiding in Him is giving God all of those fears, giving it all to God knowing that what he has is better than anything you could ever have imagined. Abiding in Him is active, it is an action you take, it’s making the choice every day to trust.
I really enjoyed this book, I loved that it brought up topics and issues that I deal with and it gave simple (because with God it is simple, and we tend to overcomplicate everything) realistic ways of working through fear. The biggest concept in this book is that fact that we need to give it all to God… What is the point of worrying about tomorrow, we have no control, so why do we try so hard to control it?
If you are having issues with fear, anxiety, control- if fear has you constantly worried about what others think, your hubby getting bit by a snake in the pool, your children falling off cliffs 4 counties over so you won’t let them play outside… if fear has it’s grip on you, this book might just be the one you need to read to set yourself free and start truly living in the authority we have been given, to stop focusing inward and start focusing upward…
Share the love,
M.
Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc
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