072 - What I've Learned About Fear
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"Have I not commanded you be strong and courageous? Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." - Joshua 1:9.
There is a lot of fear right now. Fear of COVID, fear of losing somebody who gets COVID, fear of losing your job, fear that you won't be able to find another job because you've been out of work for awhile now, fear surrounding the heated discussions about racism in America, fear of the riots, fear of the future, fear that you're going to say the wrong thing, fear that you're going to have to fire the team that you have been hanging on to by a thread, fear that you're going to lose the business that you have been building for for the last 20, 30, 40 years. This is heavy. We are in a season that is heavy individually, as families, and as a nation.
And I know a lot of us have adapted to this weird season of life that we're in. And we don't always think about this, but I think it's good to remind you today that this whole situation that is 2020 is still affecting us. It's affecting our relationships, it's affecting our minds. There's just a lot of fear. And I don't know about you, but it feels like it's starting to wear on us a little bit.
Now, before I speak to fear and all that I have learned about it recently, I want to say just a few things. Every week I show up on this podcast and I share from my heart. I try to be real. I share the things I'm learning, the things God's teaching me that I believe will be helpful for you and will encourage you. Sometimes I get it wrong. Actually, I can promise you, I have gotten it wrong and I will get it wrong again at some point. I'm not perfect. But I recently heard a quote from Craig Groeschel's podcast. And he said,
"Show up and be yourself because people would rather follow a leader who is always real than a leader who's always right.”
So I'm going to keep showing up here and be real because that's all I can do.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below!
I just want to acknowledge as we talk about fear, you're probably dealing with it on some level. I think most of us might even have issues of just constantly being fearful. It's like this background noise, but we've become really accustomed to it, so it doesn't feel like an issue anymore, but it's holding us back. It's holding us back from living the life that God wants us to live. There is this massive spirit of fear over our country right now. And not just our country, our homes, and individually, our hearts.
Grammy, my mother-in-law, and our babysitter were doing a handoff for the kids the other day. And the three of us were talking about this anxiety that we feel. Like, "Do you just feel like there's this anxiety just kind of constantly humming in our life it seems, anxiety and fear?" And we looked at each other and we're like, "I think everybody in this nation is feeling that. We just feel it." And thankfully, these women are godly women and we just looked at each other and we're like, "Not anymore. We can't." We're like, "I'm going to walk around my house and declare this as not for us in our house." And I'll get into that in a little bit, but the bottom line is we can't control what the rest of our nation is doing. And we have to acknowledge that the spirit of fear and anxiety is here. We can't control how the nation is responding, but guess what? We can absolutely control our own homes and our hearts.
So before I get practical with the things I've learned about fear and what we can do about this fear in our lives, I think we need to learn the difference between healthy fear and unhealthy fear. So the Bible actually talks a lot about fear, and it addresses healthy fear or Godly fear.
Proverbs 9:10 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding."
I was taught growing up in the church that this fear of the Lord equals respect. It's a reverence and awe for the Lord. And that's true. It is a reverence and an awe for the Lord. But I also think if you read the Bible and recount the experiences that people have had with angels or with the Lord or visions, there is actual trembling fear. Any interaction that people have had with angels or heavenly beings or visions from the Lord, flesh can't stand. It is an acknowledgement of the almighty power that is massive and all consuming and way bigger than anything we can comprehend.
Matthew 10:28 also speaks to fearing the Lord. And it says,
"Don't be afraid of those who want to kill your body. They cannot touch your soul. Fear only God who can destroy both soul and body in hell."
And this is speaking to the fact that we don't need to waste our fear on anyone or anything who doesn't have the final say about our soul and our spiritual life. Just kind of zooming out, getting that perspective. The one that we need to respect and fear and care about is the Lord. That's what really matters here. He's the one who controls our eternity. Fear the Lord, live your life for Him because He has the final say.
It's also important to realize that God gave us rational fear. When He created us and made our brains as complex as they are, He put kind of a map of fear in there as a guide. It's kind of like anger, the emotion of anger. When we're angry or fearful, sometimes it's just a signal that, hey, something's wrong. An example is a fear of heights. It's not irrational or crazy that we would be scared because we're up on a really high bridge, a mile in the sky, it's because we sense danger. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, Free Solo (It’s on Netflix!). It's so fascinating. It's such a good movie. It's a documentary about this guy named Alex who dares to climb... I think, what is it? The mountain in Yosemite. El Capitan? Yeah, I think that's it. Anyway, it's this massive rock face mountain that nobody has ever dared to climb without any kind of tether or ropes. So there's no safety net for him. If he misses a hand grip or a foothold, he's gone. He's dead. He falls off the mountain. It's just the craziest movie.
When Will and I watched it, our palms were so sweaty. I was sweating profusely and my butt got really tinkly and I couldn't watch because I was so nervous as I was watching it. I was like, "Oh my gosh." If you've seen the movie, you know. If you haven't, it's... I think you can watch it on Netflix anyway. Such a good movie. So intense. But there's this part in the movie that I learned about our brains. It's so fascinating. Alex, this guy got an MRI I think. What is it? MRI? CT scan? Whatever it is that reads the map of your brain activity.
Anyway, it showed that his brain had a very small fractional amount of activity in the fear part of his brain. And so a normal human would have way more activity in this fear part of your brain, but his was super small. It wasn't normal ranges of activity. And I was like, "Whoa, God actually puts that in our brains to signal to us, hey, this is dangerous." And so it's important to realize God gave us rational fear just to keep us safe. He showed us limitations to help us understand when we're in danger so we can step back.
Here's the problem now. What happens is I think the enemy often takes these rational fears and then he expands upon them. He exaggerates them and he takes them way too far. He magnifies them. He creates phobias. And he wants to take these God given gifts, this healthy, Godly fear, this rational fear, and then he wants to take them and run with them. And it's important to discern, okay, Lord, what in my life is rational fear? And then what is a spirit of fear? And that takes a lot of wisdom and a lot of discernment and a lot of time just spent with the Lord. But there is healthy fear. There's Godly fear, and that is where we want to stay. But I would daresay that most of the fear we allow into our lives is the spirit of fear. It's this demonic exaggeration of fear that is taken too far. At least that's how it's been for me. Most of the fear we allow into our lives and live in is the spirit of fear.
Now, I'm going to be real with you. I have struggled with fear my whole life. As a kid, I would have nightmares, really scary visions. I had a hard time sleeping by myself. I've always been really sensitive to the spiritual side of life. Cannot watch scary movies. That is like, nope, off the table—not even an option for me. A few movies I watched when I was little totally scarred me. I just know that is a limit. Even as a 33-year-old woman, I'm like, "Nope, I can not do that." And I don't know what it is for you. I don't know what the fears are in your life. We all deal with different kinds of fears.
I don't know what you're dealing with right now, what you're most afraid of right now in 2020 with everything that's going on, but here's what you and I need to know about this unhealthy, ungodly spirit of fear. 2 Timothy 1:7 says,
"God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind."
So what does that tell us? Fear is an actual spirit, or there's a spirit of fear that can come over us or come on us, and if God hasn't given it to us, who has? The enemy. And to be clear, when I say the enemy, I mean Satan and his demons, they put that spirit of fear on us. They come at us as believers with that spirit of fear. And I believe that that's one of his primary methods, if not the primary method of the enemy against believers is fear.
Why do I think that? Well, just think about the consequences or outcomes of fear in your life. What does it cause us to do? Fear paralyzes us. It causes us to totally freeze up. Fear distracts us from the real issue at hand. Fear is a thief. Fear... Let me just stop right there. Fear is a thief. Have you felt like this spirit of fear and anxiety in 2020 has stolen from you this year? Because I sure have. I feel like it's stolen my sanity some days. It has stolen so much from us in 2020. It's horrible. It makes me mad. Fear is a thief.
Fear makes a lot of mental noise in our brains, in our minds, and it drowns out the voice of God. I think it's important to realize that fear is located in your brain, in our mind. This is where the spirit of fear comes on us. It's a battlefield in our mind. It's not necessarily based in reality all the time. It's all between our ears, right? But here's the good news. The spirit of fear can be removed. It can be removed from your life. It's not something that you have to keep carrying around.
Now, another fear that the Bible talks about is the fear of man. The fear of what people think. This is a really powerful stronghold of fear that we can have in our lives that we don't even realize, because it can be really subtle. It can affect the way that you dress, how often you work out, because you're ultimately concerned about what other people think about you. That is possibly how you're living your life is based on appearance, based on what people think about your Instagram, based on what people think about your business, based on what people think about your relationship, what you do or don't say. And certain conversations can be based on the fear of man, because it's not like you're afraid of man, it's you're afraid of what they think about you. That's really what the fear of man is.
It can affect your spending habits. It can affect how you present your house and how perfect you want your house to be compared to all the other houses in the neighborhood. The fear of man is subtle. It's kind of in the background. Fear of what people think, fear of their opinions, fear of missing out. Proverbs 29:25 says,
"The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe."
The fear of man is a trap. It's a snare. But if you trust in the Lord and care about His opinion of you, you're safe. Now, right now, the fear of man, I think it's been here long before 2020, but it's definitely ramping up this year, right? So it comes in a lot of different forms, but I'm seeing it now in very strong opinions on social media.
Borderline bullying, really nasty, strong opinions on social media, the fear of losing your job right now because you're going to do or say the wrong thing, which people are. This is a legitimate fear. Yeah, you're just scared you're going to say the wrong thing. You're afraid you're just going to get blasted or socially punished or looked down upon because you're doing something wrong according to the culture of the world right now. It's hard because there's a giant spectrum right now of believers in what we think is right and wrong in a lot of different issues. I won't get into that, but quick example of a story where I really dealt with the spirit of fear and the fear of man.
I put this on Instagram and I'll be brief because you may have seen it on Instagram. But basically, right towards the end of quarantine, we decided to fly to Nashville, and I loaded up the three kids by myself. I was crazy. Crazy woman. By myself, put them on a plane, face masks and all, and we flew to Nashville to visit my mom and my sister and their family. We're all quarantining. We're like, "Hey, this is a perfect time to visit family because in our opinion, it was like, okay, the flights are super cheap, none of us have any plans. We've been quarantining. Let's just get there and then quarantine there for a week and then we'll come back home." And I know there's tons of opinions about this and you're probably drawing conclusions yourself, but here's the thing.
When I started posting about flying, I posted it on Instagram. I was like, "Here's some tips on how to fly in the middle of this pandemic and what questions do you have?" And the questions I got were so fear-based. People were saying, "Were you super nervous to fly? I'm terrified to fly. I'm worried. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know that I'm going to be brave enough. We are desperate to visit family, but so scared. I'm nervous about flying, but you give me hope." These are actual comments I was getting and it was all with fear. That was all fear-based. And so I just came back on Instagram and I shared like... You can actually go watch it. It's under my highlights. It's called The Rona. But I just shared, "I'm not going to tolerate the spirit of fear in my family." And these are ways that I deal with it. I don't watch the news, I don't watch TV. I have extremely limited intake of media because you have to guard your eyes and your ears and your heart.
And you don't have to give in and do everything that everyone says you should do. If you think that it's triggering the spirit of fear in you, you can just stop and say no. And here's the deal. It was so fun. This flight was one of my favorite ones ever. I felt like supermom. I got all three kids there safely. They did great. And I spend time with the Lord almost every morning. I try to. I declare things over my life and my family that we wouldn't live in fear, that we know who we are in the Lord. And I just shared all this on Instagram.
Then the comments started rolling in. And I'll paraphrase some of them, but this is the gist of some of the comments I got. "You're incredibly irresponsible. You're ignorant. You should be educating yourself on this virus and watching the news. I used to respect you, I'm done following you. You are endangering people. You could kill people. What you're doing is so..." Fill in the blank. I'll let you fill in the blank. And here's the thing. You can draw whatever conclusion you want to about my choices. I just did what was best for my family at the time. But I want to illustrate this because I was not participating with the spirit of fear when I traveled, but guess what? The fear of man really started to come at me. This other fear started to creep back in my life. I was devastated when I started reading those comments.
I'm a sensitive person. I legit cried over people who I didn't know. I was angry. I felt so sad for like 24 hours of my time in Nashville. At one point, I had to go on a run and just speak things over my life in my mind. I was so afraid of posting anything else to Instagram that week. I was so afraid. And I realized I'm afraid. I'm participating in a spirit of fear, and it's the fear of man, and I knew I had to step in and do the thing that I was afraid of. So I posted again. I braced myself for the comments. Actually, I did set a boundary. I turned off the comments for like 48 hours or something because I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to post again.” I don't have time or energy or emotional effort to put into responding to these or hearing all of these negative things again, but I showed up and I posted again. And I've continued to post.
Now, Instagram is this weird thing. And I know there's a lot of different opinions out there on the coronavirus right now. I'm not sharing this to illustrate where I'm standing on things. I think you could probably draw your own conclusions about that. My point in sharing this is that as soon as you feel like you've got fear maybe handled on one level, it's going to come at you again in another level. It is a tactic of the enemy, and we cannot let the fear win. I think we have to understand what fear is out there, how it's coming at us, and just make up our minds. I am not going to let this tactic of the enemy win in my life. We have to keep showing up and keep being proactive against the spirit of fear, against the fear of man, and focus on what God thinks of you, not what man thinks. 2 Corinthians 10:18 says,
"What you say about yourself means nothing in God's work. It's what God says about you that makes the difference."
We need to focus on what God says about you. You could apply this to what other people say about you. What they say about you means nothing in God's work. It's what God says about you that makes the difference. We have to be pleasing the Lord and not man. There is a great sermon on this. I listened to it a few weeks back. It's called An Audience of One. I'm going to link to it in the show notes. So good. If you struggle with the fear of man, take some time to go listen to that sermon. It's very, very good.
So, here are 10 ways I want to share with you to proactively live a life of love and freedom without fear:
1. Guard your eyes and your ears.
You know in your spirit when something is triggering fear in you. You have the power to turn it off. To say, "No, I'm not going to participate in things that spark fear in me." I will say that if somebody's saying, "Let's watch this scary movie," or, "Let's do this thing," I'm like, "No, I can't. If you all want to do that, that's fine. I can not participate in that. I know my limits." The news, media, horror movies, certain books, articles, podcasts. You need to be on guard in your life. Just say no. Guard your eyes and your ears. That is incredibly important, even with your children. Guard their eyes and their ears. Pay attention to what they watch because it can allow spirit of fear to come in your home.
2. We have to know the character of God.
We have to start with who He is. And once we understand His heart and who He is, we understand who we are in Him. So we have to know who God is and then follow with knowing who our identity is in Him. First, God is love. Period. He is love. He is for us. He is not against us. He died to save us. There's no greater act of love than that. There is no room for fear in love. The word says that perfect love casts out all fear. When we know Him and know our identity in Him, I think this is a good question to ask, ask the Lord, what did you have in mind when you made me? Actually say your name. Try it sometime today or maybe right now. If you're alone listening to this podcast, say, Lord, what did you have in mind when you made Nancy? Or fill in the blank with your name, and then ask Him to help you visualize your life without the common fears that you struggle with.
What would be different about that life than the way that you are living now? Jesus said all authority in heaven on earth was given to me. And then we have examples of Jesus sending out his disciples two by two, giving them authority over unclean spirits. And He gives us that authority. He says the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead lives in you and me. We have authority because the Lord has given it to us. We are part of His families. We are heirs and coheres with Christ in the family of God. He has so much for us. So if we know who He is, He is full of love, and He's given us His authority and we know who we are in Him, then we know how to deal with this fear in our lives.
3. Take authority in your home.
Take authority in your home. Like I said before, be very vigilant about the things that are let into your home. The gateways into your home. Media, shows that you're watching, that your kids are watching, music that you're listening to. I'm not saying don't listen to any secular music or don't watch any shows. We love a good show. We love secular music. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying you know in your spirit if there's a trigger of fear, or if your kids start having nightmares about something, then you know just it's time to cut that off. We're not going to do that anymore.
And then also just praying over your home. I stand in different rooms of our house, I pray out loud. I have walked around the property, I pray over my home and our property. You can take authority over your home. You can take authority over the lives in your home. I've prayed over my husband before, I've prayed over my kids before when they are dealing with nightmares. You have that authority.
4. Be proactive.
Like I said, we have to be proactive pushing forward against the spirit of fear. And the first thing I'm going to tell you to do to be proactive with is not to be proactive against the fear, be proactive about falling in love with the Lord. That's your #1. Spend time with Him every day. Get to know His heart. Be proactive about just spending time with Him because fear can't hang when you are in the presence of God. And after you've taken a lot of time just to spend time with the Lord, then you can easily just speak straight to the enemy. Take authority over him when you see an attack in your life or in the life of your family.
5. Speak to it.
Out loud, command the spirit of fear to get out in the mighty name of Jesus and according to the finished work of Jesus on the cross and the authority He has given you as a believer. I know you might be thinking I'm hokey and crazy, and one of those crazy Christians, but don't knock it until you've tried it. This is a powerful practice. I have sensed a physical change when I do this. The enemy cannot hang when the name of Jesus is spoken. And the word says every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. There's power in the name of Jesus.
I think there's also power in just saying your fear out loud. I don't know. I would have a nightmare as a kid, I'd be so scared to tell mom or dad what happened in my dream. It felt too scary. But when I would explain it and say it out loud, it loses power because there's power in the darkness. The enemy really likes to keep things hidden and he likes for you to not talk about your fear because then it can be hidden in the darkness. I think bringing it to light and saying the fear out loud is powerful. But that should be brief. That should not be your focus. Your focus should then quickly shift to the Lord. To His power and his presence.
6. Pray to the Lord.
Ask Him to replace that fear with something new from Him. So speak, command the fear to leave, name it for what it is, and then quickly pray to the Lord and know that God is taking care of it, He's taking care of you, and ask for Him to replace it with something new from Him. A promise, a scripture. You shift your focus. You train your mind to focus on the Lord, visualize His presence filling up your mind and your heart and your home. Fill your home with worship. And don't focus on the fear. Focus on God's blessing and goodness and who He is. Trade that spirit of fear with the fear of the Lord and His promises.
I think this is something I've learned more recently. I think most of my life, because I was taught as a young girl like the enemy can't hang in the name of Jesus. Like cast it out. And I would speak to the enemy even as a young girl and say, "In the name of Jesus, leave," but my focus would still be on like, "Did he leave? Is the fear there? I don't know. I still feel afraid." You’ve just got to leave those thoughts behind. Trust that the Lord is at work and blast the worship music. Spend time with Him and think about ways that you can just be with the Lord and not focus on the fear anymore. Because let's be real. Fear doesn't deserve your time of day. It doesn't deserve your time or attention. There's power in that. The Lord absolutely does. So turn your focus on him.
7. Realizing you do not have to participate in fear.
I want to talk to somebody who maybe has dealt with fear your entire life, or you've even been labeled as a worried or anxious person. You do not have to accept that as part of your identity anymore. That can change. You don't have to participate. I just want to say it again. You do not have to participate in fear. It's a spirit that can be removed from your life.
8. Acknowledge that sometimes you need outside help to deal with the spirit of fear, and that is okay.
It's not just okay, it's necessary and good. If you've had trauma in your life, a legit experience in your life that has caused extreme amounts of hurt and pain and loss, you need counseling. You need regular counseling to deal with what your brain is reacting or responding to that trauma. And that's a good thing. Counseling can be so healing and can really help you step into a life of freedom. Not just counseling, mental health professionals. Absolutely, you need that, but you also need ministry.
Like we're talking about today, this is a spiritual thing. You need ministry. I went through this really intensive ministry called Restoring The Foundations. It was so life-changing for me. I did it earlier this year, a few months ago. Five days, three hours a day—really intense. And I've dealt with some fear my whole life and I needed to have some people in spiritual authority pray over me and speak to that spirit of fear for me to get free from it. And that's okay. It's not just okay, it's good. So just know that you don't have to do it alone. You can get outside help and that's okay and necessary.
9. I want to encourage you with the scripture that I opened this podcast with, which is: be strong and courageous.
If you think about it, being courageous actually indicates that there's a presence of fear. So I was thinking about like a pilot in the Air Force who has been trained to fly planes, do crazy things with planes, jump out of planes. They've done these practices over and over again. They know how to do those things. And so, if you go in the air with somebody who's been trained to like, in the military, to jump out of planes over and over again, they are absolutely full of courage. But if someone who has dealt with the fear of heights their whole life and has never been in a plane before goes up there and jumps out of a plane, it takes a whole lot more courage for that person who is a complete newbie, who has dealt with a fear of heights to jump out of a plane than someone who's basically an expert at it, if that makes sense. I don't know if that's a great example or not.
But basically, to be strong and courageous indicates that there might be some fear there because, think about David and Goliath in the Bible. David was courageous because he was small and he was... I mean, Goliath was huge, and David was being mocked and intimidated by his brothers and the army, and it took courage for him to go up and slay this giant because everything was against him and he was probably very afraid. And so, I'm not saying that you're never going to be afraid again. Being courageous means feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It's a quote by Susan Jeffers that I've heard, but that's what being courageous is. It's “you feel it, and then you move forward even with the fear.” So be strong and courageous.
10. Love.
Love, love, love, love.
“Let all that you do be done in love.” - 1 Corinthians 16:14
“There is no room in love for fear.” -1 John 4:18
Fall in love with the Lord. What are the things that you do in your life that stir up your affection towards God? Do those things. Love other people, love your family, focus on everything that you touch or do in your family and your work and your life to be done in love. Let all that you do be done in love because there is no room in love for fear.
Here's what I want you to know: you have authority. If you know who God is and you know who you are as His child, you know the boldness and peace and authority that He has, not just given to you, He's purchased for you. And fear is a spirit that you can break off and release from your life. It does not have to follow you around all of your days. The rest of your life can look different from this point on. And as we zoom out of our lives and our families in this world and we look at fear objectively, I hope you see it as a tactic of the enemy. A way to paralyze us, keep us quiet and not push forward the light in God's kingdom.
As we're dealing with all kinds of new and weird and different fears this year in particular, remember this, God is taking care of you. He was last year and the year before and the year before, He is this year, He is today, and He's taking care of you and He will continue to take care of you in the years to come. He's got you. He is providing for you. He is with you. He has never left you not for a second. As your Father and your God, He's got you. Think that with me for just a second to the very beginning of the church. Jesus was the most beautiful, loving radical. He laid hands on lepers. He touched the untouchable, the quarantined. He went right up to them and laid hands on them and offered them healing and love. He walked, so to speak, straight into the house that was quarantined of someone who just tested positive for COVID and He put His precious hands on them, looked them in the eyes and said, "Don't be ashamed. Don't be afraid. I am for you." And He healed them.
He spoke directly to the racial tension of His day. He offended a lot of people because He was more concerned with what the Father thought of Him than what others said or were threatening to do to Him. His disciples, when Jesus had lived and died and gone back to heaven, his disciples... And raised again, I should add. He was raised again, his disciples faced actual death threats. Talk about the fear of man, living knowing that people are after you. And they were imprisoned. Most of them suffered brutally and lost their lives because of the powerful life changing love of the man named Jesus, who told them, "Don't fear. I am with you." Think about it. They had it way worse than we do this year. But here's the good news. His promises don't change. They were the same back then and they are the same for us today. Be encouraged by that. Do not fear, I am with you.
I'm going to close by reading a passage from Ephesians 1:
“For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord, Jesus and your love for all God's people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you. The riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people and His in comparably great power for us who believe.”
That power is the same as the mighty strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion. And every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the age to come. That's us. He is speaking to me and you. And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way. My prayer is that you would receive that today.
Instead of the Work and Play Cornerstore today, I just wanted to simply ask if you have not left a review or rated the podcast on iTunes, I sure would appreciate the one minute it would take you to do that today. In the podcasting world, that's the way these messages spread: if you share them with friends on social media and if you give a review and rate my podcast in the iTunes Store. So I would be so, so grateful.
I'm going to close with words from my friend, Emily P. Freeman, who asks a question that now honestly guides my life. And I want you to ask yourself the same question right now, wherever you are:
“Am I being led by love or pushed by fear?”
My prayer is that you would be led by love because, as 1 John 4:18 says, there is no room in love for fear.
