Quick – You’re in the middle The Serengeti. A ravenous lion spots you and gives chase. What do you do?

1. Try and figure out how you spontaneously ended up in the Serengeti?
2. Hail a cab. “Taxi!”
3. Summon your most effective spiritual warfare proclamation and launch into Tongues
4. Run!!!

Right. So this may not be the best example of why appropriate fear is – well – appropriate, even potentially life-saving (especially if you combined options C & D). But you get my point – rational fear is indeed rational, reasonable and more importantly – acceptable to God.

Of course the lion chase scenario isn’t an example of “The Spirit of fear.” – which we ARE instructed not to claim as our own (2 Timothy 1:7). A spirit of fear, rooted in deception, incubates and promotes irrational fear, and a state of constant insecurity – even potentially manifesting in the extreme as psychological disorders. But those of us who aren’t otherwise challenged by a clinical disorder, hardly need hypothetical scenarios to explore our own rational and irrational fears today, when so many fear-inducing realities abound:  pandemics, climate anomalies, civil, economic, and political unrest to name a few formidable threats. Scary stuff. Still it may actually be easier to choose faith, resignation, or even ambivalence in the face of colossal, converging social, geopolitical or ecological peril. They’re more so it can be easier to either put our trust in The Father for the outcomes, or to see ourselves having little to no control over the outcomes.

BOO!

But what about those more subtle personal fears – the immobilizing ones – equally capable of restraining us from exercising The Press, you know, toward the mark of the prize of the high calling [Philippians 3:14]?
Since we know that those of us who remain, in this season, for such a time as this, are called to impact the earth, the challenge can be to escape the fowler’s snare [Psalm 124), and get past of what our eyes behold in these astounding times. But we will need to surmount individual roadblocks (and move quickly and in the right direction) in order for our purpose to become realized and bare transformative fruit. The band Switchfoot challenges the inertia some of us may experience with these lyrics from the song Dare You to Move: “Dare you to move. Dare you to move. Dare you to lift yourself up from the floor … like today never happened …”

Lifting ourselves up from the floor can seem like a pretty tall order when we’ve been bull-dozed and flattened by personal trauma or failure. But we must be careful not to worship the failure, the trauma, the brokenness, and must abandon the tendency to endlessly rehearse deliberations over whether we were the villain or the victim.  Or as related in the verse from another Switchfoot song: “Don’t be There:” 
“I can’t recall myself how I went down. Did I get shot, or did I shoot myself?” (I kinda really dug that classic Switchfoot album). In this season, we must move quickly to follow the lead of Bob Carlisle’s or Donny McClurkin’s “We Fall Down.”

If we’re honest with ourselves and with our Lord, we’d have to admit it’s true that we have at times yielded our power and consequently our fruit to unseen things lurking in darkness – perhaps to powers and principalities in high places [Ephesians 6:12], but often to subversive, self-sabotaging practices embedded in the old, weak nature. Like a carcinogen or parasite depleting our ability to produce life, and denying us the Promise or the fullness of the promise [John 10:10]. And there is yet a promise of fullness and abundance even in a season of great turmoil, and even if it looks different for each of us.

What are some of those cankerworms, those thieving parasite invaders that have robbed or diminished our harvest? Speaking particularly to more sensitive and creative natures (perhaps an artist, a counselor, an introvert, an empath, an oracle discerner, a healer, a teacher, a minister), perhaps you may have been really challenged and depleted by the prickly people stuff. Perhaps you’ve experienced some of the following:

• Briers & Thorns: You’ve been frequently bruised, pricked or wounded by other people’s “prickly parts:” Have attempts to share or your gifting or talent been rejected, steam-rolled, scapegoated, or under-minded in some way, resulting in disillusionment and withdrawal?
  If fear of being overshadowed, of having had your ideas stolen, or on the other hand, of being in the spotlight.
• Toggling between sincere humility, false humility, self-promotion and unhealthy competition – when your quiet nature still wants your efforts acknowledged but you don’t want to be in the spotlight, or to be the braggart, leaving your feeling vulnerable to being overshadowed by another’s brilliance; so you withdraw or take matters out of God’s hands into your own
• Being outshined or outgunned due to your own lack of skill or mastery
• Being outshined or outgunned due to a physical or mental limitation
• Christ hoarding & glory hogging – Selfishly keeping The Savior to ourselves: Refusing to share His provision, or denying Him before men.
• Idolatry – self-centeredness; a type of blind ambition that makes every God-given opportunity about us, and not His plan or purpose …

It’s sad but true that sometimes people we’re called to love and serve are insensitive and lack self-awareness, lacking the ability to self-manage trample on your efforts without even realizing it and we feel ineffective at managing those encounters in a healthy, Christ-like way. At other times our old nature betrays us. We might consider a A Way of Escape …

Recue, Release & Restoration

1. Obey The Father’s call to Immersion – Seek The Lord in His Word, and pursue all of the baptisms (in, for, by The Holy Spirit). Recognize and surrender to opportunities to receive Him and His provision, to be cleansed and renewed and made whole. He continually comes for us in and out of season – willing to wash over us like rivers of flowing water. Continuously receive Him.
2. Phasers on Stun – Eyes on Him. We must remain focused on Him, on where and how He’s positioned us, and where He’s leading us. Reject distraction in the moment – looking neither left or right. The only way to transcend rapid-fire distractions in turbulent times.
3. Acknowledge the Need for Speed. The atmosphere has been ripe with accelerating enemy activity for some time. Its increasingly important to listen for His voice, to learn His voice, and to receive and respond to Him in the moment. This means remaining in close proximity or risk His instruction, misguided by our own voice or distracted by other noise.
4. Suit up – Put on the Whole Armor. We’re toast without it, especially in a hyperactive spiritual atmosphere. [Ephesians 6:11]
5. Move through your life in humility, thanksgiving and generosity (generosity birthed from connection with others – even amidst difficult engagement with others). Yikes! Again, we’ll need the closeness of The Holy Spirit for this one to keep us from retreating or withdrawing.
   But know that in the process, the Lord will relieve us of what can be the torment of difficult relating. Here’s how Our God says He will deal with the prickly people problem [Isaiah 7:25]. We will be removed from it by His grace, or it from us in that it may continue to exist, but will no longer have the same persecutory effect on us – again only by His grace.
6. Release the Helm! Give yourself to yourself. Routinely allow time to nurture and bless your own unified being (body, mind, soul). Recognize The Breath that gives us life, and allow it to restore our physical through exercise, laughter, music, dance – We were made for a balance of movement and rest.
7. Give yourself to Him by giving of yourself to others. If you’re not sure where to begin, ask Him – who and how.
8. Cultivate a love for trusting obedience and for faithfulness. Some people are naturally more yielding than others, but we all struggle with some area of obedience where we’re reluctant to give up our own way. Ask Him to take that away and replace it with trusting obedience. This is continual part of our walk. These layers are to be peeled away over and over again throughout our journey. But He is faithful to lead us one step at time into faithfulness.
9. Verbalize your faith in Him – Through audible prayer, song, traditional praise & worship. Read Scripture out loud, and confess The Lord’s prayer out loud. Be discerning about when its necessary and when you are led to use your prayer language.
10. When you fall short in these areas, go to Him in your weariness, disappointment, frustration, anger, hurt, and fear, and ask for His forgiveness. Ask Him to restore you. Then Receive His beauty for your ashes. And don’t forget make a practice of tasking in general> When He tells us that we have not because you ask not [James 4:3] also applies to direction and permission. He’ll teach us to check-in with Him before jumping in head-first.

The fact is that because we are redeemed beings housed in flesh, we can at times behave like the villain, the victim or the victor. Nevertheless at all times, we are who God says we are – nothing more. Nothing less. And must always and only confess exactly who Christ says we are: Redeemed Victors through Christ Jesus.

Fear in response to threats whether real or imagined can be managed, and in fact alleviated by a confident trust in, and yielding to the power of the Savior to save. To save us from ourselves, our failures, shortcomings, our sins, our adversaries and adversities. And to release us in liberty into the new thing He’s doing today.

In gratitude to the Father for affirmations and confirmations you’ve led me to in Matt Toomey’s Artists Rise Up Masterclass.

Image inspired by photography by the following artists on Unsplash: A. Chinchura, F. Vieira, and R. Long