“The gift of fear is faith.” – Chip Dodd

The gift of fear is faith. Chip’s point is that where you have no fear, it’s very hard to have faith. But when you’re afraid, you have the opportunity to come to God, in your fear, and surrender.

Easier said than done. Everything inside us wants to ignore or run away from being afraid.

I grew up learning how to ignore my fear. I think that most of us do. Surrendering our fear requires that we acknowledge it. That we lay claim to it.

It is especially hard to do this with other people. I met with a friend last month and told him about something I was afraid of. It blew me away how weird the words felt coming out of my mouth. I’m afraid.

It’s a lot easier to say, ‘I’m afraid, but….” (I’m afraid but I have a solution). It’s much harder to just say “I’m afraid”, and to sit in the vulnerability of that moment. That is tough to do.

God can do for us what we can’t do for ourselves. I’m learning that a key part of surrendering is realizing just that. That I can’t fix it. I can’t make my fear go away. I can’t get out from underneath the weight of it. “Pulling myself up by my own bootstraps”, so to speak, just doesn’t work.

When you look at it this way, fear is a gift. It shows us our powerlessness and leads us to faith in God, who can do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.