Good Monday morning to you. I’ve wanted to bring this week to you for awhile now. Over the past years I have watched and been told that faith and fear aren’t able to co-exist in a person at the same time. I’ve found in my life and watched it lived in others’ lives and it seems reasonable at first that you either have one or the other: faith or fear. But when I teach that, or work to explain it, the other person often thinks that not be true.
You see I have learned over the years that both faith and fear are based on belief in the unknown. Faith is what you see when you look and believe and take action in making it better. Fear is when you actually take steps to avoid or not take action because of the unknown.
Let’s take this example for instance. You pray asking for a solution to your money problems. You then get up from your prayer and start looking for the opportunities that will bring you that money you need – looking for a better job, looking for a part-time job to supplement what you have, and looking for ways to cut spending in your life to live on the money you make. These would be steps of faith. Steps of fear would be taking no action, or asking others to solve these problems.
This week I will break a few of these things down to show how others face them in life. I am hoping to have a special guest post to talk about change and how we choose to improve and make life better. One of the things that has gotten me to start this was the fact that so many people ask for others to pray about something they may be going through. But often, when options are presented, if it’s not a hand-out or a “miraculous” answer, they feel it’s not an answer to the prayer.
A few years ago I told this as a joke, or a riddle about life but it’s so true I wanted to start our week by showing you that faith is looking at all opportunities that are presented and taking action to see what works and what won’t work.
The story is of a man who was standing on his front porch. A heavy rain came through and caused the river to overflow, threatening the town. As the man watched the waters rise, a boat come by and offered him a ride. He said, “No, I’ll be OK. God will take care of me.”
About two hours later, the waters have risen even more. The same man looking out his second story window has a large boat comes by. They call from the boat for him to jump on because it’s going to get worse. He again refuses saying, “God will take care of me.”
After four hours the man is standing on the tip of his roof. Water has all but covered his house, a helicopter flies over and lowers a rope, yelling to the man grab onto the rope so they can pull him to safety. He again refuses saying, “God will take care of me.”
Well by now the water has covered his house and he dies in the flood. As he walks into heaven’s gates, he demands to head straight to see God. The man asks God, “Why didn’t you take care of me? You always told me in the Bible you would listen to my prayers.” God responded back, “I did. I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”
This story I’m sure has been told millions of time. I know I have used it many times to get people to take action. It seems overly simple, but the truth is many people are presented with such simple solutions to the very problems they face and they have no faith in the solution provided, or they fear the choice simply will not work for them because of the action required to make it work. Or they want a quick fix to their problems, not one that requires work on their part.
We all face these dilemmas in life; the only way to overcome the fear is to take action. So as you read through this week I hope you get a look at yourself and see where you need to take a step of action and bring your faith to work.
I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach. It’s time for you to take action and live the life you wanted, to love what you do and those who share it with you. Let’s make a plan to make you the RockStar in your world. Contact me now to get started.
1 Response to "Faith or Fear Week"
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