Afraid So Long That He Stopped Calling It Fear

He would not use the word.

If you asked him whether he is afraid of anything he would say no, and he would mean it, and he would not be lying. He does not experience fear. He does not have panic. Nothing about his week looks like anxiety in the way anybody would draw it.

What he has is a set of policies.

He does not raise things at family gatherings. He checks how a message reads about four times before sending it. He drives a longer route to avoid a certain street. He has a category of subject he does not discuss, and he could not tell you when it was created. He plans conversations that will probably never happen.

None of that is fear, in his own account of himself. It is being careful. It is being wise. It is knowing his family.

And every one of those policies was written by something, and the something has a name, and he stopped using the name about twenty years ago because a name is embarrassing and a policy is sensible.

David wrote a psalm about coming out of this, and the circumstances behind it are so undignified that they tell you what kind of man wrote it.

The heading of the psalm is a confession

Psalm 34 carries a note about when it was written, and the note is not flattering.

It was written after David, in a foreign king's territory and frightened, pretended to be insane to get out, scratching at doors and letting saliva run down his beard. It worked and he was thrown out rather than killed.

That is the background of the psalm. It is not written from strength and it is not written after a victory. It is written by somebody who had been so frightened that he did something humiliating, and who then sat down and wrote about deliverance.

Which means the psalm is not addressed to people who are managing well. It is addressed by somebody who was not, and it is worth knowing that before reading a word of it.

You are being spoken to by somebody who handled it badly first. Psalm 34 carries the note of that episode in its own heading, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:26, who helps our infirmities, that any of this is prayed at all.

The verse distinguishes troubles from fears

Here is the sentence, and it names two different things.

I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. (Psalm 34:4, King James Version)

All my fears. Not: all my troubles. The troubles get their own verse two lines later, and the two are kept separate on purpose.

That distinction is the reason this psalm is useful. A great deal of what people ask for is deliverance from a circumstance, and circumstances are slow and often do not move. This verse describes something else being dealt with, and it is the thing that has been writing the policies.

And notice the deliverance is from the fears rather than from the danger. The danger in David's case was real and did not go away; he was a hunted man before this and a hunted man after it.

You are able to have the fear dealt with while the circumstance stands. Psalm 34:4 says delivered me from all my fears rather than from all my troubles, and it is the Spirit given to us, 2 Timothy 1:7, who is described as not a spirit of fear.

Verse six is the whole method

Two verses later he tells you what he actually did, and it is so short that people read past it.

This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. (Psalm 34:6)

This poor man cried. That is the method. It is three words long and it contains no technique whatsoever.

And poor is not about money here; it is the word for somebody afflicted and low, which is the accurate self-description of a man who has just been pretending to be mad in a foreign court.

I would put that beside somebody whose whole strategy for twenty years has been competence. The method described here is not a better strategy. It is the abandonment of strategy in favor of a noise, and a man whose fear has become a set of policies is exactly the man least able to make that noise, because policies are how he has avoided ever needing to.

You are able to make a noise rather than produce a strategy. Psalm 34:6 records crying as the whole of what he did, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:15, that a person cries out at all rather than manages.

What God says about the word itself

There is a verse in Isaiah where God addresses the condition directly, and He does something with the reason for it.

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (Isaiah 41:10)

Count the reasons attached. For I am with thee. For I am thy God. And then three promises, each with I will in front of it.

He does not tell anybody to be braver and He does not dispute that there is something to be afraid of. Every clause is about what He is and what He will do, and the fear is addressed by information about somebody else rather than by an instruction about the self.

That is the shape of every genuine answer to fear in Scripture, and it is why the encouragement people usually offer does not work: it is aimed at the frightened person's capacity rather than at what is true about God.

You are addressed with information about Him rather than instructions about yourself. Isaiah 41:10 attaches a reason to every clause and every reason is about God, and it is by His Spirit, Ephesians 3:16, that a person is strengthened in the inner man.

Naming it is the first move and it is not shameful

Paul writes one sentence to a young man that gives the thing its name and then names what was given instead.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

Hath not given us. Which implies it is there and had to be accounted for. Paul is writing to somebody who is evidently struggling with it, and his first move is to say where it did not come from.

And the three things named as the alternative are worth reading slowly, because a sound mind is the one that matters most to a policy writer. The word carries the sense of soundness, self-possession, a mind that is not being run from somewhere else.

That is the specific promise for a man whose life is organized around a route he does not drive and a subject he does not raise. Not that he becomes reckless. That the organizing stops being done by the thing he stopped naming.

You have been given a sound mind rather than the spirit that wrote the policies. 2 Timothy 1:7 names both, and it is the Spirit of God who is the one given, in that verse, as power and love and a sound mind.