From Pity to Praise

When fear dictates your life, it puts your nervous system on constant alert, causing you to avoid risks, miss opportunities, and settle for less than you deserve.

Breaking the cycle requires acknowledging the fear, reframing its purpose, and taking intentional small steps to reclaim your life.

It’s important to normalize, and not suppress our fears. Accepting that the fear is present. Trying to fight or deny it often makes it grow. Knowledge the feeling without letting it dictate your behavior.

When we identify that fear is present we can begin to identify the “what ifs” this often puts a specific label on the fear and makes it more manageable rather than a vague looming threat.

We cannot think our way out of fear, we have to live our way out. Challenging our comfort zones with tiny actionable steps helps build momentum.

It helps to “fact-check your thoughts.” Fear frequently overestimates danger. Ask ourselves if the threat we feel is based on a real, and present danger.

Everyone fears something, whether it is the fear of vulnerability, failure, losing control, or the unknown, everyone is navigating some form of fear.

Psychology often breaks fear down into fundamental categories:

• Extinction: the fear of annihilation or ceasing to exist.
• Mutilation: the fear of losing bodily integrity or control
• Loss of Autonomy: Being immobilized, trapped, or controlled by outside forces.

• Separation: Abandonment, rejection, or losing connection

• Ego-Death: Humiliation, shame, or deep self-disapproval.

The brain evaluates risk and fierce through a highly interconnected, split second survival system that balances rational emotional responses with logical analysis. 

This process relies on a few key brain structures:

The sensory thalamus acts as the traffic cop. When we encounter a potential threat sensory data such a sight and sound is routed here first.

The amygdala is the brain, fast acting alarm system. It receives raw in three data and triggered an instant physical reaction. It also helps sear fear memories into your brain, so you learn to avoid similar threats in the future.

The prefrontal cortex is the logical override. It receives the same threat data, but analyzes it much slower. It uses memory and context to determine if the amygdala’s alarm is a false one -a shadow vs a real predator, and calms the physical stress response.

The hippocampus works closely with the amygdala by providing past memories and context to help you decide how dangerous a situation truly is.

When fear dictates our lives through a complex lightening -fast loop in the brain’s emotional center. The amygdala acts as a survival alarm system, that translates sensory threats into fight, flight, or freeze reflexes, while higher reasoning centers struggle to calm it. 

When our brain is overwhelmed with fear, we are triggered with a fight or flight response, which floods the body with stress hormones, like adrenaline. This instantly prioritizes survival, and our heart rate spikes, muscles tense, and our logical frontal cortex temporarily shuts down, leaving us operating entirely on pure instinct.

I like to think about this as our brain kind of short-circuiting from fear or overwhelming stress.

There are ways to reset and calm our brains when this happens such as slow breathing and sensory grounding.

“The problem with partial disobedience is that it is disobedience masquerading as obedience” -Paul David Tripp

When I read this in an article about partial disobedience it can cut deep. But when I began looking at scripture I found people who were obeying in part, or the Israelites, who are doing some of what God had asked, but not all obeying fully. And then I looked at Numbers 20:11, where Moses disobeying God by hitting the rock twice with his staff to produce water instead of speaking to it as commanded. “Moses lifted up his hand, and struck with his rock and water came out abundantly. The congregation and their livestock drank.”

The issue was that Moses struck the rock because he was angry. And God told him to speak. Moses partially obeyed. And his partial obedience, wasn’t good enough. God demands full obedience. God‘s perfect and holy law demands full obedience. If you look at verse 12, God told Moses, “Because you didn’t believe in Me, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, there you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”

Moses partially obey the Lord, but it wasn’t good enough. He had to suffer for the consequence of his disobedience, because in his partial obedience, he was fully disobedient to God.

How many times do we find ourselves trying to convince ourselves that our partial obedience is good enough. I know I have started to obey God but then got sidetracked and didn’t fully obey Him. I’ve even made excuses for myself because “I would do it later.”

There is no doubt we are fully sinners but we are fully forgiven by the grace and mercy of Jesus. But we will pay the consequence for every partial obedience we choose to do.

I think it’s important to realize that forgiveness isn’t a greenlight to keep doing what we’ve done all along. Forgiveness is a chance for us to turn from it and make it right with God.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while people slept, His enemy came and sowed darnel weeds also among the wheat, and went away. But when the blade sprang up and produced fruit, then the darnel weeds appeared also. The sevants of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where did these darnel weeds come from?’ He says to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and gather them up?’ He said ‘No, lest perhaps while you gather up the darnel weeds, you root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘First, gather up the darnel weeds, and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Jesus makes it clear that in the world there will always exist wheat and tares. Because of the tares, there will always be some discomfort for the wheat, but if we try to get rid of the tares, we create wars and other disruptive events that harm the wheat too.

This is where tares sincerely believe that they are wheat. Because of this, how do we know for sure that we are wheat and not a tare destined to eternal separation from God?

One test would be to know if we’re following the rules  at the Bible orfollowing Jesus. The Pharisees made the air of thinking that in following the rules, they were good.

1 John 3:9 says, “Whosoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.” But, not sinning does not make us followers of Jesus but of the law. If I follow Jesus, I do not sin. In other words, following the rules does not make me a follower of Jesus. I live by his values as represented in the law. So how do I know if I am wheat or a tare? The only test is what controls my life, Jesus or the things of this world?

The world was created by God and is good, but when it begins to control our lives or dominate it, it becomes an issue. Then we are no longer following Jesus, but something from the world. Whether it is fun, status, money, or our job, or anything else. When we are a follower of Jesus, we leave it all in Jesus‘s hands and seek His kingdom instead. Matthew 6:33 tells us, “But seek first God’s kingdom, and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Another test is given in 1 John 4:7-8, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God for God is love.” Does the love for Jesus and people of God dominate our lives or love for things.

If we are tare, Romans 6:3-4 tells us we can change into wheat and surrender our lives to Jesus. “Do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

“And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again” -2 Corinthians 5:15.

Wheat and tare can look identical when growing, only God knows our true spiritual condition until the harvest. It’s up to us to prepare our lives that God sees wheat by actively cultivating our spiritual maturity, grace and resilience.

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” -Acts 3:19 (NIV)

We all love the concept of grace. It is free, unmerited favor -the undeserved love of God poured out on broken people. But because it’s free, we often mistake it for cheap. We can fall into the trap of thinking that God’s grace is a licence to continue in our old ways, to hold on to our sins, and to treat repentance as an optional secondary step.

But the Bible tells us that there is no grace without repentance.

Think of it this way: Grace is a treasure chest, filled with forgiveness, mercy, and new life. And repentance is the key to that chest. Without the key, the treasure is still there, but it is inaccessible to us. We can stand in front of the chest, praise it’s beauty, and thank God for it, but if we refuse to turn away from the path of disobedience, we never actually unlock thrower of grace in our lives.

Repentance is not just feeling bad about sin, nor is it merely apologizing to feel better. It is a change of mind and the change leads to a change of direction. It is the act of owning our sin and agreeing with God about our sin, and actively turning toward God not away from Him.

When we hold on to our sin, we block the path to experiencing God’s healing grace. We cannot walk in the light while holding onto the darkness.

True, sincere repentance is the moment we stop clinging to our sin and start clinging to the cross. It is in that surrender that we can find grace that does not just cover our sin but transforms our lives.

Hope against hope is believing what we think is impossible. It means turning deaf ears to the doctor’s diagnosis and saying, “My God is more than able to see me through.” Hope against hope is relying on God’s promise rather than relying on visible circumstances.

One of the heroes in the Bible was Abraham. He led a life of faith. He saw God as his provider. I think he took steps that worked as simple as the account reads. Every past question is easy, and we can say, anybody can do this. But in reality I this is was easier said than done. To live the kind of life Abraham led required total sacrifice of our lives to God.

Total sacrifice in today’s world is very difficult for us if we follow Jesus. We love the world so much that many would rather skip church.

In Abraham’s time there was no Bible, no pastor, counselor, or mentor. Yet He believed in God and was fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised.

Today we still serve a living God, and not a dead one. In the middle of our struggles or what we see as impossible we can say what David says in Psalm 27:13, “I am still confident I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

When the promises came to Abraham, he might’ve thought it was going to happen right away, but it took 25 years before it came to pass. He waited that long before he had Isaac. Even when Sarah was impatient. Most of us want God to answer us as soon as we call to Him. But Romans 8:25 tells us, “But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.”

How many times do we suffer because of our impatience? We hurry to make decisions and choices instead of waiting for God.

God is faithful, when we start to think all hope is lost. God is always on time. God is always working behind the scenes. We will have it when the time is right.

That car someone is praying for, what if God knows it will destroy their life. He wants people to enjoy His goodness, and He will wait for the right time to answer our requests. He doesn’t want any of His blessings to send us to hell.

We need to keep a right attitude and know His promises for an abundant life will come in His timing.

Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” Don’t rush to get things done in life because impatience can cost you your life, and everything you have. Abraham waited 25 years, Noah waited 100 years before the flood came, and Joseph waited and went through many struggles before he saw his dream come to pass.

Sometimes, we lose hope when we feel that things we desire have been delayed when we’ve prayed for years, but nothing seems to happen. But know God will make everything beautiful in it’s time.

Hope doesn’t disappoint. Most of us believe that wealth is the answer to their problems, and putting hope in material things is the answer to all our prayers. But they just disappoint us and they can lead us to hell. 

1 Timothy 6:16-17 says, “Who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen, nor can see, to whom be honor and eternal power, Amen. Charge those who are rich in this present world that they not be arrogant, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on the living God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.”

Even though the headline screams their daily news that thin rule, the world and evil go unchecked, and even though prices rise and markets fall, and the war continues and diseases kill and disasters destroy, even though all the evidence suggests otherwise, we can hope against hope in God, who raised us from the dead with Jesus, who delivered our trespasses and raised us for our justification.