Fear--The great liar

There is a Zack Williams song which says, "Fear, he is a liar. He will take your breath, stop you in your steps. Fear he is a liar. He will rob your rest, steal your happiness, cast your fear in the fire; 'Cause fear he is a liar." I never thought much about the truth held within those words until I had a question posed to me at work on Friday evening.

You see, on my shift, I am the only Apostolic Pentecostal believer. While my boss as well as others at the company are, I am the only representative on the night crew. The question was posed asking if the kids in the church are afraid when we begin to pray in tongues. Without hesitation, I answered no while memories flooded my mind of our two 2- year olds kneeling next to their fathers in prayer at the alter. I then realized that even the children of our visitors have not been afraid when we began to pray. That got me to thinking.

What is fear? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary,  it is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger; an anxious concern; profound reverence and awe especially toward God. Those are all noun usages of the word fear, meaning person, place or thing. Moving to the verb part of fear, to be afraid of: expect with alarm; to have a reverential awe of; frighten; to feel fear in (oneself). 

Other terms to note are belief, awareness, anticipation and reverential. In defining these terms, we begin to get a clearer picture of fear. Let's look at each of these.

Belief is defined as a state or habit of mind in which trust it confidence is placed; something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion. Awareness is the quality of state of being aware: knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists. Anticipation is a prior action that takes into account or forestalls a later action; the act of looking forward; the visualization of a future event or state. And finally, reverential meaning expressing or having a quality of reverence; inspiring reverence.

If we put all of that together, let's get an alternate definition of fear: a state or habit of mind in which something that is accepted, considered to be true, of which there is knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists due to a prior action, taking into account a later action which inspires reverence.

I like that definition of fear. It speaks to the reverence that has been taught to the aforementioned children at church for prayer. They know that praying in tongues is true because they have the knowledge and understanding from prior actions: seeing and hearing parents, grandparents and other family members praying around them daily, being in church services where praying in tongues is normal.

It is we as adults that teach our children to fear, to have the anxiousness concerning the unknown. We tell them that anything that suffers from what we know is bad for them and should not be trusted. They may not communicate it as fear but as an aversion to something. They don't want to try a new thing because we said we didn't like it; now they don't like it either without ever having tried it for themselves. 

I recall being a teenager and going to a full gospel church for the first time. The only church services I had ever been in were in Baptist churches were the preacher or a deacon were the only ones who ever prayed aloud or a Sunday school teacher to begin and end class. I got to this church for a gospel singing and folks begin to flood the altar during the invitation. I look up and see a man with his arms outstretched towards heaven and hear him praying aloud in tongues. I was so bewildered. Two things were happening simultaneously that I did not understand or have knowledge of. I even went home and wrote about it in my journal project for school (a Baptist teen telling my Methodist teacher about the fullness of God and praying in tongues 😂). 

Was I afraid of what I experienced that evening so long ago? No, absolutely not. Did I have a reverential awe? Yes!  I think so many times things get labeled as "fear" then that label is ran with in the context of dangerous and likely to cause pain part of the definition. In reality, so many other words could be used to define the question I was asked.  Are the children in awe? Are the children full of wonder? Do they stand or kneel in reverence? Do they have respect for the prayer time? If that is the "fear" you are speaking of, then yes our children are afraid. But just to say are they fearful of something, nope. "Fear" is a liar. It's not about the hiding in a corner, shaking in your boots that we are lead to believe in as a child, but a reverential awe at who God is to you personally. That's the best fear in the world