But in so doing, I picked up some baggage as well as some blessing.
No one intentionally saddled me with condemnation, I'm sure, but I was a very sensitive kid and took everything to heart. Threats of hell for wrongdoing, or even making a mistake, fanned my vivid imagination, and I was sure I'd "never make it."
The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and I learned to fear God at an early age, alright.
But I figured out eventually that most people don't fear God like I did, else they wouldn't behave the way they do! :)
Over time, I've come to realize that fearing God is respecting him. A healthy respect, with the realization that I'm a child of God and he cares for me, but ultimately I will answer to him.
For years, my fear of God was not healthy. I was terrified I'd do something to tick off the Almighty, and he'd shove me down the chute to eternal damnation.
Most words I heard from preachers did nothing to assuage my fears. So, I turned to the Bible for myself to see if I could find answers there.
Now the Bible can raise more questions than it answers. But in Jesus, I saw what sacrificial love is. And I saw how he loved the unlovable, and how he did not condemn the sinner so much as those who reeked of self-righteousness.
I also learned that faith is about ceasing the struggle and resting. It's letting go and knowing I don't have all the answers, never will, and neither will anyone else, because we all are imperfect and we all have different perspectives.
In my walk with God, I have found much comfort and peace in meditating on the Psalms, which were songs originally, or prayers, or prayerful songs.
Songs, psalms, poems, they tend to stick in our head because of their rhythms and rhymes.
Hopefully, some of them have permanently stuck in mine.
I marvel at the faith of Fanny Crosby who was blind, yet penned such songs as Blessed Assurance.
"Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blest;
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love."
She also wrote I am Thine, O Lord.
One of my favorite verses in that hymn says,
"O the pure delight of a single hour
That before Thy throne I spend,
When I kneel in pray'r, and with Thee, my God,
I commune as friend with friend. "
It took years of studying the Bible and meditating on hymns such as these to free me of my fears and replace them with faith.
Maybe I should say my faith now outweighs my fears, at least some of the time.
I'd be lying if I said I have it all figured out, or that I don't have periods of doubt. [And liars go to the bad place, so I'mma gonna tell you the truth!;)]
Possibly the ultimate in reassuring hymns is one that was almost always sung at Billy Graham crusades.
In the words of Just as I Am, I recognized that the writer of the song had experienced some of the same struggles as I. To me, every word of this old hymn is gold.
And, yes, I can safely say that it and others like it have changed my life...have taught me what it means to cease my struggles to be good enough and to simply rest in my Savior.
Sometimes I am afraid, but fear no longer rules my life.
Amen.
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