What if this doesn’t work out?

What if I fail?

What if it isn’t what I think it is?

What if it’s exactly what I think it is?

Fear is strong. It’s pervasive. 

Once it gets a foothold it likes to hang on just as tight as it can.

It doesn’t wait for an invitation and always tries to overstay its welcome.

It tells you you’re not good enough. Nothing will work out. All that waits for you is failure.

God understands fear. He gave us enough verses about it to last one every day for a year.

Whenever God gives someone a task to do, He tells them to be strong and courageous. To not fear. 

He understands it. He understands that when we’re given something new, a lot of times our first response to it is fear. To curl up and freeze right where we’re at. To stay in our bubble of comfort where we’re safe and warm. And nothing ever changes. 

The enemy understands fear too. He knows that’s our first reaction and he banks on it. If he can keep us being too scared to move, how can we obey God?

So what do we do? How do we get past our fears to really trust God and do what He says for us to do?

God’s Truth

The Parable of the Talents

In Matthew 25:14-30, Jesus tells a parable of three men who were given talents to work with for their master. One was given five talents, another two, and the third had one. 

A talent was a form of currency worth about twenty years of work. 

The first man took his five talents and he worked with them until he had turned it into five more talents. 

The second man took his two and he worked with them until they were doubled as well and he had four. 

The third man though. He took his one talent and he buried it to keep it safe. He did nothing with it but hold it for his master. 

The master comes back and he gets a report. He hears that the first man doubled it and he congratulates him. He hears that the second man did the same and he congratulates him as well. 

Then he speaks with the third man and finds that he’s done nothing with it. And he takes that one talent and he gives it to the first man instead. 

The third man’s excuse for doing nothing with his talent is basically that he was scared of failing. 

God has given each of us gifts and talents and resources and time. He’s given each of us a life. They vary person to person, but He still wants us to use the things given to us. 

The first man had five talents and the second man only two. The first man returned ten talents to his master and the second man only four. But the master congratulates them both on using what they had and returning with doubled amounts. 

The third man is scolded because he let fear control him. He did nothing with the talent he was given and let it become nothing more than he started with and even lost it at the end. 

We have the same choice. Will we let our fears take over and cause us to hide away in fear of failure? Or will we take what we’ve been given and work with it, increasing it and using it well?

God will ask an account of all of us at the end of our lives. He has great things planned for each of us. Opportunities to work for Him and to use the time and talents He’s gifted us with. He’ll make those things happen. He’s perfectly faithful and perfectly capable. 

But it’s our responsibility to take hold of those opportunities too. To follow through in obedience when God tells us to do something. 

Following God isn’t meant to be an easy and comfortable thing. He never promises that. He promises the opposite even. He knows it’s hard. But He still expects us to trust Him enough to move forward into the things He has for us.

Will you stay comfortable and safe where you’re at or will you keep moving forward into the things He has planned for you? 

The Exodus 

Look back at Moses. At the Israelites. 

God promised Abraham all the way back in Genesis that a great nation would come from him. From Abraham and Sarah, who were so old that it was humanly impossible for them to have kids. But God takes the impossible and makes them possible. 

He gave them Isaac. And He reiterated that promise to Isaac. And Isaac had Jacob and Esau and then God reiterates that promise to Jacob as well. 

And then the Israelites become a nation. But they’re a nation of slaves in Egypt and part of that promise God made was that they’d be a nation great in number and with their own land as well. 

And then He calls Moses to lead this nation to the promised land. A calling that Moses rejects at first. He knows it’ll be hard. Almost impossible even. And he’s terrified. He wants so badly to stay in his comfortable life and have no part of this. He even tells God to pick someone else. But this was a plan God had for Moses to do. Specifically. 

And so he goes to Egypt and tells Pharaoh about God’s command to free Israel from slavery. And Pharaoh says no, just like Moses thought he would. And they go through this back and forth for the span of ten plagues where God shows Himself to Pharaoh, but also to Israel and to Moses as well. 

God called Moses by the potential He knew that Moses had. By the calling that God had placed on him. Moses was by no means ready to lead Israel at that point. The plagues proved God’s power not only to Egypt but to Israel and Moses as well. 

Moses had to learn how to rely on God. On His power and His might and His faithfulness. And The people too. They were called to be God’s people. But they had to learn to trust Him as His people too. To trust God to be their God as He promised He would be.

At the end of the ten plagues the Israelites are chased down as they’re leaving Egypt and they come to the Red Sea. And now I had always heard this story and just taken it as it was. God parted the seas and the people left Egypt and they started out in the wilderness. 

But first off, God literally parted an entire sea to let His people go. He quite literally made a way for them to step into what He had for them. That’s a crazy thing to just gloss over.

Something else stood out to me this time around too. God tells Moses in Exodus 14:15 to “Tell the people of Israel to go forward.” That He was going to make a way for them to walk across the sea on dry land.

And it stood out to me this time because I heard it more personally too. Go forward like you trust Me to come through. 

Don’t be scared and keep asking Me what to do. If I’ve said it, I’ll do it. Trust Me to come through.

If you believe He’s told you something, believe it. Trust Him. He will come through. God always accomplishes His will. 

Will you go forward like you trust Him to come through? Will you keep moving forward? 

If He’s told you something, move towards it. He’ll guide you. He’ll redirect you as necessary. He’s always with you. He’ll never leave you. He stayed with the Israelites through all their disobedience, patiently waiting until they trusted Him enough to walk into their promised land. And He stays with us in our disobedience too, patiently waiting until we actually trust Him enough to walk in the things He has for us. 

And He’s not just waiting. He’s working the whole time. Start saying yes to the littlest of things in front of you. Take care of the place you’re in right now and as you say yes to the little things He has for you now, it’ll be easier to say yes to the bigger things He has for you later too. 

And remember too that it’s not all on your shoulders to make it happen. It’s on God’s. He’s the One who makes everything happen. Not us. Don’t put the pressure of God’s job on your own shoulders. Trust Him to do what He said He would. It’s not too late.