Facing Our Fears (Part 2)

Something happened after Jehoshaphat’s plea. Someone in the crowd spoke up—Jahaziel, one of the brothers:

Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This is what the Lord says to you: “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them . . . You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you . . . Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you” (2 Chronicles 20:15–17).

The battle was the Lord’s. It was His business to do the fighting. Jehoshaphat’s role was to stand fast and see what God would do. This is what Paul meant when he wrote, “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes . . . Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Ephesians 6:10–13).

“Standing” is a mental posture, a refusal to run away, to retreat into self-indulgent and self-protective devices. It is a matter of standing one’s ground and waiting to see what God will do.

But standing also means engaging our fears. We have to “march down against them”; we must identify the thing we fear and face it. That’s sometimes the hardest thing in the world to do. Our natural inclination is to flee.

We must not run from our fears; we only expose ourselves to greater danger when we do. We must “get in the face” of those things we fear and then see what God will do.

The next morning Jehoshaphat’s fears returned, as they always do, but he looked again into God’s Word and found there the assurance he needed to go on. He said to his army, “Have faith in the Lord your God and you will be upheld; have faith in his prophets and you will be successful” (2 Chronicles 20:20). Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

Again, we see this in Paul’s writing: “Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:16–17).

Satan never gives up. He continues to harass us, reminding us of our impotence and inability to act, insinuating that God cannot be trusted to keep His word.  “Has God really said . . . ?” he sneers.

He flings himself against us again and again. He tries to overwhelm us with repeated assaults. For each attack we must raise the shield of faith and unsheathe our swords—stir ourselves to remember what God has said and get a good grip on His Word.

So then, with confidence restored, Jehoshaphat marched off to face his foes. The band struck up a tune, and Jehoshaphat and his army went off to war, singing an old sustaining song:

Give thanks to the Lord,
for his love endures forever (2 Chronicles 20:21).

Imagine the march. Jehoshaphat reached the top of the first hill from which he could look down into the Jordan valley. There he saw his enemies massing for the attack. Then they were lost from sight as he dropped into a valley.

He climbed another hill from which he could look down and see the enemy on the march up the wadi. He descended and once again his enemies disappeared from view only to appear again at the next rise. Each hill became another occasion to renew his faith.

Then as he approached the final hilltop, he drew his sword and led the charge—to find “only dead bodies lying on the ground” (20:24). “The Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated. The men of Ammon and Moab rose up against the men from Mount Seir to destroy and annihilate them. After they finished slaughtering the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another” (20:22–23). Jehoshaphat’s enemies were DOA. There was nothing left of them but their booty.

There’s an old saying: “To a crow in the know a scarecrow is an invitation to a feast.” Jehoshaphat and his army plundered their adversaries and returned with the spoils of war. Is this not what Paul means when he says we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37)? God takes the very thing we fear and turns it to ringing triumph.

This assault upon Judah is suggestive to me of those unexpected crises we experience that come out of nowhere, often at a time when things are going especially well.

When we least expect it, a messenger arrives at our house with a registered letter from a lawyer; a summons comes from the IRS; a warrant is served for our son’s arrest; our doctor leaves a call informing us that our lab tests look bad. The fear we experience at such times is perfectly normal. It is not cowardice. It is a natural, instinctive reaction to a situation beyond our control.

I’m personally afraid of men who are fearless. Starbuck, the chief mate of Captain Ahab’s boat The Pequod, said, “I will have no man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale.” I agree. I don’t drift our Idaho rivers with men who have no fear, and I don’t fly with bush pilots who aren’t afraid. There are old pilots and bold pilots, as they say, but there are no old, bold pilots. There are some things a man ought to be afraid of. If he isn’t, there’s something wrong with him.

The problem is not fear, but our response to it. Jesus often said to His disciples, “fear not,” but the tense He employed referred not to their immediate response to danger, but to persistent fear—fear that paralyzes and hinders them from doing what they knew they ought to do.

Though I rarely agree with theologian Paul Tillich, I think he had the right idea when he argued that courage is the foundation of virtue. Fear is what prevents obedience.

Fear is not sin, but disobedience is, and fear can lead to disobedience. We listen to our racing pulses and ringing ears and react in ungodly ways. We lash out at our colleagues, our wife and children, and God. We deny our fear and cover up with bravado or we flee from it into alcohol and drugs. We resort to scheming on our own and make decisions that exclude God’s wisdom. As a consequence we never find out what God can do.

We should rather seek God’s face and that tranquil place where He dwells. There’s no panic there. In that quiet place we must read and reflect on His Word and find out what He wants us to do. He will supply the wisdom we need.

And then we must sally forth in faith to face the thing we fear, singing to ourselves about our Lord’s love, thanking Him for a victory already won, believing that the battle is not ours but the Lord’s.

He will do all the rest. He will either do away with our enemies, or He will take us through the encounter unscathed. He will deliver us from evil and surprise us with joy. The valley we have dreaded will have become a valley of blessing forevermore (2 Chronicles 20:26).

The prophet Joel, when speaking about the coming of our Lord, calls the place of His final conflict “the Valley of Jehoshaphat” (Joel 3:2, 12). Jehoshaphat’s victory in his day was symbolic of all God’s victories and finds its final application in the ultimate defeat of all the enemies of our soul.

In the meantime, every dark and dangerous valley can be the Valley of Jehoshaphat—the place where God puts to death our fears.

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Taken from Seeing God, ©2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566 Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights reserved.