FEAR AND TRUST

For Lent, our church is studying Twenty-four Hours that Changed the World by Adam Hamilton.  We continue with Christ's condemnation by the Sanhedrin.

Mark 14:53-72

The night following the Last Supper was supercharged with emotions – confusion, anger, disappointment and fear. Fear motivated so many of the actions of the people that night.

Fear prompted Peter to carry a sword with him that night to the Garden of Gethsemane; fear guided his hand when he sliced off another man's ear. The disciples fled for their lives when they had a chance, and Peter denied Christ out of a sense of self-preservation.

The members of the Sanhedrin, the religious ruling council, were also driven by fear. Jesus threatened them and their way of life. If Jesus led a successful uprising, would they lose their power and their status? Worse yet, if he only managed to anger the Romans, would they too end their lives on crosses?

When they had Jesus beaten, they had him blindfolded. Was this an act of cruelty, or were they afraid to look into Jesus' eyes and see the men they had become?

Jesus, in the dark night of the soul at the rock in Gethsemane, was afraid, too. Christ is fully divine, but he is also fully human and took our humanity with him to the Garden where he wept and agonized over was waiting for him – betrayal, physical torture, mocking and the humiliation and pain of death by crucifixion.

The dark night of the soul is when we are wrestling with our own sin or a hard decision, or we find ourselves in the midst of desolation, a situation where we feel afraid, isolated or abandoned, confused or lost.

The man we have come to know as St. Patrick found himself struggling through his own time of desolation. At the age of sixteen, Patrick, a Christian, was kidnapped from his home in England by Irish pirates. In Ireland, he was sold as a slave to a Druid, a pagan, priest. Patrick was put to work as a shepherd.

Alone and afraid in a foreign land, he felt God was testing his faith. Instead of giving up and giving in, Patrick chose to continue to trust in God. I don't think that it meant that Patrick wasn't afraid at times, but when Patrick surrendered himself to the will and care of God, just as Christ did, he found peace and courage in the midst of that fear.

From the Amplified Bible, 2 Timothy 1:7:

 “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.”

Fear robs us from the ability to make wise decisions, to sense the presence of God with us and to experience peace and hope. As God leads us through the dark nights of our souls or through our times of desolation, God's grace frees us from the oppression of fear. We may feel afraid, but fear does not have control over us. God is greater than fear, and we can trust in God's grace that supplies us with power, love, calm and clear thinking.

Whether we are overwhelmed with impossible circumstances or a God calls us to do something that scares the socks off us, fear does not have to rule our lives. With Christ as our example, we can confidently believe in the love of God and step out in faith into the future God has for us.

Through Christ's life, death and resurrection, we are freed from slavery to sin and death and from the power of fear. In the most challenging of times that threaten us and our faith, God has given us a spirit of love, power, wisdom and a sense of peace in all things.