Be not afraid

When I was 19 I got stuck in a remote Nepal village (3 days walking out) with the worst food poisoning I had ever gotten.

Constant vomiting, diahrea. You get the idea.

There were no doctors. No pharmacy or modern medicine. 

The best I got offered was a very dry banana from a local.

It was the one of the few times in my life I have genuinely feared for my life. 

Luckily, over the next 24 hours my body managed to fight off the bug and I was able to walk out, but the memory will forever stick with me. The feeling of complete hopelessness, knowing that if it had turned bad there was nothing I could do.

A feeling of fear.

Fear is something we have all experienced, whether it be of public speaking, spiders, heights or you have Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia – which, ironically, is the fear of long words.

But yet, despite all these things to be afraid of, one of the most repeated commands in the Bible is very simple:

Do not fear.

Seems impossible in a world filled with so much chaos, anxiety and stress. And the advice seems about as helpful as telling someone not to worry, when clearly there is reason to worry.

Yet there is stands.

And this week we are going to dive into this topic of fear, trying to unpack how we can follow this command, and truly live out what it means not to fear.

And we will start that tomorrow when we dive into what the root cause of fear is.

For now, be blessed.

Aaron,

Theophilus Newsletter