No Fear!

(2 Timothy 1:7) For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

When I was in grade school, there was one particular kid that I was afraid of. He was the older brother of one of my best friends, and for several years I let him push me around. He was older than me by a few years, much bigger and stronger, and he had a nasty disposition–no excuses, just facts.

This was a family that my family knew for many years. They were ranchers that ran cattle and horses. Later on they moved closer to where we lived and opened up a stable. The dad’s primary love was horses, so it was a good fit. The horses that we had from time to time all came from them, and I spent a lot of time down at their place riding and working in the fields and stables. The other members of the family were tough individuals, but the oldest boy, Jody, just had a bit of a mean streak. He kept a lot of us younger kids intimidated at all times. You just never knew what to expect from him, so you tried to keep your distance. He seemed to get a perverse joy from hurting or embarrassing us. If we had something he wanted, he would try to take it, and we would end up in the dirt.

Jody was a bully. I don’t use that term in the modern sense. These days it seems that any time one kid says or does anything that an adult finds even slightly out of line, the term bully comes out, the counselors flood in, and much hand-wringing ensues. Don’t get me wrong, I am not condoning genuinely bad or dangerous behavior, but when I was growing up, we were taught that the only way to get a bully off your back was to stand up to him. Please understand, no one brought a 9mm to school in those days, and I know that many of you live in a very different world. In those days, two kids having it out on the playground after school was not all that unusual. In fact, I can remember a couple of the male teachers supervising a scuffle or two, just to be sure that it didn’t get out of hand, and that it was “a fair fight.” Can you imagine the litigation that would bring today? The lawyers are licking their chops!

Anyway, I can remember, like it was yesterday, the very day that the whole situation with Jody turned around. I think I was about 11 years old by then. I don’t remember exactly what we were doing, but Jody’s younger brother who was one of my best friends, their much younger brother Newton, Jody, and I, were all outside their house messing around at something. As I recall, we were all having a good time, I said something, and Jody decided to hit me. I don’t think I even deserved it that time, but I could be wrong. I was sitting on a swing; he came in very suddenly and punched me hard in the mouth knocking me down. This was the moment that I had feared for years. I had sort of grappled with him several times, but he was so much bigger that it never lasted very long and I always lost. But I will never forget that moment; it was the first time I had really gotten hit by a full fist right in the face. Two things happened at once; I hit the ground, and I realized that after all this time, after all the backing down, hiding, staying out of his way, getting hit really didn’t hurt that much.

Now mom’s, you have to believe me here; this is a realization that every young man needs to have at some point in his life. It often comes in the same form it came to me, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. This is an important moment; the moment that you learn that what you have feared is nowhere near as debilitating as living under the fear itself.

It took just a second for me to realize that I would never be afraid of Jody again, and another second for me to launch off the ground and come back at him. I was going to take every minute that he had kept me down in all those years right out of his hide. I guess he could see it in my eyes, because he turned and ran as fast as he could and literally hid inside behind his mother. We were all scared of her, so I went back outside. Jody never ever bothered me again. I learned another lesson that day–bullies (real bullies, not kids that give another kid a dirty look) are cowards at heart.

Now, given our modern, fluffy, sensitive society, you may not like my story. But here is the point. The devil is nothing but a bully. He is a defeated enemy that has no right, no authority, and no power to steal from your life. But if you let him, he will push you around, keep you tied up in fear, and rob you blind at every turn.

Job discovered, after everything dear to him had been taken away, that the reason it happened was because he allowed fear into his life. He said, “The thing that I have so greatly feared, has come upon me (Job 3:25).” You see, it wasn’t God wreaking havoc in Job’s life, or the devil under God’s instructions. Job gave the devil access through fear. Fear attracts demonic activity like blood attracts sharks.

Don’t let it happen to you! When you find fear in any form, intimidation, worry, anxiety, sleepless nights, trying to creep into your life, pull out the name of Jesus and the Word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit, and let the devil have it. The bible says that if we submit to God, and resist him, he will flee in stark terror from us. A bully is a bully. They are all the same. You can live your life with no fear!