“Do Not Fear, For I AM With You!

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10

Do not fear or fear not is the most repeated command in the Bible. God directly said this in the Old Testament many times and also through his prophets and Jesus repeated it many times in the New Testament. Lloyd Ogilvie in his book says there is 366 fear not in the Bible – one for every single day and even for the leap year.

One of the common fear that haunts people is the fear of failure in life. Young people face the fear of failure in their schools, colleges, and career, married fear they may fail in their family life, the aged fear that they may not have anybody when they face real needs like loss of health, memory issues, etc.

 Salvador Dali, whose artworks and paintings are world-famous, was bold enough to make that famous statement, “Have no fear of perfection – you will never achieve it.” I live in the USA, and quarterly and annual reviews many employees are faced with fear and anxiety because of the fear that I may have missed or made an error somewhere. Unfortunately, failure or error seems unacceptable in the corporate culture of the USA. This is one of the reasons for the high-stress level in US workplaces. Many corporations, although not all, seem to forget or are blind to the fact that we are only human and the culture elevates perfectness to such a high standard and wants to see perfectness in all we do. Fear of failure impacts all- strong, weak, educated, illiterate, brilliant, and average.

Beloved, we can get comforted because the God of the Bible acknowledges the fact of failure in our lives. Bible says the truth in Ecclesiastes 7:20, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” In other words, there is not a single person who lives on earth who does good all the time and never sins. You won’t see such a person, period! The only exception is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We all are prone to fail in one way or another.

Look at the past. Didn’t you fail many times in the past? We all did. In one fashion or another. So the truth is we will fail again in our lives. First, keep this truth in your heart. This truth of we all would fail necessitates the need for grace and forgiveness in our lives. Typically, it is hard to see such grace and forgiveness in this world, especially when we fail. People are quick to point fingers. Culture constantly looks to blame someone.

However, God specializes in grace and offers it sufficiently and abundantly amid our failures so that we can clean the slates of past failures and move on with our lives. We need God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness. He is not in short supply for all grace, mercy, and forgiveness, if we call on Him. 2 Timothy 2:1 says, “Timothy, my dear son, be strong through the grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus.” Do not be fearful, God understands our frame and failures, even if no one else understands and He has a beautiful pre-plan to refashion us. Thereby, we can be strong through the grace God gives us in Christ Jesus.

In today’s Bible verse the Lord God says, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” It is when we hit the bottom, that divine opportunities emerge to make us fly on high grounds again. God’s amazing grace, available in the person of Jesus Christ, is the doorway to fly high.

Beloved, got a moment for today’s prayer? Pray after me. “Father in heaven, I know my failure is not a surprise to you. You knew that I would fail and have grace in store for me. I believe Christ died for all my faults and sins and rose again victoriously. I accept Him as my savior and Lord. Lord, please forgive me in your grace and rebuild my life according to your design now. In Christ’s name, I pray. Amen.”