Fear & Faith
(From when Joseph’s brothers go to Egypt to buy food during the famine – Genesis 42-43)
[The brothers] said to one another,”Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come on us.” (Genesis 42:21)
I’ve read these chapters a few times in the last half year. The brothers’ & Jacob’s reactions always stand out to me. The brothers’ feeling of guilt after all these years for betraying their brother Joseph. Their fear even now of being punished, of getting ‘what they deserved’ from God. Their viewing of the situation as negative and terrible. Jacob’s refusal to let them take Benjamin to Egypt for fear that he’d lose him as well. His negative mindset of having been deprived of all his children (exaggeration much?) in Genesis 42:36 and how ‘everything is against him’. There is a fear within of punishment for our wrongdoings, there is a fear of everything turning out for the worse. All this fear translates to being very self centered on what we have done, what we have gone through, and what we don’t want to happen — a fear of what God may bring upon us.
I relate to Jacob and the brothers. I am a sinner. I have many wrongdoings and there is a fear of the consequences. There is a fear that everything will turn out terribly, that I will get what it is that I ‘deserve’.
But the ending of Genesis is beautiful and it speaks of grace and mercy, not just from people but ultimately from God. All Jacob’s and the brothers’ fears were for naught. They were so afraid of going back to Egypt to get more food, when the whole time, it was for their blessing. They viewed the situation as ‘distressful’, when really it was the complete opposite. They were to live comfortably in Egypt. Jacob wasn’t going to lose any more sons, instead, he got back the one he lost and so much more. There were no punishments; there were no bad outcomes. Instead, mercy and forgiveness was extended to the brothers. Instead, everything turned out happily and for the blessing of the Israelites. They didn’t starve during the famine. Instead they flourished in Egypt.
How often do we get into these situations? We fear the very worse. We fear taking the next step because all we can think of are the possible negative consequences. We’d rather fear than trust in a God who has time and time again proved merciful, gracious, and ultimately loving.
Yes we mess up, we sin, and we do deserve judgement and consequences. Yes, situations may very well turn out badly. But what ought to dispel all fears even in the face of the possibility of terrible outcomes is the fact that we have a God who will never leave us and who loves us with a love beyond understanding. The worst may occur and even then, having a God who guides us and accompanies us through it reminds us that it is not the ‘worst’. Though we may not always understand the difficult or unfair situations we are placed through, we can believe in the goodness of God — that His plan is good and far beyond our imagination, our plans, and even our fears. We may suffer consequences, or we may not. We may see great results in our ventures, or we may not. Everything is a possibility – the good and the bad. But one thing remains fixed and constant — our God’s love for us and His faithfulness towards us. He is not out to ‘get us’ as we may sometimes fear. He is not there to catch us in our sin and our wrongdoings and punish us like some sort of policeman. He is a God who loves us with a love that we all crave for and he wants to bless us.
The speaker at a retreat I went to a couple weekends ago said ‘the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear’. I liked that. I’m trying to have faith and trust in God with not just parts of my life, but all of it. There is a constant fear that I’ve gone too far, that I’ve messed up too much, that I’m going to one day hit a wall and fail terribly and have everything I hold dear crash around me. But I don’t want to live like that, in that fear. I want to live in faith — faith that my God will never let me go, that He’s still growing me, that He still loves me despite what I have done and who I am and that even if all my fears do come about, my faith does not rest on the condition that things go well in my life, but on the constant faithfulness God has shown in all history and to me. I want to have faith that even if I were to fail miserably and commit the worst wrongdoing possible, I am not so far out there that I am out of God’s reach and redemption.
“If we are faithless, he remains faithful…” 2 Timothy 2:13
