FEAR, ANXIETY, AND STRESS
By Lee LeFebre
Fear, anxiety, and stress prevent many Christians from experiencing joy, peace, and love in their lives. Thank- fully, Scripture is clear about the solution to the fear, anxiety, and stress trifecta of trouble.
Over time, fear, anxiety, and stress are very destructive to the soul and body. Doctors are convinced that stress is linked to numerous physical and physiological complaints. It can effect, or exacerbate, sleeplessness, eating disorders, ulcers, high blood pressure, strokes, heart disease, and sexual dysfunction. It definitely affects many people’s philosophies and theology.
Fear tempts people to do regrettable things. Fear can result in prolonged suffering in order to avoid death, betrayed friendships, lies, avoided martyrdom, perjury, even refusal to be seen with certain people.
Specific Fears
In counseling, I have identified certain specific fears that seem to stand out among the others. They are as follows and in no particular order:
- Fear of Failure
- Fear of Rejection
- Fear of Death
- Fear of Abandonment
- Fear of Loss
Fear of Failure
This is a very common fear that drives people to check and recheck their behavior. It often motivates people to hide mistakes. Fear of failure can be the motivation for distorting financial records, lying about achievements, and mis-leading investors.
The leader of a country must not fail in war. Jesus asked, ...what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand” (Luke 14:31)? Failure in battle results in loss of territory, men and equipment, prestige, and sometimes even a country’s existence.
Fear of failure is usually not an end in itself. 1 John 4:18 states, ...fear involves punishment (torment), and the one who fears is not perfected in love. In other words, it usually does little good to ask people to stare failure in the face and try to figure out why they fear it. It is better to look elsewhere for the cause. However, I am not averse to helping people see that they are total failures in terms of the modus operandi of their first birth—which, of course, consists of flesh plus law. They are also failures because they lack the power of divine life, having been born spiritually dead. When we agree to be the total failures that we are under that operating system, the fear of failure can lose its power. My experience has been that when this decision is made, Christ reveals himself as our total success. He is a success.
Fear of Rejection
Behind the fear of failure is usually the fear of rejection. However, the fear of rejection becomes powerful because people do not know in an experiential way that they are acceptable. Once a person truly knows through revelation that he is acceptable to God, then he will be acceptable to himself, unless, of course, his view of what made him acceptable to himself is different than what made him acceptable to God. Rejection by men no longer holds power over those to whom acceptance is revealed by God.
But it does little good to tell a person that he is "accepted in the beloved" as noted in Ephesians 1:6, if acceptance is not experienced. And acceptance is not experienced when certain lies keep people working to make themselves acceptable.
What lies would those be? Take a moment and refer back to Chapter 3 – The Galatian Error where I emphasized the belief many hold that we are saved by grace, but made acceptable by works—thus my oft- repeated assertion that people commonly spend their entire Christian lives trying to become good Christians, in spite of Scriptures to the contrary. That is not to say that obedience isn’t necessary as we will address in a later chapter.
Deceptions Which Hinder Acceptance
- "I am merely clothed in righteousness.”
- The truth is—in the New Covenant, I am indwelt by righteousness; it is part of who I am. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). The often referred to “robe of righteousness” is Old Covenant, external, and rendered outdated by the New Covenant.
- "God doesn’t really see me, He sees Christ in me."
- The truth is—what scripture is this baloney based on?
- God sees me as if I’m righteous."
- The truth is—I am righteous! Why do we say "as if"? Does God really need to pretend that I am righteous? Does he put on his dark glasses to help in this pretension?
- "I’ll be righteous when I get to heaven."
- The truth is—this is true of my behavior, but not of my basic identity.
- "I’ll become more righteous as I age, or as I mature."
- The truth is—righteousness is received, not achieved. For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:17).
- "I’m positionally righteous."
- The truth is—the Bible teaches that righteous- ness is actual for the believer............................. just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love (Ephesians 1:4).
- "I’m righteous in Christ, but…"
- The truth is—you can add anything you want to that sentence, and it will still be wrong!
- “I’m righteous due to the forgiveness of sins.” The reality that many people believe that forgiveness results in righteousness, is part and parcel of this deception.
Many people see their sins as being recorded on something like a whiteboard. If they commit ten sins on any one day, they are at a minus ten until they repent, confess, and are then forgiven.
Now that the whiteboard (their conscience) is clean, they are righteous until the next set of sins is committed and the process is repeated.
What is wrong with this thinking? Even if we are living on a continuous forgiveness system because of a misunderstanding of 1 John 1:9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, this forgiveness cleanses us from unrighteousness, but it does not give us righteousness. Thus, the minus ten, after forgiveness brings us to zero.
We need to be in the infinite plus column but this approach will not give us righteousness. Righteousness is not given on the basis of the forgiveness of sins, but is the gift of Christ himself.
Until the believer accepts the righteousness of Christ as his very own, by faith in the Word of God, he will forever see himself as though he is apart from Christ, unacceptable, unworthy—a poor, wretched sinner, saved by grace. This system of false beliefs will cause him to struggle for acceptance.
The precious words, "in Christ Jesus," are scattered generously throughout the epistles. Until the Holy Spirit reveals to us who we are "in Christ Jesus"— united to Him, one with Him, joined to Him, immersed in Him, in union with Him—we will forever see our- selves only as ourselves in separation from Christ. We will consequently fear failure and rejection.
Why? Because, without that revelation, we have not been "perfected in love" ...There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love (1 John 4:18). Thus, we will not see ourselves as loved!
In reality, how lovable are we? As lovable as we are acceptable. How acceptable are we? We are one with Him, so if he is acceptable, then we are acceptable! If we know God, we know love. If we know Christ, we know ourselves. The weapons of failure and rejection lose their power.
Next: Fear of Death.
