How You Can Defeat the Giant of Fearናሙና

How Fear Compromises Your Decision Making

Someone once described fear as an acrostic: “false evidence appearing real.”

In other words, it’s a lie you believe. And in today’s study, we’ll look at this second truth about fear:

Fear is a liar.

Fear lies to us, and too often, we believe those lies. And when you believe the lies that fear whispers into your heart, those lies cause you to make bad decisions. A decision rooted in fear cannot also be rooted in faith.

Fear looks around for evidence. It looks backward and forward, to the left and to the right. But it never looks up. Fear doesn’t factor God into the equation. It lies to you and says to depend upon the circumstances and your own puny understanding.

Today’s reading from 1 Kings provides a cautionary tale of how this plays out. It’s the story of King Jeroboam.

Before we look at his story, here’s a quick recap of how he came to be king.

If you remember your Bible stories, you know Israel’s first king was a man named Saul. Saul was king of Israel for 40 years, and then after Saul came David, the great king.

David was a man after God’s own heart, a man to whom God compared every other king after him. He was the standard-bearer for good and godly kings.

After David came his son Solomon. He was very wise at first – then very foolish toward the end of his life. Solomon enjoyed the blessings of God and a kingdom overflowing with peace and prosperity. When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam became king.

And to be blunt, Rehoboam was an arrogant, foolish, little jerk. Under Rehoboam, the kingdom of Israel split. Two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, stayed with Rehoboam and became known as the Kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as their capital. But the remaining ten tribes said, “Forget it, Rehoboam. We aren’t going to follow you.” They formed a new nation referred to in Scripture by various names: Samaria, Ephraim, Israel, and the Northern Kingdom. Their king was Jeroboam.

God sent a prophet to Jeroboam before he became king and told him, “If you will follow after me, if you will do what I say, I will bless your kingdom like I blessed David.”

Jeroboam had a great promise from God. He could have been a wonderful king with a blessed nation had he just trusted and obeyed God. But what did Jeroboam do? He began to look at the evidence. He began to calculate the situation and the circumstances without factoring in God. This is always the formula for fear, which leads to disobedience and disaster.

Fear always does this when you allow it to govern your decisions. You put all the pieces together but leave out the most crucial part – God. You make decisions based on circumstances rather than the promises of God.

That’s what Jeroboam did. He didn’t factor in God, and that’s where we come to his decision in today’s reading from 1 Kings.

Rehoboam is king in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where the temple is. The Law requires the people to go to Jerusalem three times a year to offer sacrifices (Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles).

Jeroboam believed that if the people in his kingdom went three times a year to sacrifice to the Lord in Jerusalem (where Rehoboam was king), their allegiance would turn to Rehoboam. He would then be viewed as a rival to the throne and lose his life.

Guided by fear and not faith, he fashioned two golden calves. He put one in the southern part of his kingdom and one in the northern part of the kingdom. He told those ten tribes who followed him, “It is too much for you to go all the way to Jerusalem to worship. You just come and worship at the golden calves conveniently stationed in Bethel and Dan.”

The thing that he did was extremely evil in the sight of the Lord. He led the people astray and concocted his own syncretistic, idolatrous worship. Jeroboam, the man who had a promise from God and could’ve been a great king with a great legacy like David, ended up being such a massive failure that he became the standard-bearer for bad kings.

When you read in the book of Kings, anytime there was a bad king, it is said that he followed in the steps of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. He blew it big time.

He made an awful decision all because of fear.

When facing your giant of fear, remember to look not through the lens of fear but through the eyes of faith. That’s what the two other passages in today’s reading remind you.

We are to live by faith, not fear. We’ll explore that powerful truth in tomorrow’s reading.

Questions:

1. What lies might your fears be telling you, and how can looking to God help you to dispel those lies?

2. Is there a situation you’re facing today that you may be forgetting to factor God into the picture? Look to God and thank him for being present in all your circumstances.