Faith Is the Opposite of Fear

We recently had a downturn in the honey company. We grew too fast and were investing into the future by building a second plant in Georgia. But we ended up losing a lot of money. 

But through that, we began to go to the market and look at either selling or bringing on a financial partner. And so we've been continuing to work through that process. But obviously, that creates a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety as an entrepreneur. There's the whole emotional side of getting tied up and wrapped up in your business.

This brought me to 1st Chronicles, where David had just done the fundraising campaign for the temple where everybody made a contribution. David was praying this prayer of dedication for the resources that had been raised, and he also had a prayer of dedication for Solomon.

In part of David's prayer, he prayed that Solomon would not operate in fear. You have to wonder if he prayed that because David struggled with operating in fear himself.

This passage points out that fear is the opposite of faith.

We see this also in the book of Esther. You've got Haman, who is posturing and positioning himself inside the kingdom to look great. And you’ve got Mordechai, who had discovered a potential assassination attempt on the king, which he divulges, and the king isn't killed.

But Haman decides to try to rout the Jews. And so he gives his declaration that the Jews are going to be killed on a certain date. And Esther has this call to prayer with Haman in the background, as he’s about to get Mordechai killed because Mordechai will not pay respect to him.

Haman actually puts a big pole up next to his house where he plans to get Xerxes to allow him to impale Mordechai on that. And so the night before that, he's going to go and petition King Xerxes to allow him to impale Mordechai, but Xerxes can't sleep. So he calls in the historian to read the chronicles of his kingdom. Then, the historian tells the story of how Mordechai had discovered this assassination attempt. 

Xerxes says Mordechai should be rewarded for that. So the next day Haman comes in. And Xerxes asks Haman if he wanted to, you know, honor somebody on Xerxes’ team what should he do? And so Haman thinks, “Oh, he’s talking about me.” So he lays out this big plan of how he would be honored, and Xerxes says, okay great, go do that for Mordechai.

It completely ruins Haman’s plan and ultimately ends with Haman being impaled on that pole that he intended for Mordechai. It's just so interesting that here is this total manipulator, Haman, who's sitting there and trying to get this set up. And you've got Mordechai, who is trying to honor God and the Jewish people. Yet he Is so insistent on prayer, and it was through that prayer that ultimately God, apart from everybody else, couldn't allow the king to sleep.

In the midst of challenges here inside the business, or even in our personal lives, it's so important to recognize the absolute sovereignty of God and how God uses anything to accomplish his will.

So now one of my daily prayers is Romans 12:1-2 that says, "therefore, brethren offer yourself up as a living sacrifice as your spiritual act of worship and do not be conformed to the world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind so you can go and test God's good and perfect will."

This allows me to step back and recognize in the midst of the trials and tribulations the sovereignty of God—the God who created the universe, the same God that created me and you and Jesus.

And even in the midst of our simple decisions, that merciful and loving God is going to take us and allow us to walk through those things, and he's going to pick us up and dust us off like the father in the story of the prodigal son. And he's going to ultimately use us to accomplish what he wants to accomplish.

Nathan Sheets

Nathan Sheets is CEO of Nature Nate’s Honey, as well as one of the driving forces behind the global “I Am Second” media campaign that highlights stories of hundreds of lives transformed through the grace of Jesus Christ.