Faith Trumps Fear

What are your greatest fears?

When I asked women that question for my book, When Your Husband is Addicted to Pornography ~ Healing Your Wounded Heart,

this is what they said:

Being close to my husband will never feel safe again.

I’ll never feel like I’m special to my husband.

Abandonment.

Judgment by others.

My husband will choose to continue in his sin (of pornography) and will not seek healing.

Recurrence and deception will leave me looking like a gullible idiot.

 Is any of that familiar? It was to me. Fear and I were all too familiar companions. I knew the verses that were meant to offer comfort …

I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. ~ Psalm 34:4

or

Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. ~ 1 Peter 5:7

…but in the thick of things, they felt like spiritual platitudes. They weren’t, but I couldn’t always see that.

Listen to what I say about this in my book: “When your husband turns to images of other women to meet his sexual needs, it is reasonable to expect that you may feel rejected and inadequate, though neither of these feelings reflects how Christ feels about you. It is reasonable for you to be cautious about intimacy with your husband. It’s even expected that you may have issues with feelings of failure and abandonment. Fear is what happens when we don’t take a close look at these feelings to determine if they are accurate or not. I have heard fear described as False Evidence Appearing Real. This is why it is critical to focus on what is true and real.”

As God was in the process of healing my broken heart, I happened upon a verse that caused me to falter a moment. Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

Here’s the deal: You demonstrate radical faith when you look your fears square in the face and deny that they have power over you. When you trust your heavenly Father enough to know that He’s got this one covered, you glorify Him. He is able.

Faith trumps fear every time.

 

My book, When Your Husband is Addicted to Pornography … Healing Your Wounded Heart will release from New Growth Press in October (2012).