Psalm 27:1 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid
Psalm 27 is about fear and what to do about it. Do you remember your very first fear? You probably do remember some of the first things you ever feared as a child. Among those things doubtless was the dark. Psalm 27:1 says, “The LORD is my light.” Maybe as you got older you feared danger of some other kind. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” The psalmist here is not implying that there is never a reason to fear. In fact, he itemizes an answer to the question, “Whom shall I fear?” in verses 2-3. The people he feared were his enemies, his foes, and an army that might encamp against him. But he says, “The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
So, what was your first fear? Probably something you are not afraid of anymore. The question is, “Can you outgrow your fear?” Well, you may have outgrown one of your fears, but you just replaced it with a bigger fear. If you were scared of the dark when you were four, now you are scared of an electromagnetic pulse attack from China. I don’t even know if that is a real thing, but if you are afraid of it, you can google it. You can google your symptoms while you are at it, and will probably end up miserable because you did. The bottom line is that as we grow out of some fears, they change and fear doesn’t go away.
All that to say, if you don’t outgrow fear, what do you do? You don’t outgrow fear; you outsource fear. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” Tim Ferriss wrote a book called The 4-Hour Work Week in which he describes how you can work less and make more. This is oversimplified, but as I recall you get an income stream started, outsource it to India or someplace, and then they are working while you are sleeping. Well, God never sleeps. Sometimes we don’t sleep because we fear. We need sleep, but God does not need sleep and God does not sleep. So, outsource your fears to Him. You don’t outgrow your problems; you outsource your problems. “Of whom shall I be afraid?” I am afraid of my enemies my foes, and an army encamped against me. Verse 5 says, “For in the time of trouble he shall hide me.” So, the question is not of whom am I afraid, but who has the answer? The answer is God.
Romans 8:35 says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” The answer is no; none of that will separate us from Christ’s love. Romans 8:37 says, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” So, you outsource your fear. How do you do that? Let me suggest two things.
First, call out your fears. David did this. He itemized them. Whom do I have to fear? David tells himself whom he has to fear, his enemies and foes. Sometimes we have these big, vague fears we don’t know how to handle because we are not even sure what they are. Write them out. Maybe on paper in the light of day they will seem smaller than you thought or you might realize the nature of the problem you have. Even if your problem is bigger than you, that is not the point. Of course it is bigger than you; that is why you are afraid. But God is bigger than the problem; that is the point. So, call them out.
Second, pray them up. Don’t bottle your fears up inside, tell them to other people, or complain. Call them out and pray them up. What does that do? It gives you hope. Verse 13 says, “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” It gives hope. Where is the land of the living? It is right here, right now. You drive by a church in the country that has ten members and a thousand members who are buried out in the church yard. Well, this is the contrast. We are not talking about the land of the dead. Everyone will eventually be there. Whether you are a prince or a pauper, you are going to die. This gives hope and it gives it “in the land of the living” right here and right now. God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. He is the I AM of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They still live because God still lives. So, when I outsource my fear, it gives me hope.
It also gives me patience. Verse 14 says, “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.” So, what we are looking for is not just pie in the sky by and by. We are looking for help here and now in the land of the living, but sometimes the answer still doesn’t come in my time. If I can trust God with timing, I can trust God with anything, and I certainly can trust God with both.
So, what do you do with your fears? You don’t outgrow them. You outsource them to the one who is greater than you and your fears. Fear God and that can give you peace of mind today.