When I Am Afraid to Move Forward

Devotional

Sometimes it isn't the fight that stops you. It's not knowing whether there's going to be one.

The road ahead isn't obviously dangerous. It's just dark. You can't see far enough to know what the next step costs, so you stand there. You haven't decided to quit. You just can't make yourself move.

That's a different animal than fear of something you can see. With a real threat you at least know what you're dealing with. This one has no shape, which makes it harder to name and harder to fight.

David knew both. Psalm 27 has actual enemies in it. Armies. People who want "to eat up my flesh," which isn't poetry, that's how it felt. And from inside that he says something that sounds almost reckless:

"The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?"

Two words carry that whole sentence.

Light. Which doesn't mean you can see the whole road. It means you can see the next piece of it. A lamp in that world lit about one step at a time.

Salvation. Which means the outcome doesn't depend on your competence. Somebody else already secured it.

So David's confidence isn't in his nerve. "Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear." He doesn't know how the battle ends. He knows who's in it with him. And that turns out to be the thing that lets a person take a step. You don't need to see the whole road. You need to know who's on it with you.

But watch — David doesn't only make declarations. He also prays, and the prayer is where the real man shows up.

"Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me!... Hide not your face from me. Cast me not off; forsake me not."

That's not somebody who's got it handled. That's a scared man aiming the fear at God instead of away from him.

And notice what he asks for. Not escape. Not a map. He asks for God's face.

Which is where I want you to check yourself, because it's where I have to check myself.

When fear freezes you, what are you actually asking God for? Usually it's information. Show me five steps out. Tell me it works. Guarantee the cost is manageable. That's not faith, that's a desire for control with a prayer attached.

God doesn't promise you information. He promises you himself.

So the real question under the paralysis is this: is God enough, or is it God plus certainty?

David answers it. "I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." Not someday. Here. In this life. Before it's resolved.

And we get to say that with something David didn't have. He was waiting to see God's goodness in the land of the living. We've seen it. It walked around. It took on flesh and went into the dark of a fallen world and faced the last enemy head-on and did not turn back. When you're afraid to move, you're not betting on an untested promise. You're standing on a finished victory.

Then the psalm ends, and notice it doesn't end with the fear gone.

"Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!"

He says it twice, and in between the two he tells you where the strength comes from: let your heart take courage. Take. Receive it. It's handed to you.

The dark doesn't have to lift before you move.

But you may need to wait on him before you go. And in the waiting he gives you the thing you were never going to manufacture on your own.