We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.

E. G. White

God tells us over and over again, “Do not be afraid.” “Fear not.” “Be anxious for nothing.” I can only imagine God put this sentiment in His Word so often because He knew how difficult it would be. 

I, for one, am a chronic worrier. What’s the worst that could happen? Give me any situation and I’ll figure it out. I used to have an irrational fear of bridges–I was just sure that one day the bridge would break and my vehicle would plunge into the river below and I wouldn’t be able to get out because of the surface tension of the water against the door, and I would drown. That fear is gone now, and I actually enjoy bridges– but the concept has bled into the rest of my life.

It’s like my mind is constantly on duty in the ICU– it somehow tends to always find the worst-case scenario, and then convince me that if I don’t do something to stop it, the worst-case scenario is exactly what will happen. I’m trained to catch any tiny sign of things going wrong, and then think 3 steps ahead to stop it– or something bad will happen and it’ll be my fault because I saw it coming. 

Can you relate?

It’s exhausting. Seriously, it makes me physically tired to have my mind running like this all the time. I find myself over and over again asking myself where my faith is. I read the stories in the Bible and remember the things God has done for me in the past and I’m strengthened for a moment, but if I don’t dwell on His faithfulness to me in the past, Satan will find other things for me to dwell on. Like the “what-ifs.” And stories of bad things happening to people who loved Jesus. And all the ways bad things could happen to me and my family (quite a few nowadays I must say)…and worse yet, the thought of God allowing those things to happen.

Then the fear settles in. 

And just like that– I find myself, a professed person of faith, doubting the character of the very God who has brought me through so much in the past. Every promise I try to cling to in the Bible of His protection is immediately rebutted with a “…but then why did (fill in the blank) happen?” or a “is that really what that means?” or “can that even be applied to this life on earth or does that only apply to heaven?”. I unwittingly allow the devil to paint a picture in my mind of a God who passively allows His people to suffer whenever it suits Him… a God who says one thing and does another and justifies it by saying “I didn’t mean it the way you understood it. You should have studied harder. You should have had more faith to be okay with this happening because it’s for My glory. It’s for the greater good.” My heart becomes filled with lies…and I end up worshipping my fears above the God who gave Himself to save me. I’m a slave to fear, and to a false image of God.

I don’t know if anyone else is there with me on this. If so, I pray this will minister to your soul like it’s ministered to mine today.

As my husband was walking out the door today, I was filled with anxiety as usual. It was eating me up. I knew God was leading him to go to the place he was going, and I couldn’t come because our baby is sick. But whenever he goes someplace and I can’t come with or vice versa, my mind creates this tragic movie about something horrible happening. I knew he had to go but no matter how much I prayed I couldn’t find peace. So finally I just asked God to show me in His word what I needed to see. As I opened the Bible, I flipped to Job. In the margin was a commentary note about how Satan is the author of suffering, but God in His mercy has the power to overrule it. Then I thought of Psalm 91. I flipped there and tried to claim those promises, but as mentioned before I just started doubting that it could be applied to today. There was a reference to Isaiah 43 linked to one of the verses, and being curious, I turned there. And what I read brought me to tears and gave me peace that, to this moment, I can’t explain. 

“But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.

Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.

Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring your descendants from the east, and gather you from the west.”

Isaiah 43:1-5

Now, this is comforting in and of itself. But my mind in its doubtful state tends to be a skeptic. And, embarrassingly enough, God knows that. So He brought me to this verse specifically so I would know that YES, He is talking to me, and YES, this can be applied to me and my family, right here and now. He spoke faith directly to my doubtful heart.

For context, let me tell you how I know this.

A few weeks ago, I had just newly returned to work and had been taking my daughter to this wonderful daycare that God led us to (another miracle story for another time). Things had been going very well until Friday, shortly before noon. I was in clinic and someone happened to mention storms were coming that afternoon. So since my parents were on their way to visit from Illinois, I opened up my weather app to see what kind of storms we were looking at. To my alarm, they were already headed our way. And there was a tornado warning on a storm that was headed directly for my daughter’s daycare. My mind was racing as I frantically tried to calculate the timing of everything, and my heart sank as I realized that even if I left that minute, I couldn’t get there in time to pick her up and get her out of the path of the storm. I’d get there just as it hit. So I prayed and prayed and asked others to pray. And out of nowhere, a line from a song I’d heard that morning came into my head: “let go, my soul, and trust in Him–the waves and wind still know His name.” It had brought me to tears as I drove into work, and I didn’t even know at the time that there would be literal wind and waves that afternoon. God had told me beforehand not to worry about the specific thing He knew I’d worry about 4 hours later. 

The storm weakened and the tornado warning was lifted at the exact minute it was forecasted to hit the daycare. Praise the Lord.

The following Monday, I noticed there were storms approaching as I was about to leave work to pick up my daughter. When I got to the daycare, it was thundering but didn’t seem all that foreboding so I didn’t think anything about heading home. As soon as I got on the highway, with my baby in the back, we were hit with the heaviest rain I’ve ever driven in. I’d never been so scared while driving in my life. It was a 5 lane highway at rush hour, and nobody could so much as see the car ahead of them. I thought we’d get rear-ended at any moment by a semi driving faster than me because they had more traction. Cars were passing on either side. At one point the road had flooded and as someone passed, it drenched us in a wave that felt like an entire ocean. There was no place to pull over and if there had been, doing so would have probably put us more at risk for being hit. I was hyperventilating and calling out to God for Him to save us, white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Before the rain even started we were hydroplaning on the wet pavement. But shockingly after the rain started, even in the flooded areas of the road, my Civic’s little wheels stuck to the ground. It was like angels were sitting on the car, giving it traction.  What seemed like an eternity later we reached our exit onto another highway, and at that point the rain lifted. We made it home, shaken up but alive. 

“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.”

He was talking to me.

When I was about 10 years old, my mom took off work for one day to take us to the community pool. My 8-year-old sister and I were in the back of her car dressed in our swimming suits and as we came to a stoplight, a woman who was probably in her 20s or 30s driving a convertible flew around us and pulled in front of us right before the light. My mom slammed on her brakes to try not to hit her and was pretty angry at the lady for cutting her off. The light turned green and off we went. Shortly after, the lady in the convertible disappeared up over a small hill. As soon as we got over the hill, we saw a pickup truck cross over the center line of the two-lane road, and hit this convertible head-on at full speed, causing both cars to rebound to opposite shoulders. If that lady hadn’t cut us off, it would have been us, and who knows what could have happened.

Last year, my parents had come to visit and were driving us to the airport for our flight to Arizona. It was 4am when we left the house and we were all understandably exhausted. My dad was driving, with my mom in the passenger seat and me and Christian in the back of my dad’s F150. As we were headed down the dark country highway in the left lane, a car sped up behind us and tailgated us for a minute before my dad moved over so he could pass. After he passed, my dad pulled out behind him in the left lane again. I had rested my head against the back of the headrest in front of me and shut my eyes. Suddenly I heard my dad gasp and felt the truck swerve and as I looked up, I saw the car who had passed us skidding sideways into the right lane, its passenger door just a few feet from colliding with the front end of a moving pickup truck right before it skidded to a stop safely on the shoulder, backwards. They had hit a deer. The deer was still spinning in the lane and somehow my dad was able to swerve and miss it. If they hadn’t passed us less than a minute before, it would have been us that hit that deer and went spinning off the road. Immediately in my head, sitting in the back of that truck, I heard the quiet words: 

“I will give nations for you.”

He was talking to me. And He’s talking to you, too.

As soon as I read those verses tonight, I remembered the things He’s done for me in the past. If He was that clear about showing me He was talking to me in those two verses, then the rest of the passage is applicable as well.

“Fear not, for I am with you.”

These stories are not few and far between. They happen often–there are so many more that I hope to share with you soon. If it weren’t for the ways God has led us in the past, it would be easy to believe the promises in the Bible weren’t written for us, but someone else. Or for some other time. We would be deceived into believing that God isn’t really who He says He is and doesn’t love us like He says He does. But He has been there with us, protecting us and leading us, every moment since our very conception, and “we have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.” E.G. White.