Facing Fears
From the Series—Chase the Lion
November 15, 2006This evotional continues the Chase the Lion series.
The series is based on the book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. You can purchase a copy online at amazon.com. Or download a free PDF of the first chapter at chasethelion.com.
During this seven-week series, we are exploring seven lion chasing skills: defying odd, facing fears, overcoming adversity, embracing uncertainty, taking risks, seizing opportunities, and looking foolish.
Fear Factor
It is so easy to read about a lion encounter that happened three thousand years ago and totally underestimate the fear factor. I wonder if Benaiah suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Sure, he killed the lion. But not before it scared the living daylights out of him. He was inches from thirty bared teeth. I don’t think he ever forget the smell of the lion’s bloody breath. And the sound of the roar had to echo in his mind’s ear forever!
I don’t care how battle-tested or battle-scarred you are. I don’t care how crazy or courageous you are. You don’t come face-to-face with a five-hundred pound lion without experiencing sheer terror or pure fear! But one thing sets lion chasers apart. They don’t run away from the things that scare them! Normal people don’t chase lions, but lion chasers aren’t normal.
Lion chasers chase their fears!
If you look at this story at face value, this has to be one of the most improbable reactions recorded in Scripture. This is as counterintuitive as you can get. The natural reaction when the image of a lion travels through the optic nerve into the visual cortex is to run away as fast and as far as you can! But Benaiah has the opposite reaction. And almost as improbable as falling up or the secondhand on your watch moving counterclockwise, the lion runs aways and Benaiah chases it.
Hold that thought.
Conditioned Reflex
At the turn of the last century, a Russian psychologist and physician named Ivan Pavlov did some experiments with dogs that made him famous. In fact, he won a Nobel Prize.
Pavlov wanted to find out how conditioned reflexes were acquired. He knew that dogs naturally salivate to food, but he wanted to see if salivation could be caused by another stimulus. Pavlov discovered that if he rang a bell before feeding the dogs that eventually the ringing bell sans food would cause salivation. Pavlov referred to this learned relationship as a conditioned reflex.
The discovery is actually a restatement of what Aristotle referred to as the law of congruity: "When two things commonly occur together, the appearance of one will bring the other to mind." That is the way God has wired the human mind.
What I want you to see is that all of us have been conditioned a lot more than we realize! To one degree or another, all of us are Pavlovian. Over the course of our lifetimes we acquire consciously and subconsciously an elaborate set of conditioned reflexes—some good and some bad. Let me give you an example.
Every time I fill up with I a tank of gas I look out my rearview mirror to make sure the hose isn’t still in the car! Anybody want to take a wild guess why? Because I didn’t look in the rear view mirror a few years ago and I pulled the hose right out of the gas pump. Imagine a car with a tail. That’s what it looked like as I drove away from the pump! Every time I pull away I think I forgot to take the hose out. It is a conditioned reflex!
Now here is the trick.
Those conditioned reflexes can be good or bad. I think the conviction of the Holy Spirit when we sin is a healthy and holy conditioned reflex. But false guilt isn’t. Some of us feel guilty over confessed sin and we shouldn’t. God has forgiven and forgotten. But it is harder for us to forgive because we can’t forget.
Rooster’s Crow
If you look at Scripture through the filter of Ivan Pavlov, there are some fascinating conditioned reflexes. All four gospels record the story of Peter denying Christ. Luke 22:60 says that right as Peter was denying Christ the third time, a rooster crowed.
The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times." And he went outside and wept bitterly.
This had to be the most painful failure of Peter’s life. And I have to wonder if Peter felt a twinge of guilt every time a rooster crowed! You know how certain stimuli trigger certain memories? A sight or sound or smell can unlock memories that we thought we had forgotten! Well, I’ve got to think that the sound of a rooster crowing had to have a physiological effect that produced feelings of guilt.
It’s tough for us city dwellers to appreciate because we don’t have roosters in DC. But if you have traveled to foreign countries or rural places you know that roosters do rule the roost. I’ll never forget waking up on the island of Isabella in the Galapagos—it was like waking up to a rooster choir. And one of my most distinct memories from Ethiopia was a crazy rooster that had no internal clock. The crazy rooster would start crowing at about 3 AM. And there was no snooze button!
Imagine what it was like for Peter every morning. It was a daily reminder of his failure! The rooster’s crow was a conditioned reflex just like Pavlov’s ringing bell.
Now let me tell you what the enemy wants to do: Satan wants to remind you of your worst failures over and over and over again. He wants to crow like a rooster every morning!
I think Jesus calls us to be revolutionaries. Satan wants to turn us into reactionaries! He wants to condition our reflexes with guilt and fear! But Jesus came to recondition our reflexes!
Instead of hating our enemies we pray for those who persecute us. Instead of trying to be first we go last. Jesus said that whoever keeps his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will keep it. And when we get slapped on the cheek we don’t slap back. We turn the other cheek.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s easy to act like a Christian. It is much more difficult to react like a Christian.
Reconditioned by Grace
Now fast forward to John 21. Post-denial Peter says to the other disciples, "I’m going out to fish." And I suppose it’s possible that Peter just wanted to go fishing. But part of me wonders if Peter thought his career as a disciple was over with. He had failed one too many times! And he was going back to his former life. There is nothing that Satan would have loved more than for Peter to spend the rest of his life fishing in a boat on the Sea of Galilee instead of going to the ends of the earth fulfilling the Great Commission! Satan wants to neutralize us! But Jesus reconditions Peter in a profound way! In a sense, He reinstates Peter three times. Three times he asks Peter: "Do you love me?" And Peter is a little offended by the third time! So why does Jesus do it three times! Maybe Jesus knew about conditioned reflexes long before Pavlov did his experiments! And Jesus did what he does so well—He took that guilt and reconditioned it with grace!
One last observation.
I’d never noticed when this reinstatement happened, but John 21:4 says it was early in the morning! When do roosters crow?
I think Jesus reconditioned Peter so that the sound of a rooster’s crow was no longer a reminder of his guilt. It was a daily reminder of God’s grace! Maybe you need to be reminded that the grace of God is much bigger than your worst failure! The enemy wants to remind you of your worst failures. But I love what F. Scott Fitzgerald said: "Never confuse a single mistake with a final mistake."
The grace of God turns final mistakes into single mistakes!
I’m impressed with the people in the gospels who put their faith in Christ, but what is even more remarkable to me is the people that Jesus put his faith in!
Peter messed up. But Jesus didn’t give up!
God wants to recondition our guilt with grace. And He wants to recondition our fear with faith!
Batter’s Box
When I was a little kid I played little league baseball and I definitely have some good memories. I hit a few home runs and made a few all-star teams. But I also have a few bad memories.
I remember an all-star team practice when a routine ground ball took a bad bounce and I caught the ball with my eye socket. I had a big old black eye! All-stars aren’t supposed to get shiners!
But my most memorable moment was getting hit by a pitch during a little league game. I was actually knocked me unconscious for a few moments. And I remember everything about it. I remember a crowd of people hovering over me. I remember being lifted into the ambulance and rushed to the hospital. And I remember them putting those EKG patches on me to do some tests.
Now, what do you think was going through my head the next time I stepped in the batter’s box? The next at bat was the toughest at bat because subconsciously I was afraid that what happened before was going to happen again. And my coach would yell keep your head in there but my head would yell it’s not his head in here! I had a conditioned reflex! Every time a pitch was high and inside, I felt like backing out of the batter’s box. But I had a choice to make. I could have stopped playing the game altogether and forfeited all that fun! Or I could face my fear and step into the batter’s box. I wish I could say that I hit a home run my next at bat, but I honestly don’t remember. And I’m glad I don’t because courage has nothing to do with whether or not you hit a home run or strike out.
Courage is getting back into the batter’s box!
Facing Your Fears
It’s tough to get back in the batter’s box after you’ve been hit by a pitch relationally!
Maybe you struggle with the fear of intimacy because you got really close to someone and you got really hurt. I don’t know how else to say it, but you need to get back into the batter’s box. If you don’t get back in the batter’s box relationally, you’ll never get to first base! Yes. That was a joke! But if you don’t get back into the batter’s box you’ll forfeit intimacy forever.
Maybe it’s the fear of rejection—a rejection letter from an employer or school or publisher. If I had quit after my first rejection letter, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day would have never been published. I had to take it on the chin and get back into the batter’s box!
Maybe it’s the fear of failure. When I was in seminary we tried to plant a church. We formed a core group. We had a bank account. We had a name. One minor detail—we never had a service. The church never even got off the ground. I felt like a failure. And I suppose that failure could have kept me out of the batter’s box, but it’s hard to imagine forfeiting National Community Church.
Don’t let your fears and failures keep you out of the batter’s box! Maybe it’s time to get back into the batter’s box and swing for the fences!
A Life worth Telling Stories About
It was about a year ago that I was part of a team of NCCers that went on a mission trip to Ethiopia. That week was full of unforgettable experiences.
Before going on the trip, everybody on the team was a little nervous. It was during a time of political unrest; we were subjecting ourselves to a variety of third world diseases; and even drinking the water and eating the food was done conscientiously.
So everybody on the team was a little nervous, but one team member was downright fearful. Especially when she learned that we were going to camp out in Awash National Park on our free day. Somehow, knowing that armed guards would keep watch all night didn’t ease her mind! Neither did the crocodiles we saw in the river or the lions we heard around the campfire! But I was so proud of her because she faced her fear. And because she pushed through her fears, she experienced some of the most amazing memories of her life.
We drove through the Ethiopian outback and went swimming in a natural spring that was heated by a volcano. You don’t get to do that everyday. We visited a tribal village that looked like it came right out of the pages of a National Geographic. And none of us will forget our game drive on top of Land Rovers.
In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine how many memories she would have forfeited if she had run away from her fears. But she decided to live her life in a way that was worth telling stories about! One of the greatest tragedies in life is the stories that go untold because we don’t face our fears! For what it’s worth, none of things she was afraid of happened. The plane didn’t crash. She didn’t get sick. And she wasn’t eaten alive by wild animals. The only bad thing that happened to her was getting pooped on by a baboon. I kid you not! I’m not sure if the baboon was aiming or not, but what a shot. I know that is a nasty, but what an ice breaker at parties. Hey, I got pooped on by a baboon once. How many people do you know who can say that? What a story! That is living life to the fullest!
So here is my advice: don’t let mental lions keep you from experiencing everything God has to offer. The greatest experiences will often double as the scariest experiences. The defining moments will often double as the scariest decisions.
In the words of David Whyte: "The price of our vitality is the sum of our fears."
Benaiah must have been scared spitless when he encountered that lion. But he didn’t run away. Evidently, faith had reconditioned his fear because he chased the lion! And it was the fear he felt that made his in a pit with a lion on a snowy day story all the more fun to tell ex post facto.
Imagine the bedtime stories Benaiah must have told his children! I can hear his kids: tell us the lion story one more time! I think we owe it to our kids and grandkids to live our lives in a way that is worth telling stories about. And more importantly, we owe it to God.
So here is my question: are you living your life in a way that is worth telling stories about?
Maybe it is time to quit running and start chasing.
Chase the Lion
Satan wants to scare the living daylights out of you. But you have a choice. You can run away or give chase!
I Peter 5:8 pictures Satan as a roaring lion.
Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
This is where chase the lion becomes a double entendre.
There are two places in Scripture where we are told to resist the devil.
One is I Peter 5:8: "Resist him standing firm in your faith."
The other is James 4:7: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you."
The word "flee" in James 4:7 is the Greek word phuego and it literally means "to run away." God doesn’t want us to run away from the enemy. He wants us to chase him!
God wants to raise up a generation of lion chasers who don’t just run away from evil. God wants to raise up a generation of lion chasers that put the enemy to flight.