Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

By Sarah Spraitzar

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze” (Is.43:2)

I am absolutely terrified of flying. Sitting in the backseat of a taxi as we approach an airport, I see the rear ends of those gleaming white jets in the hangars and immediately feel queasy. Deep breathing helps a little until I get to the gate and have to look out the window at the metal contraption that is about to take me to 30,000 feet at 550 mph. With some logic, I can reason through my fears: statistically, one is more likely to die in a car accident, more likely to get hit by lightning, come on Sarah, this is not a rational fear. There is no logical solution for the physical terror. Heart racing, pulse pounding in my ears, a flush of heat and then extreme cold, overwhelming nausea, I still hold to the unshakable belief that I am in fact walking the plank. I am heading to my death by terrible explosion in mid-air. Without the little benzodiazepine that my doctor thoughtfully suggested, I would surely pass out before boarding the plane.

The physiology behind the fight-or-flight response that I experience when flying has been scientifically well-described, and as a medical student I am well aware of the sympathetic overload that my body experiences. The association of this response with flying, however, I cannot fully understand. I experience similar anxiety as a passenger in a car unless I am being driven by someone whose driving skills I trust completely. Of course it is only my foolish pride that allows me to believe that I know the standard of good driving. Since I have a nearly perfect driving record, I suppose that I feel good about my judgment. When I have a near miss on the road, I tend to pat myself on the back instead of thanking God for His protection. But I have known since early childhood that pride goeth before a fall, and in my case, before the totaling of my car. After losing power steering in my car, I drove head-on into a concrete bunker one night last week. It was impossible not to immediately acknowledge my failure and thank God with every ungrateful unbroken bone in my body that He protected me from other vehicles, from a fractured cervical spine, or from death by fright.

Fright and control are intimately connected in my inner life, and it is these demons that drove me to give up and beg God for help. Even as a child, I was acutely aware of failure and would shed real tears over anything less than perfection on school assignments. My vision of God was of an unforgiving schoolmaster or a demanding parent who could never be satisfied. Even if I gave up my absolute best, there would never be any guarantee of His acceptance. Being surrounded since conception by parents and a church community that instilled the truths of salvation in my mind, I yet resisted true belief. I knew that the Bible taught that all of our righteousness is like filthy rags (Is. 64:6), that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), and yes, that God so loved the world that He sent His Son to save us (John 3:16). Illogically, I chose to continue trying to be good enough in my own mind, knowing full well that I was doomed in the trying. Praise God that at the age of nine I gave up this useless fight and prayed with all the fervor I could muster one night that I did believe that Jesus had died for my sins and that I desperately wanted salvation from my fear.

The night that I prayed to God admitting my sins, asking Him to cover me with the blood of Jesus, to forgive me for believing only with my head and not with my heart, I ran to my parents’ room and woke up my dad. How he understood my babble through my hysterical tears I don’t know, but it didn’t take him long to begin praising God that He had saved his little girl. He read a lot of Bible passages with me that night, but the one that has remained with me is John 10:27–78: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” My dad either understood the struggle of assurance from personal experience, knew my own struggle with fear, or both. Even years after my salvation, I was susceptible to the belief that my faith was a sham and that I had rebelled once too many times. Thank God for His promises and for the comfort that they give. It is easy to focus on how short we fall of God’s glory, but we “are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). Thank God that when I am frightened that perhaps God has given up on me, He has already given me the ultimate comfort. “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15).

No airline can offer an unconditional guarantee that its jet can remain airborne. No amount of driving experience or good instincts can offer protection from a motor vehicle accident. My spiritual journey has been far more hazardous than any land or air travel could ever be, and yet God has given me an unconditional guarantee that salvation through Christ is powerful. It is powerful because Christ is powerful. Despite his most humiliating death “even death on a cross!” – “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8–11). The most perfect, exalted being in the universe has promised that no one can drag me away. Trusting in this perfect salvation of Christ is not trusting in logic or reason, but it is still the most logical thing in the world. It is full, complete, and unbreakable.

When I was saved as a child, I was much more afraid of hell than I was desiring real communion with God. A good deal of God’s working in me since my salvation has been on not desiring deliverance from the flames, but on desiring God – desiring to learn about Him, believe His promises, and learn to communicate with Him just for the joy of it. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1). My fear often gets in the way of imitating God. “Perfect love casts out fear,” I can remind myself, but I have to ask God for help constantly to free me from fear. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Tim 1:7). I believe that much of my fear is still rooted in the issue of control, and it is through constant reminders that it is God who is all-powerful, through Jesus who sits on the throne and will be worshiped forever and ever, and who will never let me go. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38).

Those bumper stickers that say “God is my co-pilot” I find particularly troublesome, especially with my intense phobia of flying. My only true consolation from fear that I am going to die in a terrible accident, fail my medical boards, or even worse, lead an ineffective life for Christ, is that God is in total control. Regardless of whether I acknowledge it, God pilots me through every event of my life.

“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom” (Is. 40:28).