If we were to leaf through the pages of the Bible, we would find a curious and beautiful pattern. Before God delivers a person from a lion’s den, before he parts a sea, or before he announces the birth of a Saviour, he almost always begins with two simple words: fear not.
It’s often noted that some variation of this command appears hundreds of times throughout Scripture—enough for us to quote one every day of the year. God knows that fear is the great paralyser of the soul and that we need constant reminders to resist it. Fear clouds our vision, muffles our hearing of his voice, and anchors our feet when he is calling us to march forward.
In our modern world, we often treat fear as an uncontrollable emotion—something that happens to us. However, in the Bible, we see that ‘fear not’ is written as a command. When the Lord spoke to Joshua, who was facing the daunting task of leading Israel after the death of Moses, he did not offer a nice suggestion to try and stay positive. He issued a royal decree:
‘Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.’ Joshua 1:9.
The phrase ‘Have not I commanded thee?’ strips away our excuses. God addresses our fear not as a psychological ailment to be managed, but as a spiritual barrier to be overcome through obedience. This doesn’t mean that fear has no emotional or physical dimension, but that Scripture consistently reminds us that fear does not have the final authority over a believer’s actions. To ‘fear not’ is an act of the will before it is a feeling of the heart.
While we usually want the resolution first or the problem solved so we don’t need to be afraid, God operates on the principle of faith.
He asks us to lay down our fear while the storm is still howling, because fear and faith can’t occupy the same space in the heart. One will always be calling the other into question. Fear is essentially faith in a negative outcome. By commanding us to ‘fear not’ first, God is clearing the ground of our hearts so that he can plant the seeds of his promises.
The most striking example of this divine order is found in the Book of Isaiah. Here, God doesn’t just tell us to stop being afraid. He provides the ‘why’ that makes the command possible:
‘Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.’ Isaiah 41:10.
Notice the five-fold promise that follows the command. We can stop being afraid because:
As we begin this series, we may consider an area of our lives where we feel the most ‘dismayed’. We can understand that the Lord’s command to ‘fear not’ is not a dismissal of our struggles, but an invitation to trust his strength. He is not asking us to be brave in our own power, but to be courageous because he is standing right beside us. When God says, ‘fear not’, he’s not just telling us how to feel. He is telling us who he is, and that he is with us.
View other devotionals in this series