I'm not BFFs with my doctor.
I don't share my life secrets with the cashier.
I don't expect my friends to clean my teeth and I don't expect my dentist to remember my name without a chart.
There's these things called "social boundaries" and I'm not that great at observing them (I'm a pretty casual person), but I am aware of their existence. I'm aware of the different roles that people maintain in my life, and I try to not force those people out of their respective roles.
Maybe that's why over the past few months I wrote God a job description and forgot that He has about a million different roles that I was completely ignoring.
I don't have any problem admitting that I struggle with anxiety and panic. If you've read this blog for any amount of time you probably know that already, but just in case you didn't, I'll tell you: I struggle with fear in a more life-interrupting way than the average person.
In the approximately two years that this has been going on, I've probably talked to Jesus a lot more than I used to. But that wasn't healthy, because I only talked about one thing: My current problem.
Not that praying about fear (or whatever your major struggle is) is bad, but I almost think it made me dwell on the problem more. Has He answered my prayers anyway? Absolutely. I can point to several times that Jesus came through for me, conquered fear, made me courageous.
But I think all along He was looking at me with a confused look (though not a confused mind -- He is God, after all) saying, "Um, you know I'm here when you're not afraid…right?"
Here's a few problems I discovered with only "giving" God one job (more accurately, only taking advantage of one aspect of His character):
I directly related how well I was doing anxiety-wise with how well I loved Jesus.
If I was struggling, in my mind, it meant I didn't love Him as well right then. Because if I loved Him, I would trust Him. If I trusted Him, I wouldn't be afraid. And there we have the vicious cycle of Christians facing anxiety and depression -- in the time we are at our worst, in most need of closeness with Christ, we feel the most guilt and the most separation.
I directly related how well I was doing anxiety-wise with how well Jesus loved me.
Because Jesus was God of my fear and nothing else, if I had a particularly nasty amount of fear, He must not want to heal me. He must not love me. He must not want me to be free. Is it even worth it to ask His help? He must be angry that I'm scared right now -- so angry that He won't help me through it.
I lost sight of the whole picture.
Wanting God to only help me get through fear is like going to the doctor with all of your internal organs shutting down and only asking him to give you something for the pain. I can't find a single time in the Bible where He just made someone's death more comfortable; He brought them back to life. But what if someone had come to Him and simply said, "Would you please make my pain go away? You can leave the disease there, I just don't want to feel it anymore."
Jesus is here for more than just dealing with fear. He's here for more than dealing with my sin. He's here because I am His beloved, and His desire is for me (Song of Songs 7:10). He didn't have to make me. He didn't have to make people at all. He did it because He wanted someone in the world like me, and someone in the world like you, to love and cherish and be close to.
That relationship, that closeness, is what precedes courage.
I am more than my fear, and so is He.
I think, if I were to let Him out of the Fear-Conqueror box and just let Him be God and Friend and All-in-all to me, He'd be all that I need and so much more. If our conversations were about everything, instead of only about worry, worry would be on my mind less. And He would be on it more.
"Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." | Ephesians 3:20-21
