Fear is a Vampire

Fear can blind you, sink its teeth into you, drain you, and leave you gasping for air.

Fear is a sneaky little emotion that used to cause me a lot of trouble and still likes to lurk around every once-in-awhile.  It can creep in unnoticed, spread quickly, and take over everything like a tricky fast-growing vine-weed we had growing in our garden last year.

Oddly enough, this vine-weed in our garden is called Devil’s Hair or strangleweed.  How appropriate.  

This weed can’t make its own chlorophyll, so it steals it from healthy plants. 

“The thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy.”  John 10:10

Once it finds a victim, it detaches itself from its own root system and digs into its unsuspecting host so it can literally suck the life out of them.  

That little strangleweed, fear, made its appearance the couple days before my husband and I had a speaking event last week.  It came and wrapped itself around my eyes, blinding me to the good things all around, and then went right for the throat until I was gasping for air.

Just hours before the event, we were not ready to speak.  We had tried to prepare for weeks but just continuously stumbled over our words and nothing was coming together, even down to the last minute.  Fear had a tight grip on me and wasn’t letting go.

We thought about canceling, but both of us knew that was not what God had intended.  We left for the speaking event and decided that instead of going over it again in the car on the way there, we would pray and worship.  We put it in God’s hands and knew He was the only One who could save this night.  

One thing I’ve learned through much trial and error is that plants can’t save themselves.

They need the Gardener. 

And our great Gardener rescued. 

He untangled the enemy-vines and gave us His voice.  He spoke through us and brought Light into many lives that night.  Even if we wanted to, we could not take credit for what He did that night. The glory is, and always is, His and His alone.

Reverend Alfred Durrance said, 

“When I am working WITH God and not FOR God, I have no fear of how things are going to turn out.  I can fearlessly make the attempt.”

God showed us in His glorious way how much more smoothly and joyfully things can be when we are working WITH Him. 

It is very rare when I let fear creep in like that anymore.  Once you are able to spot that vine or any other wicked little vampire-like vines, you can eliminate it before it starts to dig in and drain you. 

But you have to be looking for it and be ready to take action.

Gardensalive.com says this about these real-life, pesky weeds:

…they “can show up anywhere, at any time, and you must be prepared to act quickly and decisively when it does. If one of your plants suddenly appears to have been attacked by Spider-Man, carefully remove it and trash it.”

When you have those thoughts that are destructive or draining, act quickly and decisively.  Don’t let them get their little fingers into you in their attempt to steal your joy or your hope. 

Immediately identify them, and then yank them out and trash them.  The longer you let them go, the more destructive they will be. 

The gardening website goes on to warn that if you don’t act quickly with these strangleweeds, they will ruin your garden and even your entire season and seasons to come. 

Get to them right away and chuck those suckers far from you.  Or better yet, put them in the burn pile so they have no chance to spread or contaminate your garden if the wind begins to blow.  

2 Corinthians 10:5 is a good verse to memorize and keep close to your heart and mind:

Even when you have taken the weeds to the burn pile, new potentially harmful seeds will fall and threaten you and your garden, it is certain. 

But you can be ready.

When you are mindful about what messages are coming in and you capture every thought, you can be quick to separate them.  Does this thought bear fruit or belong in the trash?  Is this a thought that agrees with what the Word of God says or does it threaten to kill, steal, and destroy?

And when you’ve let the seed take root because life has a way of being distracting or because sometimes it is difficult to see how destructive some seeds are, ask the Gardener for help.  He will save you and restore you.  He will “rescue you from the grip of the enemy so that you can serve Him without fear” (Luke 1:74).

His Word is FULL of promises just like this.

Let those promises wash over you, refresh you, and sink into your soil.

“Let your roots grow down into Him, and let your lives be built on Him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.” 

Colossians 2:7

Thank you, God.  My cup overfloweth.