Day 653 – Why Are We Afraid? – FearLess Friday

Wisdom-Trek

Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy Welcome to Day 653 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom Why Are We Afraid? Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 653 of our trek, and it is time for our Philosophy Friday series. Each Friday we will ponder some of the basic truths and mysteries of life and how they can impact us in creating our living legacy. For the next several weeks, we will focus on how to live with less fear. We will explore the trails on our trek of life that will help us to be fearless. This does not imply that we will reach the point where were are completely without any fear, for that is not only impossible, but also not wise. There is a time and a place for an appropriate level of fear, but most fear that we experience on a daily basis has no grounding and can be eliminated as we grow in wisdom, insight, and understanding. So our objective for these next several Fridays is to experience a FearLess Friday on our trek of life. Today is our second trail on our trek covering Imagine a Life Without Fear. We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. As mentioned on previous treks, on July 8th I suffered a fall from a ladder that fractured my upper femur bone. I am focusing the next few Tuesday and Thursday “Wisdom-Nugget” episodes sharing my story of the accident and recovery. The story begins with Wisdom-Trek.com/day-645. A major life event such as this strikes fear into our hearts of how our lives will change or how it could have been even worse. Last Friday we started a series focusing on imagining a life without fear. The focus of our trek today is… Why Are We Afraid? In Matthew 8:26, Jesus asked his disciples who were in a boat with Him in a middle of a violent storm, “Why are you afraid? You have so little faith!” At first glance of this verse, if you were one of the disciples in the boat with him, you would be thinking, “Jesus, are you serious?” Is he kidding, teasing, or being sarcastic? This is kind of like one swimmer asking another, “Why are you wet?” I don’t think Jesus was smiling. He was very earnest. So are the men to whom he asks the question. A storm has turned their Galilean dinner cruise into a white-knuckled plunge that was so severe that seasoned fishermen are scared to death. Here is how the Apostle Matthew remembers the trip in Matthew 8:23-24, "Then Jesus got into the boat and started across the lake with his disciples. Suddenly, a fierce storm struck the lake, with waves breaking into the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him up, shouting, 'Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!'" Matthew remembered well the pouncing tempest and bouncing boat and was careful in his wording. The English word “fierce storm” minimizes the actual word that Matthew chose in the Greek language. Matthew chose the word Seismos – a quake, a trembling eruption of the sea and sky. We could translate this verse as “a great seismos arose on the lake.” A seismograph is an instrument we currently use to measure earth quakes. The disciples had “sudden fear” – the kind that makes you go pale or faint, a fear that leaves you unable to speak or scream. Not all storms come suddenly. Prairie farmers in the US or hunters in the Serengeti can see a formation of thunderclouds hours before the rain. This storm, however, springs like a lion out of the grass. One minute the disciples are playing dice on the deck, and next thing they are drenched with waves as the boat rides over the mountains and valleys of water. Peter and John were seasoned sailors and may have struggled to get the sails down in time. Matthew, a tax collector, was not used to this type of storm and probably struggled just to keep his dinner down. Although there was some passage of time from leaving the shore, at least enough for Jesus to fall into a deep sleep,