Welcome back,

I hope you had a great weekend. The month of April is almost over, I hope you’ve had a good run.

Interestingly, my devotional has coincided with a book I am reading. Today, the devotional takes its reading from Philippians 4:13 that we are capable of all things thinkable, and imaginable because our strength comes from God. So, I asked myself, why then do I feel inadequate? Why am I, sometimes, so scared? The devotional and the book gave me an answer. Fear doesn’t just come, there is a root cause. Similarly, being confident doesn’t just happen, something or things precede it.

The devotional talks about dread feeding our fears. The dictionary defines dread as “anticipating with great apprehension.” It means we are not looking forward to something, the anticipation that we have is negative. This builds up to a scary feeling. The devotional went further by making it clear that the devil tempts us with dread so that we can confess fear! The devil sows the seed of hate in us about something that we need to do. And that hate makes us believe that we can’t (not good enough) execute the task. It is due to this kind of feeling that we must make the task at hand attractive enough for us to want to do it. From the book, the author mentioned a simple first step, switching our vocabulary. Change ‘have’ with ‘get’ in our sentences.

When we dread something, we see it as a punishment, we are not excited about it. This makes statements like “I have to speak at a conference next week in front of hundreds of people,” sound as if I don’t have a choice and I am not exactly thrilled. The word ‘have’ here gives the impression that speaking at a conference is a punishment. The same thing the devotional was explaining when it said “fear brings with it the thought of punishment.” However, according to the devotional, we should not dread what we are going to do, instead, we should approach it with perfect love. As God is with us, he makes his strength available to us. So, love and enjoy whatever it is you are going to do, that’s how you drive out fear!

Let’s look at the other side of the word change. Saying “I get to speak at a conference next week in front of hundreds of people,” (I hope you see the difference) gives it a level of importance, like it’s a rare opportunity that you are privileged to do and you look forward to. So, you are anticipating positively. God has already settled his part in this matter (Isaiah 41:10), but we also have a huge part to play. And honestly, our part is as simple as changing our vocabulary, and confessing what God has said about us.

Stay blessed, Dasola