Courage Is Faith in God

I am very grateful for all of the many life lessons that I have learned in Christian Science as a result of being a member of this church. I was remembering recently one of those life lessons. It began a few years ago, and it was when I was all of a sudden struck by a statement from the Bible that was in our lesson that week. It was from Psalm 27 where it says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

For a long time, and after I became a member of this church, I never thought of myself as being fearful. Not necessarily invincible, but certainly not fearful. It was shortly after I joined this church that a practitioner was helping me with some issues which really forced me to look deep into my consciousness; and as I did so, I was kind of shocked to realize that most of what I did every day was actually done out of fear. At work I worked long hours because I feared not being able to pay my bills. I went out of my way to help people, anybody, because I feared not being appreciated by people. I exercised a lot and worked out every day because I feared not being strong. There were other examples, and it was a real eye-opener for me to realize how much I was doing being driven by fear.

That was when I began to make some fundamental changes in my life. God helped me to change careers so that I could devote more time to church and to family. I began to worry less about whether I could pay my bills, and I became more interested in helping those who were truly working for God, and less concerned about whether anybody appreciated it or not. I guess I was beginning to understand what John meant when he said “Perfect love casteth out fear.” I began to fear less as a result of this, and trust that God would take care of me.

At about that time one of our members sent us a great article on “Confidence,” by Martha Harris Bogue, which I recommend and is on our website. One of the sentences in that article says “Fear is faith in evil; courage is faith in God.”

For me, this was an incredibly liberating healing, to be free of much of the fear that I had considered normal for most of my life. It helped me to deal with a lot of other issues that I had been dealing with that I thought were normal. I'm grateful for the help of that practitioner, and also for the writings and the life of Mary Baker Eddy that show us how to get out of fear, how to stop fearing, and to love more, and to love better. They have shown me that God is not only the strength of my life, but that He is my very life. That has healed me of much of the fear that I brought with me to Plainfield. I'm so grateful for it.