Fear Not

Our Faith Trophies

Chapter 5

November 11

Genesis 35:

3. "...I will build an altar to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone."

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Preface

When we call out to God for help with a particularly challenging situation, and then, against all odds, things work out, revealing God's hand in helping us, it's important to commemorate the event. Put something that represents the success on display. Start a trophy case, so to speak; an altar of gratitude, of when things worked out. Then, when future challenges arise, instead of becoming distressed, look back over each trophy. This will well up within us a degree of faith that'll be unassailable, chasing fear away, allowing God to move all the more powerfully in our lives. And then we'll add another trophy. 

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There's a repeating occurrence throughout the bible: 

1) God does something awe-inspiring and miraculous for the faithful, 

2) the faithful, in response, do something to preserve the event for all time.

Today, similarly, people, when they accomplish a big goal, they celebrate their success or victory, doing something to commemorate it. There's actually a success practice of recording or displaying representations of each victory. By doing this, they establish a reference library. And during challenging, distressing, frightening times, or after suffering a disappointment or loss, they're able to go through their past victories one at a time, a process that reminds and re-empowers faith and, from there, courage. It lifts their spirits, refocusing their resolve, encouraging them to persevere with confidence.

How many times big and small have we received help from God over the course of our lives? How many of these moments have we recorded or commemorated in some way? (How many memory altars have we built for God in our hearts?)

For those who've built none, they've forgotten most, if not all. Maybe they even failed to give credit and gratitude to Whom it was due or claimed the credit for themselves.

Without past reminders to serve as the greater context in which present challenges arise, to compare them against and to overcome them with, today's new challenge ends up taking over the entire frame of perspective, becoming the only thing that can be seen, making it seemingly overwhelming.

When distressed or frightened, we can take a moment to replay all the past times we've been saved, protected, provided for, loved and blessed in some way; we can even list all the blessings present in our lives today that we may otherwise have taken for granted--health, family, friends, job, nature.... And with each recall, our distress is chased away, like how each ray of the rising sun breaks through and removes a little more of the fog.

In this way Jacob shows us that when we change the way we look at the challenge, the challenge we look at changes.