Fear Not

The Power in an Open Hand

Chapter 50

December 26

Nehemiah 6:9

They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, 'Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.'

But I prayed, "Now strengthen my hands."

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Preface

Have you ever been inspired to do something, but as soon as you look into how to get started, or mention it to someone else:

1) the challenges that present themselves,

2) the realization that you lack the requisite knowledge, or

3) the negative feedback you receive,

suddenly takes the wind out of your sails?

It feels like having your insides suddenly emptied out.

First, the challenges are for us, not against us. They are the steps to success, serving as our life coaches that help us become the goal realized within ourselves.

Second, it's not "what" you know, it's "Who" you know that matters. Who will lead you to the needed "whats" on the path to achieving the goal. In this way, we learn how to do the things we don't know how to do by doing them.

And third, any other person who's not living toward the accomplishment of their own goals should never be told or asked about yours. They will only repeat to you the internal dialogue they use against themselves. They end up actually telling you how they keep themselves from producing the fruit they were meant to give to the world.

Their words have nothing to do with what you asked about.

No matter what words they used when shooting your dreams down, when they're translated, what they actually mean is "Because I don't believe in myself, I don't believe in you." This isn't your friend. It's ego, saying "If I can't, no one else can." Why? Because if you prove you can, then they have no more excuses.

Getting hit with a bout of fear, say, in the form of sudden self doubt, is like a space shuttle getting hit with debris, ripping open a hole in its side. Space abhors a vacuum. The person hit, like the shuttle, empties of all the air in them.

Fear, when allowed in, first throws a gut punch in order to knock the wind out of a person. Then it rushes in, becoming the inner dialogue that fills the empty space it's created with words like "can't," "impossible," "it's too hard," or "I don't know how." These words are the bricks of smoke that build the illusion of lacking self confidence.

And the other people who're afraid of losing something if we're successful understand this process at an instinctual level. They'll say and do anything they can toward the goal of making us afraid, hoping we'll introduce the seed of doubt into our faith. They need to break our faith with fear if they have any shot at not having their imagined fears realized, that we may actually succeed.

There were people afraid of Nehemiah succeeding in the building of the temple wall. They thought that the wall would hurt their income. So they resorted to mafia-like tactics, trying to make him fail. Their tight-fisted attempts at force went against Nehemiah's open-handed approach of power. And like a baseball glove catches a ball, Nehemiah's open hand always caught the fist with no harm to himself.

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The enemy attempted to instill fear, knowing that fear would weaken Nehemiah's and his workers' hands.