Chapter 21
Miracle Cure #4 Courage
Anxiety is a fear response. And while fear is your friend when you’re facing real danger, it can also do you great harm depending on how you handle it. Your response to your own fear can draw you closer to God and strengthen your soul, or it can push you away from God and damage both soul and body.
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The Fear Beneath Anxiety
You might have some fears lurking in the corners of your soul that you don’t even know about. Once a fear lodges itself, it will stay until it’s properly dealt with. Some fears may have entrenched themselves so deeply that you’ve become used to them and you don’t even notice them anymore, yet they have the power to enslave you.
What are your worst anxieties? Take a moment to identify any fears that might be driving those anxieties. Some possibilities are fear of ...

•	Rejection 
•	Losing your job
•	A miserable marriage
•	Hard tasks at work
•	Getting old
•	Getting sick
•	Your kids not doing well
•	Financial trouble
•	Environmental decline
•	Political issues
•	A hard conversation you need to have
•	Being humiliated
•	Ongoing depression
•	Your body’s responses to anxiety

Everything on that list is unpleasant, but they don’t always become anxiety-producing fears. Examine your anxieties and discover what fears fuel them.
Is it Wise to Face Your Fears?
Once you discover your fears, what can you do about them? Psychologists recommend overcoming your fears by facing them (exposure therapy). Does that work? It depends. If you face your fears with courage, fear will diminish. But if you face them with cowardice, they will only become worse. 
Running Scared
One cowardly way of responding to a threat is fleeing when you should stand firm. Your nervous system, which controls the body’s anxiety response, learns what is dangerous by your responses to threats. When a fearful thought comes into your mind and you run from it, refusing to think about it because it’s too scary, that signals to your amygdala, You’re right—that thought really is dangerous. 
When you’re tempted to run from a scary thought, remember, running will only make it scarier the next time. 
Courage
The solution to cowardice is courage. Instead of running from uncomfortable thoughts, stand and fight. Psychologists describe this with terms like “behavioral activation” (moving ahead when you’re tempted to freeze), “exposure therapy” (desensitizing your brain to what it fears), and “response prevention” (refusing to respond in a way that reinforces the fear). Courage says, “I’m going to hold this thought right in the front of my mind and expose my soul to it. I’m not go to run and hide from it.”
Does that mean you have to keep the thought in your mind forever? No. Only until you have thought about it the way God thinks about it (Miracle Cure #2. See Chapters 14-16). This will strip it of its power, since everything looks small from God’s point of view. When you have given God’s Word the last word on that thought, then you can set it aside and move on to think about something else. That’s how you face a scary thought with courage.
Anxiety Medications
This principle is important to remember when using anxiety medication, because anxiety drugs affect the brain differently depending on your level of courage.
The two most common prescriptions for anxiety are benzodiazepines and SSRIs, and it’s important to know the difference in how they work.

Common Benzodiazepines: Xanax, Valium, Ativan, Klonopin
Common SSRIs: Lexapro, Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, Celexa

Benzodiazepines sedate the amygdala. This calms the body, but it also interferes with the rewiring process. While sedated, the amygdala cannot relearn anything. Neural networks can only be rewired when they are in an active state—while you’re feeling the anxiety. So as long as you continue using the Benzodiazepine, nothing will change.
On the other hand, SSRIs can assist in the retraining process, as they promote growth and change in neurons. But be careful. The SSRI drugs will strengthen whatever activity is taking place in the brain, good or bad. If you are thinking in good ways, SSRIs can strengthen those neural pathways. However, if you are thinking in bad ways (such as worrying, fretting, or negativity) those bad neural networks will be fortified.
The more often you follow the path of a negative thought process, the deeper you dig the ruts in your brain in that direction. As a result, future thought processes fall into those ruts more easily. And if you think that way while using SSRIs, the ruts go even deeper.
Stand Strong
Another cowardly way to respond to a fear is by giving in to it. Rather than standing against it and fighting, you let go and allow the frightening thought free rein. You let your worries run and feelings take charge. You imagine yourself in the hardship, unable to find happiness. 
It's easy to give in to your emotions because of how loud they scream. When emotion-driven thoughts are running wild—This is going to be so painful! I'm going to be miserable! Oh my gosh! What will I do?—it’s time to stop listening to your feelings and start talking to them (See Chapter 15). Speak up and remind your soul why you have nothing to fear.
To do that, it helps to understand what lies beneath your fears.
The Root of Fear
If you were an animal, you’d be perfectly content just to be happy right now, regardless of what the future held. But God has placed eternity in your heart. Our lives are shaped by past, present, and future. No matter how wonderful things are right now, if you don’t have confidence in future happiness, fear will plague your heart. 
You can handle a rough patch in your marriage now if you’re confident it will recover. But when you’re afraid things will never get better, that can be a burden too heavy to bear. 
Fears are the cry of vulnerable joys. When the sources of your joy and hope are at risk, you will fear the future. What gives you confidence in future happiness? Whatever it is, if your soul senses vulnerability in that hope, the anxiety and fear IV bag will be on a constant drip day and night.
If your happiness in life comes from your job, any time your job is threatened, you’ll be afraid. If your fulfillment comes from a relationship and that relationship becomes shaky, you’ll have fear. Even if you don’t see any loss on the horizon, if you can’t see anything that will make you happy, you will dread that joyless future even if things are just fine right now.
Defang Future Threats
So how do you gain courage when you’re afraid of future unhappiness?
We love reading about the courage of David. A boy with a sling facing down a giant who terrified the mightiest of the battle-hardened warriors. In Psalm 27:3, David considered the possibility of being overrun by an army, yet he felt no fear. What was the secret of his courage? He tells us in the next verse. Don’t miss the connection between verses 3 and 4. 
Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear … One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. (Psalm 27:3-4).
David overcame fear by making God his one pursuit. When the only thing you need for happiness is closeness with God, fear evaporates because your joy source is never at risk. No matter how scary things get, you still have happiness and hope in your future.
This is why Scripture condemns cowardice so harshly and places such a premium on courage. God takes it personally when we fear the wrong things, because fear exposes the object of your hope. 
Defang your fears by fixing all your hope on nearness to God. If God is the one and only source of your hope, the one and only thing you have to fear is distance from him. And since his presence is always available to his children, your source of joy will never be at risk.
Naming Your Fears
Another tactic David used to build his courage was to name the threats he was not afraid of. Rather than merely saying, “I’m afraid of nothing,” he specifies the objects of his non-fear. Even if no threat existed, he would imagine one just so he could affirm his fearlessness. When he wrote Psalm 27, there is no indication he was facing a fierce army. But he notes that if he were, he wouldn’t fear it because he saw God’s presence in his future.
In verse 10, David imagines something even more terrifying than being overrun by a hostile army—rejection by family.
Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me. (Psalm 27:10)
Does the fear of rejection grind away at your soul? Even if it doesn’t, it might be worth imagining anyway.
Why dream up scary scenarios? For David, it was for the sake of worship. One way he articulated praise to God is by naming specific threats he would not fear because of the availability of God’s presence. 
No doubt, another reason was to remind his own soul. When pain or difficulty looms on the horizon, it’s easy to forget that your happiness doesn’t have to be at risk.
When fear rises, put your trust in God into words. And be specific. 

•	“I’m not afraid of those tremors. They’re unpleasant, but they can’t take my joy.”
•	“What if my investments tank and I’m completely out of money five years into retirement? It would be rough going, but I’m not afraid of that. God would not only supply all my financial needs like he always has, but he would also supply the joy I need.”
•	“H.R. is calling me in? I’m not afraid. They can take my job, but not my joy.”
•	“That hard conversation I don’t want to have—it’s no threat to God’s presence. I’m not afraid.”
•	“This judge has the power to send me to jail, but I’m not afraid. Only God controls my wellbeing.”

It’s worth verbalizing the hardship you’re tempted to fear and the reasons why you won’t fear it—both to glorify God and to reassure your soul and nervous system. 
Gazing on Beauty
Be careful not to oversimplify this. There is more to it than simply uttering the words, “God will be enough.” 
David spoke of gazing on God’s beauty. That may sound like an abstraction, but gazing on beauty is an everyday occurrence. It simply means to think about that thing that brings you joy—to turn it over in your mind, daydream about your life with that thing, and imagine yourself happy with it. We naturally do that with everything but God. 
David put forth the effort to set the attention of his soul on God’s presence. And the more he gazed, the weaker his fears became. 
Fear and Decision-Making
Have you ever been paralyzed by a hard decision? Decision making is a common fear because some decisions have monumental consequences. 
It amazes me how much authority God has delegated to humanity. A father who pretends to let his child drive the car will grab the wheel when necessary to avoid crashing. But when God puts us behind the wheel, he really lets us drive. Think of what massive consequences, good and bad, God allows to result from our decision making—everything from bringing a new life into the world to ending a life. Your decisions matter.
A financial decision could lead to bankruptcy. Your choices on how to handle your teenager’s rebellion could set him on the right path or destroy your relationship with him for life. Stakes are even higher for Christians, as we understand there are eternal ramifications of our decisions. Something you decide today could make things go one way or the other forever. 
With that kind of weight on our shoulders, it’s common to freeze when making hard decisions. How do you find the courage to be decisive? 
Courage for Decisiveness
Begin with reminding yourself which part is on your shoulders and which part is not. 
Your Part
Your task is not to make the right decision, but to make the decision in the right way. The right way to make a hard decision is:

•	Have a godly goal. Your aim in making the decision is to please God and participate in his purposes as revealed in Scripture. 
•	Have godly priorities. As you weigh pros and cons, assign greater weight to the things Scripture says are most important and less weight to temporal issues.
•	Apply biblical wisdom. To the best of your ability, utilize wisdom principles from Scripture to help you understand likely outcomes. Seek counsel from wise, godly people.
•	When you have done your best on each of those, trust God with the outcome.
God’s Part
The decision is your responsibility; the outcome is God’s responsibility. His job is to control providence and bring about the result that will fit his sovereign plan. 
One reason we have fear in decision-making is that we take upon our own shoulders a responsibility we can’t bear—favorable outcomes. You think you must choose the option that will have the best financial result, that will fix the broken relationship, or that will result in the least trouble.
If you think that’s your responsibility, decision-making will be terrifying because you don’t have the omniscience required to know what the best outcome would be or the omnipotent power required to bring it about.
If you simply make the decision in a godly way, God will be pleased. And if he is pleased with you, what else matters? You’re good! Leave the responsibility for outcomes on God’s plate where it belongs.
Scary Submission
Another common fear is submission to authority. Scripture frequently calls us to submit to the authorities in our lives, but the less competent the one in authority, the more frightening it is to obey. This is why, when Peter commands wives to submit to their husbands, he adds, “…and don’t give way to fear” (1 Pe.3:1-6). Submission requires courage.
 If you’re in that position, ask yourself, “What is it I’m afraid of?” Are you worried the one in authority will take you somewhere in life you don’t want to go? Maybe ruin your life? 
Courage comes from remembering that it is God, not the human authority, who determines where you end up in life (See Chapter 23 for a study of God’s providence in using human actors to accomplish his purposes). 
Remember Joseph? The people with power over him took him all kinds of places he never would have chosen on his own—left for dead in a pit, up for sale on the slave block, alone in a foreign land, forgotten in an Egyptian dungeon. By all human judgment, his life was ruined by those in charge. 
But human judgment isn’t reality. God intended each of those moves to bring Joseph to exactly the place he was supposed to be to fulfill God’s marvelous purposes. 
The authorities banished Christians from their homes in Jerusalem and it sent the gospel around the world (Acts 8:1). Jesus’ mother had to make a perilous journey to Bethlehem when she was nine months pregnant because of a census law. But it was exactly where she needed to be to fulfill messianic prophecy (Luke 2:1,4). 
Do you imagine that God worked that way with Joseph, the early Church, and Mary, but not you? Does he use human actions to fulfill his purposes only with biblical characters, then put his providence on hold in your case? No.
Whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through … the encouragement from the Scriptures. (Romans 15:4 CSB) 
Your husband might make the most selfish, foolish decisions imaginable, but that won’t keep God from using those very decisions to bring you to the exact place he has planned for you. The governing authorities might pass foolish law after foolish law, but all those laws will do is bring you right where you need to be—just like Mary. You have nothing to fear.
Does it seem like your boss, your husband, a judge, or some other human agent holds your wellbeing in his hand? Think again. Your wellbeing depends on one person—your Father in heaven. 
“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). 
The LORD is for me; I will not fear; What can man do to me? (Psalm 118:6 NAS).
If you don’t trust God to lead you through the imperfect authorities in your life, you will have two layers of anxiety:

1)	You will stress about the authority making wrong decisions.
2)	You will suffer the anxiety that comes from trying to control that authority. Trying to control another person is a massive source of anxiety.
Peace-Giving Submission
If you do believe God can lead you to where you need to be even by means of a fallible, foolish authority, then not only will you be free from all that anxiety, but being under authority will be a source rest. You’ll be free from the stressful responsibility of discerning the wisest path or making the best decision. 
Responsibility on your shoulders is pressure. When it’s on the authority’s shoulders, you can relax. You won’t have to answer to God for the decision. No need to lie awake at night wrestling with whether there is a better path like they do. You can simply enjoy not having to worry about it and rest in God’s providence. 
It’s a wonderful gift to live under authority. You have plenty of legitimate responsibility-stress in your life without taking on the stress of someone else’s responsibility. Enjoy the respite that comes in areas where the buck doesn’t stop with you.
Phobias
A phobia is an irrational fear. Feeling nervous at the edge of a cliff is not a phobia, because it makes perfect sense. A phobia is when you know something isn’t dangerous, yet your nervous system responds as if it were. You can tell yourself all day long you shouldn’t be afraid, yet the terror remains. 
Most people never recover from their phobias because they respond to them in ways that reinforce them.
Again, the solution is courage. You can’t control how you feel, but you can control how you respond to how you feel. You can strengthen your irrational feelings by running scared, or you can treat the threat like the harmless phantom that it is. Preach to your soul. This is only a feeling—nothing more. It can’t hurt me. God is with me. I refuse to run. 
Respond with that kind of courage, and, over time, your soul and body will learn that you’re safe in the arms of God.

Godliness Training Exercises
•	Make a list of your fears. For each one, ask, “What is the vulnerable joy behind this fear?” 
•	Spend time each day in prayer, shifting your hope from that vulnerable joy to future experiences of the presence of God. Gaze upon his beauty by considering how wonderful it would be to encounter his attributes in a greater way.
•	Think of one or two catastrophes that you don’t expect to happen (such as your mother and father forsaking you), and imagine yourself maintaining your joy because of a profound experience of the God’s presence.
•	Memorize Psalm 27:3-4.

If you have anxiety about decision-making:

•	For a hard decision, write down what it would take for God to be pleased with how you made the decision. What would be the right motives? What attitudes would please him? What measures should you take to seek wisdom? What would trust look like?
•	Write down the aspects that belong to God and are not your responsibility.
•	Memorize Proverbs 3:5-8.

If you have anxiety over having to submit to poor leadership: 

•	Memorize Proverbs 21:1.
•	Spend time each day in prayer affirming your trust in God’s sovereign guidance through that authority. If you have been unsubmissive, confess that to the one in authority and seek forgiveness.