Nothing to Fear?

As we move into our second week of The Disciple Experiment, what are you afraid of?  I am not talking about those child-like fears of thunderstorms, the dark or monsters under your bed.  We live in a scary world full of real life fears: unemployment, disease, war and terrorism.  Yet our time is not the first era to live under the cloud of dire fears.  The God who sustained the Jews in captivity and the early Christians in persecution - the God who, because of his appearance in Christ, knows pain and therefore walks the painful path alongside us, whether that path is a totaled car, a totaled dream or a totaled family - that God is somehow able to provide peace instead of fear, despite all the agonizing circumstances swirling around us.

Read John 11:1-16 and Matthew 26:36-34.  In both of these passages, Jesus faced real danger.  In the John passage, Jesus risked his life to go back to Judea to help Lazarus.  The people of Judea had already tried to kill him once, and were likely to try again.  In the Matthew passage - Jesus' desperate prayer in Gethsemane, the night before he was killed - Jesus faced the prospect of the  most agonizing suffering imaginable.  And while Jesus obviously could have accessed the power to supernaturally overcome these situations, he chose to remain utterly human and forego using that power.  Which means he faced fearful situations just like we do.

As you read these two scriptures, find ways for dealing with scary situations based on how Jesus dealt with his own fear.  How do you deal with scary situations and what advice can you give others for dealing with their fears?