745 React to Fear with Trust - Psalm 56:3

What do you do when you're afraid? 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One podcast. I'm grateful that you enjoy these little 5 minute daily devotionals to challenge ourselves to be difference makers in our workplaces and wherever we are, wherever we go every day today. Today, I'm preaching a little bit to myself.

I'm reading Psalm 56:3 from the English Standard Version. “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” What do you do when you're afraid? I've often said that I don't like me when I'm afraid. When I'm scared or worried, I sense those knots in my stomach, I sense this anxiety building in my spirit and I get tense about things, and one of the things that I tend to do is I tend to try and make new plans. I tend to grab all the resources that I have and come up with a new plan for how I'm gonna react to this fear. 

But the Psalmist doesn't give us that option here. The Psalmist says “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” and he's talking to God. The Psalmist is speaking openly to God here. He says “In God whose word I praise. In God I trust. I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” That's the next verse. 

And so we're talking to God and we're saying that we've created, or this Psalmist has created a relationship. “When I sense fear, I put my trust in you. I actively place it there.” 

I want to be the dictator of my own trust and confidence and peace. I want to rest in God, which we'll talk about in a future episode. But the way that I do that is by placing my trust in Him. 

How can we do that today? And how can that difference matter in the lives of the people that we interact with?

Well, if I can put my trust in God, then the things that happen to me aren't setbacks. They aren't disappointments. God is almighty, and when I put my trust in Him, my fear goes down a notch. My anxiety and my tension, and my tendency to react quickly to the things that happen to me also go down a notch. I want to trust God in such a way that I'm relaxed so that I can experience what He would have me experience in every interaction that I have with my coworkers or with customers or with vendors. 

My opportunities to be a difference maker appear because I'm confident and I'm trusting God. And I'm looking for those opportunities instead of obsessing over what might happen to me and the things that might go wrong according to my plan. All of these things are triggered by my own fear and so I want to create a new trigger for me today. I want my fear to trigger trust. 

Trust is – I think I've said before – my word for 2022. And I'm trying to put my trust in God more and more. And so I notice these uses of the word trust in scripture.

“When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” 

Today, let's deny the fear that we have by putting our trust in God, God is almighty and He's aware of our circumstances and our situation. And He's called us. He's given us an opportunity to be a difference maker in the lives of the people that we interact with every day.

All we have to do, and it's not that easy, is put our trust in Him. Don't let the circumstances of your life knock you off, but put your trust in God and then do what He would have you do in every choice you make and in the lives of every person that you interact with today. 

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for considering how God might use you in our world. It makes the world a better place. It also draws more people to him. Your actions matter. Trust God, punch in and do what He says and let's help the people around us move one notch closer to Jesus simply because we're trusting him today and we're not afraid.

And if you haven't done it yet, join us. We're a group of people who are trying to do this on a daily basis. You can join our online community at community.followerofone.org. Thanks very much.