Fearless, by Max Lucado

“Fear, it seems, has taken a hundred year lease on the building next door and set up shop. Oversize and rude, fear is unwilling to share the heart with happiness. Happiness complies and leaves.”

These words are from the first chapter of Max Lucado’s new release, Fearless.

In this book, Lucado tackles the topic of fear – by covering 13 different kinds of fears we may have, sandwiched between the first and last chapters. These include fear of not mattering, fear of global calamity, fear that God is not real. He uses these chapters to engage with reader and to outline a scriptural response, using analogy, contemporary thought and situations as well as retelling biblical stories.

Initially I found it hard to focus on this book. I think this is partly because a lot of the language and analogies used are very Americanised, and as I am British it is harder to sink into the natural flow. This is not a criticism, more an observation. The book addresses the culture it inhabits, and although I too live in Western society, there are subtle differences in mindset and cultural emphases.

Nevertheless, once I had overcome this obstacle, it was a very accessible read. Lucado is a natural story teller, skilfully using evocative language and metaphors to get his point across. This can make you consider something in a different light, or even make you smile, as I did at various points.

In a culture obsessed with worry, this book is very relevant. Lucado addresses each kind of fear with sympathy, even solidarity, ensuring there is no great divide between writer and reader – we are all in the same boat.

I found this book very easy to read - for me perhaps a little too easy, as I prefer something a little more ‘meaty’ these days – looking for something deeper, you might say! Nevertheless in order to cover what he does it would be difficult for Lucado to do so in a more thorough way without making this a huge tome. In a sense, there is a book’s worth in each topic he covers.

Fearless is accessible and should appeal to a wide audience within its cultural (developed Western world) background, although it may have some difficulty crossing into other cultures. It is a good overview of our preoccupation with fear, making some sensitive yet pointed observations of our 21st Century mindset, and offsetting this with the values and attitudes of the bible.

dancing partners

Who is your most regular dancing partner?

I had an inherent shyness as a child which morphed into sheer self-consciousness as a teen. I masked it by a kind of deliberate silliness, directing attention away from myself and onto another, not entirely real, persona. So much of the time I was dancing with fear. These days I have a more balanced approach to dealing with such twinges of shyness and self-consciousness, something more of a realistic approach to dealing with fears and anxieties – but they are not entirely absent; I have to swallow hard and overcome them. Sometimes it is very difficult. (It’s hard to explain to someone who has never struggled with the feeling of self-consciousness – that literal shrinking inside of you, begging to be elsewhere).

We all have factors in our lives which we deal with regularly. Things which lead us on a dance we do not like, filling up our dance cards until there is simply no room for anyone else. These factors can be anything: fear, worry, bitterness, anger, addiction, or very specific things that only we (& God) know about. They take their toll on us. I have learned from my experience with Chronic Fatigue that even confidence requires energy – on a physically bad day, overcoming that innate self-consciousness is much, much harder. And tiredness, of course, makes us more susceptible to these things – it makes me more susceptible to fear’s advances. And these advances, of course, tire me further.

It’s good to have a realistic view of these things in our lives, to acknowledge their presence – to note what inflames them or makes them more difficult to overcome. In this way we can learn to manage our ‘dance card’ better. Personally, I want to dance a different dance.

I want love to be my constant interrupter:
can I cut in?

For love is the nemesis of fear, overcoming those ‘twinges’ with a greater reality. In its true form, love is stronger, bigger, more powerful. I need no longer feel self-conscious because I am simply not dwelling on myself at all. I wish to reach the point when I am compelled to dance only by the love of Christ, nothing less.

I’m longing for the day when all the negative things inside me are ejected from the dance floor forever. When I will no longer know in part, but know fully the one who loves me and leads me on the greatest dance of all. When everything falls into it’s rightful place, placed into perfect perspective.

And I shall dance and dance and dance…
…and never, ever, tire.

***

Picture credit: 'Dance at Bougival' by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Public Domain image