Raise your hand if you haven’t been scared at any time this year – yeah, I’m pretty sure no one raised their hands. Fear is a common part of our lives and facing media and the news every day certainly doesn’t help our situations. Fear is something none of us can fully avoid, but fear doesn’t have to control us. It’s something that can be overcome with time and patience.
The best way we can overcome fear is by relying on the One who is the “Founder of peace” (Mosiah 15:18) – Jesus Christ. His Atonement and His gospel are the answer to finding peace and escaping fear. He can literally free us from the fears we face each day, no matter what those fears are, and here’s how:
Christ is a God of Promises
In my opinion, it’s hard to stay fearful when you have something good to look forward to. And God makes the best promises. President Russell M. Nelson suggested in October 2020 that, as we study the scriptures, we should look for the promises God has made to covenant Israel. Only a few weeks in, it’s easy to see that God has made so many promises to His children.
These promises have power. Promises assure us that God is aware of us and that He has a plan. He hasn’t abandoned us or forgotten us. Instead, He assures us that His promises will be fulfilled. Yes, we have to wait right now. No, we don’t know when exactly the promises will come. But we do know that God has always delivered on the promises He’s made, and He will do the same thing now.
Some promises are being fulfilled right now, like the gathering of Israel. Learning about His promises and looking around at our lives can help us see how Christ is working right now to progress His work, lift us up, and keep every promise He has made.
We simply have to remember these promises. Some are conditional, some are not, but all are accessible to us. When we remember the promises God has made to us, we can see His power, His love, and His hand reaching out to us each day. How can we be fearful when we put our faith in Christ who never has and never will fail us?
Christ Has Delivered Us
One of the promises Christ made to us was that He would free us from sin and death, among other things. He made this promise to us before any of us were even born, and when He came to earth, He fulfilled this promise by suffering His infinite Atonement and sacrificing His life for ours. He was resurrected and overcame death.
Christ is the reason each of us is here today, the reason we can have hope and change in our lives. He’s kept His promise so well and so personally that we can each have a close relationship with Him.
Many of the things we fear most – death, loss, failure, misery, sin, and so on – were already overcome by Christ. He is the reason we have any chance at overcoming these things. And when we realize that we can overcome these things and that we can keep moving forward and healing, we also realize that we don’t need to fear the things Christ has overcome. We don’t need to fear.
Christ Opens His Arms to Us
Never at any moment are we in a place that Christ can’t reach us. It doesn’t matter how broken we are or how much we’ve messed up or how unworthy we feel. He comes to us, arms open to embrace us, and He does this every day, every moment.
We only have to turn to Him and accept His embrace.
Christ loves to heal broken things. I’ve been realizing this more and more lately. Christ never asks us to be perfect and whole when we come to Him. Instead, He expects the opposite. He asks us to come to Him when we are staggering from the weight we carry and the injuries we’ve sustained. He asks us to come when we’re in tears and angry. In any situation, He only asks us to come to Him.
And He will accept us and heal us.
That doesn’t mean He will condone mistakes we’ve made or sins we’ve committed. After we come to Him, Christ asks us to change and grow and become better. That will always be true. But His love will be present through the whole process, and in the end we will likely see that the changes He asked us to make were the greatest sign of His love that He ever showed us.
When fear overwhelms us, when we aren’t sure we can face another day, we can simply turn to Christ’s open arms, and He will strengthen us to face anything we’re up against. He’ll heal us so we can keep going. And He’ll love us so we know we aren’t alone.
Fear will have no power over us when we fully rely on Him.
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