What Is Your Greatest Fear?

So two Thursdays ago, we had the 12,000th storm this Spring blow through around 11:00 pm.  I was barely asleep when I first heard the wind chimes hanging in the tree outside the screen porch banging against each other.  That's my way of knowing how strong the night storms are.....by how loud the chimes are ringing.  I sat straight up in bed....they were ringing loud and hard.

I fear storms.

Many years ago, I lived in Highland Village, a town just outside of Dallas.  We hadn't lived in our new house long when a storm blew through one night and our roof was hit by one of the many bolts of lightening.  I was awakened to the house shaking, crashing glass and the smell of gas.  Our furnace vent on the roof had taken a direct hit and the lightening bolt literally lifted our roof and set it back down. Every electrical appliance in the house had been destroyed.  Every picture on every wall had fallen off.  Every light fixture had blown out its bulb.  And our furnace had now been disconnected from the gas line and the house was filling up with natural gas.

I lived in fear of storms from that moment on. 


As I got out of bed to keep my eye on the storm passing over us two Thursdays ago, I found myself engulfed in that same fear once again.  So much so, that I kneeled down in the middle of the living floor....begging God to stop the winds from blowing and the lightening from striking and to strengthen my faith in Him to protect us.  I repeated the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm over and over again...it was the only ones I could remember perfectly at that moment.....when I felt led to get up off the floor and open my Bible. 

It opened to Psalm 27.

And the first thing my eyes saw was a note I had written in the margin years before.... 

"In Case Of An Emergency, Read Me First".  

And I smiled in the midst of the wicked storm blowing outside.....knowing God had me write those words to myself years ago....for this very day.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation - so why should I be AFRAID? 
The Lord is my fortress, PROTECTING me from danger, so why should I tremble?"
Psalm 27

And in the words of one of my favorite authors, Ann VosKamp:

"The greatest fear can be that grace and God will run out and there won't be enough - 

WE won't be enough.

This fear is a fraud.

Let go of the lie."