Your Reward is Through Your Fear

"What you are most afraid of is where your greatest rewards are."

A friend sent me this quote recently and to be honest I was taken aback by it. At first I almost dismissed it as I don't view myself as one to walk around in nervous fear but God grabbed me with the remembrance of things in my own life that I am currently in fear over. Things that when confronted with I tend to sweep under the rug, ignore, refuse to face directly. What do you fear? Is financial uncertainty? Sickness? The future? Do you fear never realizing your potential or never seeing your dreams become realities? Do you fear addressing that broken relationship? What about that habit that keeps creeping into your life that you need help with? Maybe you fear standing up for what is right, whether it be for yourself or for others, based on the Word.


You see, each of these is a storm, a testing of our character and each of these has a tremendous reward on the other side of them - a new plateau of living. But each of these requires complete and total honesty with yourself and a bold determination to face the issue in front of you and not back down from it, not cower or close your eyes from it for its "uncomfortable" nature. It will be uncomfortable. Growth usually is. But the end result is increased capacity, increased ability, and increased strength. These "increases" are necessary for the "increased" blessings that God has in store for you.


Jesus stated that he came for us to have life and to have it abundantly. The Greek here means to have life that is superior, extraordinary, surpassing and beyond what is normal. Very often, the means to these levels of increase are through the very storms that we are tempted to fear. We have to recognize that this fear is nothing more than the enemy's attempts to keep us from the very growth we need to encounter the divine and miraculous provision and blessings of God in our lives. When we stand on "we are more than conquerors in Christ" and "greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world" and the countless other truths in this Word that are life and power then truly we find the "roaring lion" a defeated foe melting into the shadows.

So when you see the clouds darkening on the horizon and the waves picking up, you can rejoice because you know there is something magnificent on the other side of the storm and regardless of its intensity - you are never alone.