“He will not fear bad news; his heart is confident, trusting in the Lord.” Psalm 112:7 CSB
I tried to find what the name of the phobia for fearing bad news is, there isn’t one. However, in my search, I found the Wiki page with the list of phobias, I was shocked at the things people fear. Which is why I find it shocking that there isn’t a name for fear of bad news. All of us have that fear to some extent. This fear comes when the phone rings in the middle of the night. This fear comes when you don’t want to go to the doctor because you’re afraid of what they might tell you. This fear arises when the school your child attends calls in the middle of the day. We may not realize we have this fear, but we all have it to some extent. And this fear has the capability of growing if we allow it. After we have received a phone call with bad news, we can become afraid of all phone calls. Because this bad phone call came in the middle of the day, not the middle of the night. Now you are aware bad things happen all the time. Now you have developed a fear of all phone calls. The fear has grown, but only if you allow it to grow.
Paul, in one of his final letters, wrote to a scared young pastor named Timothy. He wrote him these words: “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:6-7). Paul is telling him, God gave you the Holy Spirit, He has power, use it. He’s telling Timothy, focus on God, not your fears. Whatever Timothy focuses on is what will consume him. We are the same way, if we focus on our fears, they will consume us. But if we focus on God, our fears won’t control us. They won’t stop us from answering the phone or going to the doctor. We won’t have fear, because our thoughts are focused on God. When our thoughts are focused on God, there is no room for fear.
I fight fear by meditating on a Scripture. According to Rick Warren, if you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. Worry is thinking about something over and over again. Meditating is thinking about a Scripture over and over again. When I went through a period of time after Cody died when I was afraid to answer the phone, I used today’s Scripture. When I started to get fearful, I’d just think about this Scripture instead. I shifted my thoughts to God instead of my fear. I still do it today. And you can too. Try it, next time you are fearful, find a Scripture and think about it instead. You’ll be amazed at the outcome.
