Choosing between fear or faith is not just a one time decision. You get the opportunity to choose which one you’ll live by over and over again.

Photo Credit: Public Domain via Pixabay

And choosing fear is still easier. Even when you already know that faith brings much more joy and satisfaction in life. Making fear induced decisions sucks your sense of self right out of you. And along with it go confidence, happiness, and satisfaction, not to mention your energy.

Choosing faith energizes

Choosing to live by faith is harder today than choosing fear is. But you’ll regret choosing fear tomorrow, and celebrate choosing faith tomorrow. And don’t forget, the things you are most satisfied about today, those were your faith choices yesterday.

Choosing faith, make decisions everyday that are influenced by hope. Faith dares to hope for good things in the future even when you still don’t see it today. Faith believes in God’s ability to change your life, and in your being able to do all things in Christ. Faith believes in your future.

Choosing faith creates momentum

Choosing faith, making decisions based on a hope for a greater tomorrow, is energizing. And faith always produces works. Faith without works is dead. And dead faith is no faith. But when we act on that hope for a better tomorrow, the energy of hope and action starts building into a momentum.

Call it an upward spiral, faith creates action, action creates movement, movement inspires more faith, more faith creates more action, more action creates more movement, and guess what – you have momentum! Lift-off!

Fear sabotages your dream

I could still use more faith. I find it too easy to make fear induced decisions. And if I’m not careful, those are my default decisions. Sometimes fearful decisions are decisions that actively sabotage your dreams. But more often, they are simply decisions that result in inaction. The reasoning goes something like this: “I am probably not smart enough to write intelligent articles people will enjoy anyway, so nobody will miss it if there is no article tomorrow.”

And so you do nothing. And guess what, nobody really misses that there is no article in the morning, and so nobody will miss it the next posting date either. And you just proved to yourself that you were not good enough. But the reason nobody misses the article has more to do with the fact that you still haven’t built up the momentum by acting in faith than it has anything to do with whether you are good enough, smart enough, called enough, or creative enough.

Faith builds your dream

I have to be careful that I don’t engage in the good enough, funny enough, interesting enough, creative enough, wise enough head games. Truth is, it doesn’t matter at this point. I want to become all of that. That takes action. Repetition is the mother of skill. You have to do, and then repeat, and repeat again.

Faith says, God has gifted me with the desires and the capabilities to get good enough. And even if nobody misses my article, or art, or product tomorrow, I will do it anyway. And soon I will get good enough, interesting enough, creative enough, funny enough and engaging enough that there will be people who appreciate what I do. And they will miss it when there is a post missing.

And when you choose to believe that, you act on it, and when you act on it, you are energized like the energizer bunny, and when you keep on going and going and going… Okay so that was obviously momentum there. And repetition is the mother of skill. So I am totally on my way to becoming smart enough, creative enough, interesting enough, funny enough and engaging enough. I’ll get there!

The faith or fear test

Here are three questions I find help me with choosing faith:

1. If I knew I couldn’t fail, would I do it? If the answer is yes, and it is a worthwhile thing to do, start doing it. Don’t let the possibility of failure stop you. Think instead of the possibility of success.
2. Is doing this something that feels like it fits into my life purpose? Not everything is worth doing. If it doesn’t seem like it fits your purpose in life, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. But if it feels like it fits into your life’s purpose, then you can believe that God will make a way through seemingly impossible odds.
3. Am I doing it just to protect myself, my ego, my reputation? If the only reason you are not doing it is to protect your ego or reputation, then sacrifice your reputation and ego. It is acceptable for my ego to be dashed, and my reputation to fail, but it is unacceptable for my God-given dream to die before it has cost me what I have to give.

Your turn! Ask yourself a few of these questions.