I originally published Fear versus Faith back in March of 2020. I will expand on that today. Fear is one of those things that comes and goes as part of everyone’s life. No one is immune to fear. It is what we do with fear that shapes who we are. Fear comes from every direction including people, places, and things. Sometimes, we become fearful of things based on our inability to control or understand them. One of the greatest quotes I have never heard regarding fear was by the late great Zig Ziglar. Mr. Ziglar said that fear is “false evidence appearing real.” More often than not, that is exactly what fear is. Having said that, a person who lives in a world of addiction and or behavioral disorders lives in a constant state of fear. We live in this state of fear because of perceived inadequacies of how we are viewed by others. Most of the time, these inadequacies are interpersonal, and they are based on erroneous and overly critical evaluation. Sometimes, we are afraid that we cannot succeed and therefore we never have any success. Our fear of failure is a common inhibitor of trying anything.
Living in fear can be one of the most paralyzing things we would ever encounter. A negative self-fulfilling prophecy most always accompanies this feeling of doom. Even things we could otherwise do with the sense of accomplishment seem to get sabotaged along the way. This is extremely dangerous for a person who is trying to overcome substance abuse and behavioral disorders. Until we can exchange our fear for a degree of faith any success we have will be minimized and most often fleeting.
We need to change our self-talk from negative to positive. Without this transition, moving from fear to faith is not likely and oftentimes impossible. Once we do move into that faith arena, the door opens for things to begin to change. It is said, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This is where being around others who have walked the journey, we are about to embark is valuable. By observing them we have personal and tangible evidence of what faith does. Once again, faith is not anything we can see in and of itself, but we can see the results of faith combined with positive action in the lives of other people.
Once faith is activated, we become a different person. We learn that standing in the shadows of defeat only gets our soul cold.
When we come out of those shadows of defeat and stand in the sunlight of faith, we begin to accomplish things that used to evade us. Now we gain a sense of confidence and are encouraged as we move forward.
Without faith, we would never become who we are designed to become. Faith is fuel to the power that we will need to break through our negative lifestyle into a life of victory and personal accomplishment. One of the things that I have found in my personal journey, is my personal faith serves to encourage others. Because I had faith based on what I saw occurring in others, I began to see similar things in me and by me. That allowed me to be a victor, not a victim. Once I started operating in the victorious position, I was then able to encourage others instead of waiting for others to encourage me.
This is one of the most important things to me in my personal journey. Every day I awake knowing something wonderful is going to happen. It is going to happen because I will be putting into action the things that promote that type of positive response from the universe. When it happens, I cannot wait to share it with another person who is waiting to share in my joy and adopt my joy as evidence that they can find the same victory. This is how the fellowship of recovery attracts others. It is written, recovery is a fellowship that encourages us to share the victories we have with those who are seeking victory. I hope this has led you to see yourself as a person who can go from fear to faith. Be blessed. Have a wonderful day.
Robert Pardon
Robert is the Recovery Guy. Getting clean and sober on April 25, 1986 has given me the insight and practical skill set to not only stay sober, but to also re-invent myself to the person I always wanted to become. Showing others how to do this is my life goal.
All posts by Robert Pardon