Fear and Fire

 I didn't know I already had the answer

 no I didn't know

 but if I had known...

Fear is an unpleasant feeling triggered by the perception of pain or danger, real or imagined. It courses through the body like lightening, causing one to react. To either be on the offensive or defensive.

I've been plagued by fear quite a number of times. From the childhood fear of being caught in the kitchen enjoying meat not meant for me, to planning my escape from teachers when I was late to school, to surviving robbery attacks.

Recently I've been playing hide and seek with pickpockets when I'm walking home in the evenings. One rider stretched the arms back and I thought he was enjoying the crack in this shoulders and that indescribable sweet feeling from stretching.

My bag was the target and the whole stretching display a camouflage. The speed with which I jumped away😀, even I was impressed with myself. 

So you can see I've had my fair share of this electric feeling called fear. But the day I experienced the fear that inspired today's post, I really experienced what fear is.

I am a Christian, a follower of Christ and a child of the lord. I believe myself to not be easily spooked. But one midnight I was shaken so bad. I was witnessing a very dear one slowly loose her hold on life, she was dying before my very eyes.

And right there that unpleasant feeling signaling danger, this time very real and not perceived, coursed through my body. moving up and down, down and up. I was terribly shaken.

Ah Fear! Fear fear ooo.

My mother had already started praying and reminding God of His promises to us. but I was gripped with so much fear, just kneeling dejectedly on the cold floor.

I didn't know what to say, what to pray for, how to even start the prayer.

I suddenly started praying out scripture; by your stripes we are healed, the God of fire that consumes water, my God is a consuming fire, the One who broke the shackles of death and rendered it useless.

When I say I was speaking out scripture errhn. I had an out of body experience. 

I was thinking to myself some days later so I know all these bible verses, I surprised myself.

Then Jeremiah 20:9 ministered to me as I kept thinking about the incident.

If I say, “I will not remember Him

Or speak His name anymore,”
Then my heart becomes a burning fire
Shut up in my bones.
And I am weary of enduring and holding it in;

I cannot endure it [nor contain it any longer] 

There are times the word of God we carry in us cannot be contained whiles we have power to change certain situations. Jeremiah's prophecy at the time was spelling doom for the people yet when he tried to contain it, the words were like fire shut up in his bones burning in his heart.

My prayer at that moment might not have changed anything but it gave me hope, I was comforted, strengthened and emboldened. My fear was gone, replaced by fire!

There is fire in you, there is fire in me. When you meet other fires that put fear in you remember you have the only fire that can consume water in you.

Go out fearless and fired up.

Cheers!