No More Fear: Living a Life that is Free From Fear

By David Holdaway

Fear will always cause us to live on the defensive. Our goal must be to live a life that not only copes with – or even conquers fear – but is free from its control.  
There is a major difference between having a ‘fright’ and having a ‘fear’. A fright will challenge us while a fear will control us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Upfront
• Release date: Jan 9, 2006
• ISBN: 9781907929243

Book preview

Introduction

If you have ever battled with fear or been worn down by worry, then I have written this book for you. After more than twenty five years of helping people deal with their fears and anxieties I have tried to make the following pages as helpful and practical as possible.

The Bible says, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, Galatians 5:1 and that Jesus has come that we may have life in all its fullness, John 10:10. This means that God doesn’t only want us to learn to cope with our fears or spend our life constantly having to overcome them. We need to know how to conquer, but one of the subtle traps of the devil is in getting us to live on the defensive.

The Israelites fought and won battles in the wilderness but did not enjoy the Promised Land. We can spend all our life fighting and winning battles with anxiety and fear and at the same time be worn out and never enter what God has for us.

Fear will always cause us to live on the defensive. Our goal, therefore, must be to live a life that not only copes with or even conquers fear but is free from its control.

Fear is mentioned in the Bible more frequently than pride, lust, bitterness, jealousy, anger, selfishness and greed. The most frequent command of Jesus in the Gospels is to fear not.

One of America’s most famous newspaper counsellors is Ann Landers. As the world’s most widely read columnist she receives on average 10,000 letters every month, almost all of them burdened with life’s problems. When asked if there was one issue people suffered with more than any other she replied, Fear.

In a report about fears titled trapped by a web of phobias the Daily Mail newspaper stated;

"Britain is becoming a nation in fear, as dark terrors rise out of our subconscious and make an ever increasing number of people sit shuddering alone or locked away. More than 16 million of us apparently suffer from an anxiety disorder or phobia that affects our lives in some way. They can strike anyone, regardless of age or sex. There are more than 400 distinct phobias recognised by doctors. One internet site (www.phobialist.com) catalogues more than 1,000 phobias. There is some evidence, however, that phobias are more likely to develop in people who are intelligent and highly educated."

It went on to say,

There is also research which shows that the age at which anxiety strikes is coming down; 20 years ago most people who approached the Phobic Society were in their 40s or older, but now they are more likely to be younger.

If you battle with fear, then realise you are not alone. But why is fear such a powerful controller in our lives? What is it and how does it operate and more importantly how do we overcome and live free from it? This is what this book is all about.

I first penned these pages several years ago. After hearing so many comments of how they had helped people I decided to republish the book. I have added a few new chapters and extra insights that I trust and pray will enable and empower you to live a life with no more fear.

May God bless you as you read.

David and Jan Holdaway.

Chapter 1

Why Am I So Afraid?

Fear is not an unknown emotion to us.

Neil Armstrong

Charlie Brown, I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time.

Charles Schulz

It was late at night and we both heard the noise. It sounded like someone walking above our bedroom. My wife Jan and I had been married only a few months and we lived in a lovely little place not far from the Bible college where we were both studying. This cottage, however, was somewhat isolated in the countryside and built in such a way as to have access to the attic from the outside. There had been a considerable number of burglaries in our area and there were constant news reports of a violent attacker at work. As we lay in bed reading, pitch dark outside, we heard a running sound on the floorboards above us. Then there came a banging and scraping noise.

I prayed out loud feeling more than a little panicked. We waited and listened and then I barricaded the bedroom door as the noises grew louder. All the imaginations that had gathered listening to the news of crime in our area began to come together like dark thunderclouds before a storm unleashes its fury.

There was another loud bang and that was it. I phoned the police. I could have gone and investigated myself but I rationalised it was better not to leave my wife unprotected. This didn’t take much self–persuasion. Twenty minutes later the police and a police dog arrived.

They searched everywhere and concluded it was mice running under the floorboards on the ceiling directly above us. Imagine how I felt, mice, small, furry little animals but in my mind I thought thieves, rapists, murderers. Midgets had become giants, harmless little creatures had become ferocious beasts and what was nothing to worry about had grown to be all consuming terror. Afterwards my wife and I laughed. We shared it with others and guess what, they laughed as well.

Where Does Fear Come From?

The Painful Past

Behind the scenes of a major circus the elephant trainer was asked, How is it you can stake down a huge ten ton elephant with the same size stake that you use for a small baby one weighing only a few hundred pounds? That’s easy, said the trainer. When they are babies we stake them down in just the same way as their parents. They try and pull away maybe 10,000 times before they realise that they can’t possibly escape. At that point their memory takes over and they remember for the rest of their lives that they can never escape the stake even though as grown elephants they could easily break free.¹

People can be like that, something said or done in the painful past and zap a stake of fear and control is driven into our minds. Something happens at school and a stake is driven in. We grow up gaining our degrees and promotions but there are areas of our life still held in bondage to a stake driven into us from our past.

Fear can become a self–fulfilling torment. Even such a godly man as Job, after hearing what had happened to his children, cried out, What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me, Job3;25.

Maybe there was something in his past that caused him to think like this, or perhaps it was the heartache of a worried parent for the welfare of his children. We don’t really know, but what we do know is that many fears have their roots in mindsets and belief systems that are a product of life’s hurts and insecurities.

When Life magazine carried a feature on Elvis Presley they titled it, Down at the end of Lone Street. It documented how the man people thought had everything spent the latter years of his short life of just 42 years in a nightmare world of depression, despair and drugs.

He was called The King, a title he carried with handsome good looks and a seemingly happy go lucky charm and talent but behind the image reality was shockingly different. The night he died he had taken several packets of sleeping pills and prescriptions drugs to try and help him get some peace and rest. He took more and more until they finally took effect and the following morning he was found dead on the bathroom floor having almost bitten his tongue in half.²

Many who knew him well said that Elvis lived in fear all his life, fear of authority, fear of people better educated that himself, but mostly fear of ending up back in the poverty where he started. These fears were reckoned to be rooted in his early childhood and relationship with his mother, Gladys, who had lost one baby and for a while Elvis was all she had as her husband Vernon battled with drink.

By all accounts Gladys Presley overwhelmed her son with worry and smothered him with affection as they trudged with their few belongings from rented home to rented home. It was around this time, when Elvis was five or six, that the nightmares that would terrify him all his life began.³

Just a few weeks before his death, he was asked by a reporter, When you first got started in your musical career, you said you wanted three things in life, to be rich, to be famous, and to be happy. Are you happy, Elvis? He replied, No, I'm as lonely as hell.⁴

A Fallen World

Below is a policeman’s response to a problem set in a training exam which read:

You are on the beat and you see two dogs fighting. The dogs knock a baby out of its pram causing a car to swerve off the road, smashing into a grocer’s shop. A pedestrian is seriously injured, but during the confusion a woman’s bag is snatched, a crowd of onlookers chase the thief and in the huge build up of traffic, the ambulance is blocked from the victim of the crash. State in order of priority your course of action.

His reply:

I would take off my uniform and mingle with the crowd.

The Bible first mentions fear in the third chapter of Genesis when Adam and Eve hide from God having broken the only requirement He made of them, not to eat the forbidden fruit. Their eyes were opened to their own nakedness and a whole new dimension of emotional experiences descended upon them. They had released sin like a doomsday virus with all its deadly consequences into this world. It was not what they had hoped for. Instead of becoming more, as promised by the serpent, they had devalued themselves and become less and the power of fear was unleashed into a now fallen world.

The reason the Bible says so many times Fear not and Don’t be afraid is because there are so many things to fear. There is a phobia for almost every aspect of life.

There is claustrophobia (fear of closed places) and acrophobia (fear of high places). Less well known are astraphobia (fear of thunderstorms), mysophobia (fear of dirt), erythrophobia (fear of blushing), hydrophobia (the fear of water). Some hotels don’t have a thirteenth floor or a room 13