What a Wrestling Match With God Taught Me About Fear
In my early twenties, I was seriously considering the priesthood as my primary vocation. While I deeply wanted to be a husband and father, I wrestled with the decision for a long time, because there was something in me telling me I should become a priest.
During this time, I met with a priest friend of mine who happened to be the vocations director of my diocese. In the first few minutes of our first meeting, he told me he'd had this conversation with many young men, and that everything I was thinking and feeling was totally normal. It's very natural, he said, for someone well suited to be a husband and father to be attracted to the priesthood, and for someone well suited for the priesthood to be attracted to being a husband and father. In a lot of ways, the qualities that make a great husband and father are the same qualities that make a great priest.
He wasn't telling me this to patronize me or make me feel better about not knowing what to do. He was telling me this to help me discern what was the voice of God and what was the voice of the enemy. He told me these are the two voices that dominate the discernment process, and it's important to be able to distinguish one from the other.
Then he broke it down into simple terms: if you feel yourself leaning one way or another based on fear, that's a clear indication you're hearing the voice of the enemy. God doesn't motivate through fear — He motivates through hope, invitation, and vocation. Fear is a tactic of Satan to keep us from being Fully Available. Courage is the ability to stand in the face of that fear and not let it come between us and the call of God.
The Call Is Quiet
The call of God is most often quiet and difficult to hear if we're overcome by fear. Spiritual courage is what allows us to overcome that fear. Courage isn't the absence of fear — it's the resistance and mastery of it. We first need to understand that fear is a tactic used by Satan to keep us from becoming Fully Available. Then, once we understand the fear, we can resist and master it with courage.
So practically, what does this look like? It starts by understanding where the fear is coming from. When you're faced with a spiritual crisis — discerning your vocation, or more broadly, your relationship with God — it's important to reflect on what you're afraid of and why. Anything worthwhile is going to come with a certain degree of risk, and that can cause fear and uncertainty in anyone. The invitation from God to follow His will for you is no exception. In fact, when you're faced with a decision of that significance, that's exactly when fear will be greatest. Satan doesn't want you to become Fully Available, and he will try to keep you running in fear from what God truly wants for your life.
Being spiritually courageous means your relationship with God is not run by fear. You know where fear comes from, and you know it's not from God. Like any other form of courage, this takes real practice. Just recognizing, in the moment, that your fear is not the voice of God can be immensely powerful. When you live the experience over and over — resisting fear and courageously following the voice of God — you become more and more spiritually courageous. Standing in the face of fear and courageously following the call of God is the first step in becoming Fully Available.
God Won't Drive a Parked Car
If there's one thing God will not do, it's drive a parked car. Could He if He wanted to? I'm sure He could — after all, He's God. But that's not how He operates. While He is continually seeking us and desires union with us, He will not work in and through us until we take a step in His direction. There are certainly cases where God pulls a person from the depths of evil and close to Him, but that's the exception, not the rule. God will not drive a parked car — but He's the best driver once the car is moving.
The great thing about God is that He gives us the power to freely choose to put the car in drive and start driving. He has freely given us the power to choose — the power to seek Him and His ways. That choice is ours, and nobody else's. It's up to us to take responsibility for how much we want God to work in our lives. He has promised great things to all who believe in Him and listen to His word. He has also promised difficult things for those who don't. The one thing He did not promise is that we will choose Him, seek Him, and listen to Him. He did, however, promise us the power to make that choice.
It's easy to blame God when you don't feel His presence in your life. If God really loved me, why won't He help me out? God's an easy target, because we've talked ourselves into the idea that He plays favorites — that He gives grace to certain people and not to others. What we fail to understand is that the ball is in our court. We fail to understand that we can, and should, take responsibility for the relationship we have with God. If we want to feel Him more in our lives, we need to do our part in seeking Him and listening to Him.
Your spiritual life is not blind chance, and it won't happen by accident. You won't stumble into it one day and suddenly be a spiritual master. Like anything, you need to take matters into your own hands. It's time we all take responsibility for our spiritual lives by giving ourselves the space to discern the call of God versus the distraction of the enemy and have the courage to stand in the face of our fear and make the decision to walk in the direction of God.
