Fear Part 1: The Greatest Fear

Listen to the five-minute Greatest Fear audio program from Coach’s Corner.

In today’s post I’m going to explore fear…in fact, what I believe to be the greatest fear of leaders, and of people in general. This blog is designed to help you grow as a Christian leader. Knowing your fears and being able to overcome your fears is necessary to becoming a great Christian leader.

So what is the greatest fear? Public speaking? I’ve been told that some surveys rating people’s greatest fears rank public speaking as a greater fear than death itself. I recall the first few times I spoke in front of a group. It was very scary. A friend of mine, who is an amazing public speaker, used to throw up before every speech. This is a big fear for a lot of people.

Could our greatest fear be the fear of failure? The fear of rejection? The fear of losing your job? Those are all strong fears, but I would argue that none of them are the greatest fear. In my years of work with leaders, I’ve come to believe that the greatest fear is the fear of uncertainty. 

Fifteen years ago my mother came down with an illness. As she began to go through tests, it became clear that she might have liver cancer, which would be really bad…probably terminal. For about three days we didn’t know if she had terminal liver cancer or not. At the end of those few days, the doctors reported back that she did indeed have liver cancer. It was a very sad moment for all of us, and I remember my mom saying, “Well, at least now I know.” That surprised me. It almost came across as if the not knowing was harder than dealing with the reality that she was going to die. We had four wonderful months with her in hospice care. I think those months were so good for us as a family partly because we knew what we were facing.

Here’s another example that leads me to think that uncertainly is our greatest fear: I’ve heard that battered women, after living in fear for their lives with their abusive spouses, confess that they didn’t leave for so long because they didn’t know where they would go, what they would do, or what their lives would look like on their own. The amount of uncertainty in that is huge, and I believe that many of these women feared the uncertainty more than they feared the threat of death.

Author Susan Scott, in her book Fierce Conversations says this:

A problem named is a problem solved.

I don’t quite agree with this, but I like the expression. What she’s getting at here is that when a problem is named, a lot of the fear goes away, even if the problem is terrible. I’ve changed this saying to go something like this:

A problem named is a problem tamed.

I think that once we name a problem, it has a lot less power, even if it’s terrible, like terminal cancer.

So what did Jesus have to say about fear and worry? Take a moment to read Matthew 6:25-34. It seems to me that Jesus was talking about uncertainty in this passage, and that he’s offering us an antidote—a solution—so we won’t have to be so afraid of uncertainty.

In my next post I’ll talk about what this antidote to the fear of uncertainty is. In the meantime, I encourage you to reflect on your fears and if uncertainty might be at their root, and I pray that you will continue to experience God’s rich blessings.

Post by Rodger.
Image by Pink Sherbet Photography.

Continue on to Fear Part 2: The Antidote to the Greatest Fear.

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