Do not normalize fear…

I started reading Judges today, and it’s funny how something suddenly stood out to me that used to have an impact in my life. It’s the same pattern that followed the people of Israel generation after generation. It’s nothing but our age old friend, Fear. Sorry for being sarcastic here because the repercussions of it was like that. I’m not saying fear itself is bad. The Bible clearly says that the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and that fear actually keeps us aligned with God’s will. What I’m talking about here is a different kind of fear, its the fear of things that slowly take us away from God and His promises.

I remember this pattern in my own life during my corporate years. The system often felt like a constant rat race, keeping us on our toes, yet quietly keeping us separate. Information became a kind of currency. To do well in that race, I felt the need to stay connected to my higher ups, and those connections often came with added favors. The more connected you were, the more freedom you seemed to have in your work — freedom that often meant easier tasks, mistakes being overlooked, or protection when things didn’t go well.

While this may have worked well for management, it didn’t work well for me. Over time, this environment began to shape how I thought and worked. I stopped thinking independently and began doing only what I was told. My mindset narrowed, and I lost the habit of pausing to ask whether there might be a better way. I found myself complying even when I sensed there were better approaches, largely out of fear of losing connections or falling out of favor. Looking back, I can see that my work itself could have spoken more clearly than my efforts to stay connected but without realizing it, fear started doing the driving. Deep down, I knew this wasn’t healthy, yet I continued in it. Fear, more than purpose, had begun to propel me.

It took time for me to recognize that I was caught in a quiet cycle of defeat, not because I lacked ability, but because fear had slowly reshaped how I lived and worked. Rather than exercising the gifts God had given me, I chose the safer path. Have you ever experienced something like this? Does any of this sound familiar?

When I read Judges this time, that personal experience suddenly made sense. How? When God gave the land to the people of Israel as their inheritance, they did not fully conquer it. Have you realised this when you have read Judges before? I’ve read Judges in the past, but this time this whole thought process stood out. Judges chapter 1 spends a lot of time talking about the incomplete conquest of the land. Tribe after tribe failed to fully occupy what God had already given them. Instead of standing on the promise of God and removing the people who have occupied their inheritance, they compromised and started to live with them. What really struck me was that each tribe seemed to have a reason, and over time they accepted this situation as if it was part of the plan.

As I kept reading, I pondered on one question in my mind, why didn’t they have the faith to fight? This question matters because these people were not new to battles. They had fought war after war with Joshua. They had seen God move powerfully again and again. These were not unfamiliar situations. Yet they still failed. That took my mind back to the spies sent out in Numbers 13. Twelve were sent to spy the Promised Land, ten came back with a bad report, and only two responded in faith. If you read that bad report carefully, it’s filled with fear. The same pattern shows up again in Joshua 11, where the Anakim are defeated in the mountains, yet some are left behind in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod.

Fear was introduced in Numbers, restrained in Joshua, but never fully dealt with which manifested in Judges. In other terms, fear was verbalized in Numbers, managed in Joshua and normalized in Judges. When fear is not addressed in one generation, it quietly passes on to the next - sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly, thus leading to disobedience and eventually making us to stumble over time. God Himself explains this in Judges 2 where He says, “You have not obeyed My voice.”

Let’s pause there for a moment. Do you see how fear transitioned the people of Israel slowly over time into disobedience and they started to live with it? I would urge you to analyze your life as I do mine to look for things that we have normalized which are not of the word of God. Once you are able to identify, I would encourage you not to walk through the same cycle of defeat that I went through. It takes time to break out of it, and even realizing you’re stuck in one. What really helped me was, I started to write down the promises God spoke over my life and read them out loud whenever fear showed up. I also began asking myself, if fear had caused me to disobey God’s direction in my life. I’d encourage you to do the same and press on to God to deal with the fear that quietly pulls us away from obedience to His Word and break that cycle of defeat.