Crash the Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others (13 page)

Listen, if it were possible to ignore all the impulses of panic and anxiety that come our way, I’d suggest we do so. And there are some irrational fears that we can train ourselves, discipline ourselves, and, through God’s Spirit, empower ourselves to ignore. But at other times, the only way to drive fear out is by diving in—and touching down on solid ground.

Here’s how I try to do it.

Anytime the chatterbox hits me with a what-if, the first thing I need to do is
identify
it. The trigger could be anything from the inconvenient scenario (
What if I left my wallet at the restaurant?
) to the unthinkable (
What if Holly is late because she and the kids were in a terrible accident?
).

Whatever the what-if is, as quickly as I can, I must assess the nature of the fear. What, specifically, am I so afraid of? In some ways this step alone neutralizes the undercurrent strength of the fear. Instead of being swept away by a vague, unspecified
feeling
of fear, I’ve identified a fact that is driving the fear. Once I’ve identified what the fear is, I can objectively look at how it needs to be
handled. Is it illogical and removed from reality? Or is it imminent—something I can act on right now?

If so, then the sooner I act, the more effectively I can subdue it. In this way I can leverage the fear
against
the chatterbox. Instead of just trying to
ignore
the fear and hope it goes away on its own—which it almost never does—I’ve isolated and identified the fear. That points me to an action I need to take. And I’m delivered
out
of my fear by taking an active path straight
through
it.

But what about the fears of outcomes I
can’t
directly affect? This is where my strategy might sound a little sketchy, but stick with me. Instead of advising you to
run away
from your what-if, I want to encourage you to play it out.

Follow up your what-if with another phrase—
that would
—and then play it out.

What if
the worst possible thing happens?

That would
be the most difficult day of my life.

Recently someone very close to me seemed as if he might be about to take his own life. I had done all I could for him, and I honestly felt as though my personal involvement in trying to help him heal was making the wound worse.

I called a Christian counselor late one night when the fears were washing over me so strong and so fast that I could hardly breathe. I told him, “I have no idea what he’s going to do. I really think he’s going to hurt himself, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m scared to death.”

That’s when he took me to the place I least expected a Christian counselor would take someone who was processing such a big fear. “Well, what if?” he asked.

“Excuse me? I’m confused.”

“What if he did kill himself? What would happen?” he asked.

“I’d be devastated.”

“Right. It’d be one of the worst days of your life.”

“Yes. The worst. I have no idea how I’d get through it.”

“But you would?”

“I would what?”

“Get through it. You would get through it, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess I would. Somehow God would get me through it …”

As I heard myself saying those words, I felt something shift inside. I was
still afraid, but not in the same way. My hope was no longer being choked out by fear. Instead I was wrestling with the fear but holding on to a hope that was
higher
than the fear. And finding a foundation that was
stronger
.

The counselor had indirectly walked me through the three steps to overcoming the chatter of terror that had been crippling me:
What if … That would … God will
.

God will get me through this
. Somehow. Some way. No matter what happens.

God will be at the bottom, and because I’ve built my house on the Rock, it will stand.

As it turned out, the person I was praying for didn’t end his life. My fears, while not unreasonable, had ultimately been unwarranted. But in some ways I’m glad I was forced to face that level of fear, because I came out of the pit of that experience with a new plan to process my fears, no matter what level they attack me at.

I feel like I’m finding a sort of revolving door I can send my fears through when they come marching in.

What if … That would … God will
.

It works with smaller fears too.

What if
the car repair bill is more than I can afford?

That would
be inconvenient. I’d have to figure something out to get the kids to school, and I’m already bad at getting out the door on time, and who’s going to be willing to bring me home after work?

But you know what?

God will
help me figure something out. He always has. It might be inconvenient, but it’s certainly not impossible. He’s parted water before, after all. This isn’t exactly the highest degree of difficulty for Him.

Out fear goes, out the door, slowly. And you move on, taking the action you can, moving beyond the feeling of
I hate my life. This is the worst thing ever. Why does this always happen to me?
That’s where the chatterbox loves to trap you.

And as we’ve already seen, this same strategy can work on the
biggest fears
if we have the guts to use it.

What if
the person closest to me leaves me? Whom would I talk to, confide in, depend on?

That would
be the loneliest season and most devastating blow I’ve ever had to endure. For a while I’d probably feel like I couldn’t go on. I’d feel like a part of me was gone.

You can’t be afraid to stare into the pupils of the possibility of pain and see it for what it is. Pretending it isn’t there or couldn’t happen is like popping a pill but putting off surgery.

The key, though, is not to stay down too long in the potential pain of
that would
. It’s like being at the bottom of a pool—you can hold your breath for only a few seconds before you drown. The goal is to
assess
the fear. But
obsessing
over the fear will asphyxiate you. After you’ve identified the fear and acknowledged the possibility of pain, breathe in the promise. And breathe it deeply.

Even if that happens …

God says He will …

The Enemy does his best work in the darkness of our ignorance and speculation. He hammers away with what-ifs in the workshop of thoughts we are too afraid to face.

A few summers ago I came across a book titled
Feel the Fear … and Do It Anyway
, written by a psychologist, Susan Jeffers, over twenty-five years ago. Although her conclusions come from a worldview quite different from mine, I found myself going,
Yeah, that’s totally how it works
over and over again as I read. In fact, she introduced me to the term
chatterbox
as she explained the inner voice that, as she puts it, “holds the key to all your fears … the voice that heralds doom, lack, and losing.”
³

Her solution to the frustration and paralysis the chatterbox creates is “to commit yourself to replacing it with a loving voice.”
⁴
As you’ve seen so far, my statement of the solution is a little more aggressive. I prefer to think in terms of crashing the chatterbox—overloading it—violently if necessary, then replacing it. Not just with any loving voice, but with the loving and powerful voice of God, based on the promises of the Bible and expressed in the person of Jesus. Hearing that voice above all others is the only way I know to silence the internal cacophony of fear in any of its forms.

One of the most helpful paradoxes Jeffers presents in her book—the one I’m trying to advocate here—is summarized in this quote: “Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.”
⁵

The way I see it, you might have to get hit by the wave of fear—or what-ifs—even if it takes you down for a little while. But isn’t this preferable to living with the undercurrent of dread about catastrophe and calamity that is outside your control? Isn’t it better than secretly wondering whether God is able to handle the hardships of your life—or more accurately, wondering whether you would be able to handle them with God’s help if they happened?

It’s better to be ripped to the bottom as we press forward in faith than to stay on the shore, playing in the sand with plastic shovels, never really trusting God. While it’s cold and dark and often lonely at the bottom, it’s even lonelier to drift through your entire life with silent suspicions eroding your confidence day by day.

After all, isn’t the danger of missing out often much greater than the risk that comes with stepping out?

One of the first times this reality hit me was when I was reading Jesus’s parable of the talents in Matthew 25. In this story Jesus describes three men who are entrusted with different amounts of money. Their master is going away for a long journey, and these men have his permission to decide how to invest his resources in his best interests.

Upon his return the master calls the men into the boardroom and instructs each man to produce an analysis of his quarterly returns. What happens next is ironic—and chilling.

The two men who had received the most money to manage have doubled the master’s initial investment. The boss praises them and sends them back to their suites in Trump Tower. But you can’t have an episode of
The Apprentice
without someone getting fired.

When the servant who was allotted the smallest amount of money comes forward, he has no gains to produce. Only misinformed excuses.

Why did the man miss out on the opportunity he was given to increase the value of the investment and participate in his master’s purpose? We don’t have to guess; he gives it to us straight: “I was afraid.”

What was he afraid of? Again, his own words tell us exactly. This man has a certain interpretation of his master’s disposition: “I knew that you are a hard man.”

And that interpretation limited what he was willing to attempt.

Just as, in the first book of the Old Testament, Adam’s fear sent him into hiding, in the first gospel account in the New Testament, this unnamed man’s fear produced a hiding of a different kind. He hid what he had been given because of his faulty perception of the one who gave it.

I was afraid
—of you—
so I went out and hid
.

Not only does the chatterbox spin endless tales about the awful things that might happen to us. It also creates infinite illusions about the terrible ways God will respond to us if we fail. If we attempt to obey God and fall flat on our faces, not only will we be ashamed of ourselves, but we think God will also be ashamed of us.

So we stop trying and stop trusting. Badly misinformed about the nature of what God really wants from us, we dig holes in the sand and bury our treasure on the beach. At least this way, we reason, the waves can’t wash away what little we have. We comfort ourselves by insisting that, while our lives might not be very fruitful, at least we’re being
faithful
. The fact is, we’ve become more fearful than we realize, and it’s costing us more than we may ever understand.

This is not God’s idea of faithfulness.

Now, instead of turning fear out of doors, we have let fear shut us out of opportunities to use the resources and gifts we’ve been given to honor the God who gave them. We feel God prompting us to give generously of our time, our talents, our treasures. There are words of encouragement we’re stirred to speak and dreams of impact we imagine sharing with others. We sense that doing so would bring about change in us, in others, in our world—for the glory of God. But instead of being compelled by the loving voice of the Father, we become intimidated by the harsh voice of the taskmaster who pantomimes and pretends to be God in our lives. “The voice that heralds doom, lack, and losing.”

The old chatterbox.

But the chatterbox plays only one side of the record.

In order to really grasp how important it is to walk past your what-ifs and into God’s plan for your life, you can’t just count what it might cost if you do attempt to obey God and fail. You must consider the cost of playing it safe in an attempt to avoid what God is calling you to do—and succeeding.

The man with one talent thought he was being frugal, responsible, and faithful by reproducing what the master had originally put under his charge. The master, however, had a much different opinion about how the opportunity had been handled: