The Day I Overcame My Fears

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“Yes, I’ll go.”

That was the exact moment – the very day and hour – that everything changed for me. I remember where I was standing as I held the telephone receiver to my ear, what my posture was, what I was looking at, and precisely how I was feeling.

And the feeling I had was sheer terror. But somehow, in spite of my overwhelming fear, I said, “Yes, I’ll go.”

I had been living with it for years, that fear. It was a fear of learning new languages. Turns out, I’m horrible at it. In high school I was a decent student, except for my Spanish class. I flunked it. Well, not quite. I got a D in it. I had never gotten a D in anything before, or after, for that matter. But when you have your sights set on college, as I had, a D is the same as an F.

So I repeated Spanish 2 during the summer and raised my grade. But the damage had been done. From then on I would think of myself as “Herb, the kid who got a D in Spanish.”

What made things worse was that I felt the call of God to go into ministry. And for me, that meant going to seminary after college. And specifically, it meant attending Dallas Theological Seminary. My pastor, youth pastor and uncle had all graduated from DTS. And since Dallas had a reputation for producing excellent scholars and great expository preachers, and since preaching the Word was what I felt God was calling me to do, I didn’t consider any other school.

But here’s the rub: Dallas required three years of New Testament Greek and two years of Old Testament Hebrew. For me, that was a linguistic Mount Everest. I couldn’t fathom studying two ancient languages at the same time for two years.

On top of that, Dallas was fourteen hundred miles away from my home in Los Angeles and I had no funds saved up for graduate school. I would have to support myself while taking a full course load at DTS, courses that included those dreaded languages.

And so there I stood, phone in hand. My application to Dallas Seminary had been accepted, but I had been putting off my final decision to go until the last minute. Finally, the seminary called to tell me that my time was up. They needed to know now whether or not I was going to come.

As I stood there, teetering between yes and no, I thought of Abram leaving Ur by faith and following God’s call to the promised land. And then I thought of Jesus’ call to his disciples to leave everything they called home and follow him. If I was going to be a disciple of Jesus, I would have to ignore my fears and do the same.

And so I said, “Yes, I’ll go.”

I wish I could tell you that an overwhelming sense of confidence and peace filled me at that moment. But they didn’t. I was just as scared after I decided to go as I was before. I simply knew that God had promised to be with me and provide for me and I acted on that.

I struggled with Greek and Hebrew through much of Dallas. And the workload was crushing. Those four years were some of the most stressful years of my life. But they were also some of the most blessed years of my life. I grew personally and spiritually as a result of my time there. And, miracle of miracles, I eventually came to enjoy Greek and Hebrew.

And so, my dear Christian friend, don’t ever let fear keep you from doing the will of God. Face those fears square in the eye, and then turn to God, trust in his promises, and tell him, “Yes, I’ll go.” Your life will never be the same again.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

For the past sixteen years New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry

Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.

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and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.

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