When Nikita Khruschev visited America, he gave a press conference at the Washington Press Club. The first question from the floorÑhandled through an interpreterÑwas: "Today you talked about the hideous rule of your predecessor, Stalin. You were one of his closest aides and colleagues during those years. What were you doing all that time?" Khruschev's face got red. "Who asked that?" he roared. All five hundred faces turned down. "Who asked that?" he insisted. Nothing. "That's what I was doing," he said. Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader, (Addison-Wesley, New York: 1989) 195.

There is nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.

The scalded cat fears even cold water.

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.

We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.

More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

Fear and faith are not opposites. Fear is not a lack of faith, but faith in circumstances. You fear when you trust your circumstances more than you trust God.

Trace it, face it, and erase it.

Several years ago, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks did a comedy skit called the "2013 Year Old Man". In the skit, Reiner interviews Brooks, who is the old gentleman. At one point, Reiner asks the old man, "Did you always believe in the Lord?" Brooks replied: "No. We had a guy in our village named Phil, and for a time we worshiped him." Reiner: You worshiped a guy named Phil? Why? Brooks: Because he was big, and mean, and he could break you in two with his bare hands! Reiner: Did you have prayers? Brooks: Yes, would you like to hear one? O Phil, please don't be mean, and hurt us, or break us in two with your bare hands. Reiner: So when did you start worshiping the Lord? Brooks: Well, one day a big thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Phil. We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, "There's somthin' bigger than Phil!"

Failures take on a life of their own because the brain remembers incomplete tasks or failures longer than any success or completed activity. It's technically referred to as the "Zeigarnik effect." When a project or a thought is completed, the brain places it in a special memory. The brain no longer gives the project priority or active working status, and bits and pieces of the achieved situation begin to decay. But failures have no closure. The brain continues to spin the memory, trying to come up with ways to fix the mess and move it from active to inactive status. Perry Buffington, licensed psychologist, author, columnist; "Forgive or Forget," Universal Press Syndicate 8/29/99

At the recent National Pastors Convention that Leadership helped to sponsor, John Ortberg preached about Peter overcoming his fears to accept Jesus' invitation to come to him as he walked on the water. In Ortberg's words, "If you want to walk on water, you've got to get out of the boat." Ortberg told a memorable story about a pastor who needed to confront an individual who was causing conflict in the church. But the pastor confided to his wife that he was afraid to speak to the troublemaker because "every time I think about this person, I get sweaty palms, and every time I have to confront someone, my mouth goes dry." His wife's pithy response: "Why don't you lick your palms?"

Worry Hinders Our Faith According to our nation's Bureau of Standards, a dense fog covering seven city blocks to a depth of a hundred feet contains less than one glass of water. All of that fog, if it could be condensed into water, wouldn't quite fill a drinking glass. Compare this to the things we often worry about. Like fog our worries can thoroughly block our vision of the light of God's promises, but the fact is, they have little substance to them.

In public worship our habit is to slouch or squat; we do not kneel nowadays, let alone prostrate ourselves in humility before God. It is more characteristic of us to clap our hands with joy than to blush with shame or tears. We saunter up to God to claim his patronage and friendship; it does not occur to us that he might send us away. We need to hear again the apostle Peter's sobering words: "Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives in reverent fear." In other words, if we dare to call our Judge our Father, we must beware of presuming on him. It must even be said that our evangelical emphasis on the atonement is dangerous if we come to it too quickly. We learn to appreciate the access to God which Christ has won for us only after we have first seen God's inaccessibility to sinners. We can cry "Hallelujah" with authenticity only after we have first cried "Woe is me, for I am lost." In Dale's words [R. W. Dale in his book ATONEMENT], "it is partly because sin does not provoke our own wrath, that we do not believe that sin provokes the wrath of God."

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

I have been told that a dense fog that covers a seven-city-block area one hundred feet deep is composed of less than one glass of water divided into sixty thousand million drops. Not much is there but it can cripple an entire city. Worry and anxiety are like that. Just a glass full can cripple your life. At the moment when Martha needed most to stop and put down her cares and concerns she did not. She missed the greatest moment of her life, and why? For the roast in the oven.

I am, indeed, far from agreeing with those who think all religious fear barbarous and degrading and demand that it should be banished from the spiritual life. Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several other things -- ignorance, alcohol, passion presumption, and stupidity. It is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer; but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that stage, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast out our fear.

The "fear nots" in the infancy narratives: The "fear not" of salvation: "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings...which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:10,11). The "fear not" of the humanly impossible: "Fear not, Mary:... the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:...For with God nothing shall be impossible" (Luke 1:30, 35, 37). The "fear not" of unanswered prayer: "Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John" (Luke 1:13). The "fear not" of immediate obedience: "Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife:...Then Joseph ...did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him" (Matthew 1:20,24).

During the Gulf War of 1991, Iraq launched a series of Scud missile attacks against Israel. Many Israeli citizens died as a result of these attacks. After the war was over, Israeli scientists analyzed the official mortality statistics and found something remarkable. Although the death rate had jumped among Israeli citizens on the first day of the Iraqi attacks, the vast majority of them did not die from any direct physical effects of the missiles. They died from heart failure brought on by fear and stress associated with the bombardment. Psychological studies conducted on Israelis at the time showed that the most stressful time was the first few days leading up to the outbreak of war on January 17th and peaking on the first day of the Scud missile attacks. There was enormous and well-founded concern about possible Iraqi use of chemical and biological weapons. The government had issued to the entire Israeli population gas masks and automatic atropine syringes in case of chemical attack, and every household had been told to prepare a sealed room. After the first Iraqi strike turned out to be less cataclysmic than feared, levels of stress declined markedly. As in other wars, the people adapted to the situation with surprising speed. Then as the fear and anxiety subsided, the death rate also declined. There were 17 further Iraqi missile attacks over the following weeks, but Israeli mortality figures over this period were no higher than average. It was fear and the psychological impact of the missiles, not the physical impact, that claimed the majority of victims.

paraphrase: Every morning the alarm clock goes off--what a horrible name, the 'alarm' clock. Why can't we call it the 'opportunity clock' or the 'it's going to be a great day clock'

A frightened captain makes a frightened crew. –

Carl Reiner: "What was the main mode of transportation 2000 years ago?" Mel Brooks: "Fear!" -- The 2000 Year Old Man

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. – Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915

To the man who is afraid everything rustles. – Sophocles, c. 496-406 B.C.

God uses lust to impel man to marriage, ambition to office, avarice to earning, and fear to faith. -- Martin Luther

One of the reason mature people stop growing and learning is they become less and less willing to risk failure." -- John Gardner

One sword keeps another in the sheath. – George Herbert, 1651

There are several good precautions against temptation, but the surest is cowardice. -- Mark Twain

A passenger in a taxi tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him something. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped jus inches from a large plate glass window. For a few moments everything was silent in the cab, then the driver said, "Please, don't ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me." The passenger, who was also frightened, apologized and said he didn't realize that a tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much. The driver replied, "I'm sorry, it's really not your fault at all. Today is my first day driving a cab. I drove a hearse for 25 years." ________________________________________________________________________

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I want to have children, but my friends scare me. One of my friends told me she was in labor for thirty six hours. I don’t even want to do anything that feels good for thirty-six hours.

Fear and worry are a lot like a scarecrow. What harm can a scarecrow do? We scarecrow constructors know that the answer is "none," but the birds don't know that. You're smarter than a bird. That's why the prophet Jeremiah says that some of the enemy's greatest threats are "like a scarecrow in a melon patch.... Do not fear them; they can do no harm" (Jeremiah 10:5).... If those black birds ever figured out our strategy, they'd realize that a scarecrow is actually a tip-off to the location of the best corn. So isn't it possible that the very fears the enemy tries to plant in your mind are unwitting advertisements to God's good stuff?