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Remember when you were a kid lying in bed in the dark and you heard something, or thought you saw something move? We were scared. Our hearts felt like they were going to pound out of our chests. Sometimes we wanted to scream for help, but we couldn’t.

How did you handle that fear?

As we get older, our fears become more complex. We’re less afraid of things like bumps in the night or monsters under our beds, and more shaken by things like work pressures or job security, our kids, our relationships, our finances, or health issues. We may be older, but the unknowns and uncontrollable things roaming around in our minds can produce the same kind of fears that make our adrenaline rush, our blood pressure rise and even freeze us in place.

I’ve had some experience with fear. Not just the, "I’m worried" or "I had a scare" stuff. I’m talking about life dominating anxiety and stress -- driven fears that threw me into the fight of my life.

My fight against fear began on Thanksgiving Day 1991. This was no typical Thanksgiving. I was in Dublin, Ireland. I went to Europe with a group of people to visit missionaries. It was the trip of a lifetime, and everything was going great. So on Thanksgiving morning when I hopped into the back seat of a missionary friend’s Morris Mini in Dublin that morning, I never expected anything unusual to happen. They call that car a mini for good reason!

We we’re headed out to an Irish manor called Drewstown House. It is a Christian camp and conference center. At Drewstown, we were to meet a group of American missionaries to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner. But on the way out of Dublin, we got stuck in traffic.

As I was sitting in the back seat of that little car, behind a huge guy, I started to get this feeling that our Mini was getting even ‘mini-er.’ I tried to think about other things but when that didn’t work and I knew I was either going to pass out or freak out, so as calmly as I could, I said to the guy sitting in front of me, "I’m not doing too well back here, is there any way we could trade places?." Fortunately, even though he barely fit, he somehow squeezed himself into the backseat and let me sit up front. Eventually, we got out of traffic and into the country.

We had a great Thanksgiving overeating and watching NFL football on video. We celebrated the fact that we were part of the land of the free and the home of the brave. But I didn’t feel too free or brave that day, because when I thought about getting back into that Mini to go home, a sense of panic came over me.

I prayed, and I planned. I managed to trade places with someone who had come in a normal-sized car and made it back to Dublin that night. I didn’t have a clue that my claustrophobic incident was just the beginning of one of the scariest rides of my life; a ride that would last nearly four years.

When I returned from Europe, my fear came with me. Whatever had caused this sense of panic in me wasn’t helped by the fact that I came home to some of the most spiritually, relationally, and physically demanding situations I’ve ever encountered in my work as a pastor.

I found myself in a daily battle against panic. Before it was over, I was not only avoiding the back seat of cars, I couldn’t sit on the inside of restaurant booths or ride on elevators. When I started to feel claustrophobic just lying bed at night, I knew fear was getting the best of me.

To cope, I’d compensate. I’d take the stairs instead of elevators. If I went to a restaurant with friends and they wanted to sit in a booth, I’d just head to the bathroom. Then, I could be sure to get the last outside seat. I got good at all this stuff. But fear and panic would still sneak up and get me when I least expected it. Fear was beginning to roll into fear. Panic possibilities seemed to be surrounding me. I had run into the first of four facts I would learn about fear.

Fact #1: Fear Feeds on Fear

Allow a little worry or some self-doubt to creep into your life and you’ll discover, that fear has the ability to multiply and morph into something bigger and scarier than you ever imagined. That’s because fear’s favorite tactic is the pile-on.

When my fears began to escalate and pile up, did I go for help? No, I was too proud and too self-sufficient to do that. I kept hoping I would wake up some day and discover all this stuff was just a figment of my imagination. But that didn’t happen. I was able to work around situations or control things well enough to get by. But in the fall of 1994 I was forced to face my fears head on.

Drewstown House outside Dublin was in dire need of repairs, and I was working on a plan to send a work team there from the church I served in Indiana.

Never thinking that all this fear and anxiety stuff I was experiencing would still be an issue, I came into the winter of 1994 facing a real dilemma. I was set to leave with my team in June and it dawned on me that this would require me to do things like get inside an airplane and stay there for seven hours. If I survived that, I would then have get into a vehicle and travel the very streets where I had begun my journey of fear. The more I thought about this, the less sure I was about being able to do it.

I had run into Fact #2: Fear comes when we wonder if we have the resources to face a threat.

The less sure I am about my ability to cope with something, the more afraid of it I’ll be. It doesn’t matter how big or small that ‘something’ is. What sets off and creates fear in us is the belief that we don’t have what it takes to handle some thing or situation. Intimacy with God or other people is scary because it has uncertainty and unknowns written all over it. We’re not sure we have what it takes to be that committed, we’re not sure we can give that much of ourselves away, so we hold back or run from these relationships instead of learning how to embrace them.

So, the real story behind our fears is a lack of confidence in our abilities. Behind every one of our fears are questions like, "Can I handle this?" "Will I succeed?" "Will I survive?"

In 1994, I was faced with some big, unavoidable choices. I either had to find a way out of leading this work team to Ireland or I had to find a way to work through my fears. I had to choose. I discovered though my experience with fear that we can choose whether we give fear the power to be a destructive force or a constructive force in our lives.

That’s at the heart of Fact #3: Destructive fear immobilizes us and constructive fear mobilizes us.

Our inner fears have the power to freeze us in place or move us toward God. Like a little child frightened in the dark, we can lie there scared stiff, unable to move, hoping we won’t be eaten alive, or we can call out to our heavenly father to come help and rescue us.

Some of us who have let anxiety and panic run our lives for long periods of time may need to seek professional help. A good doctor or counselor who specializes in these things may be needed to help us break the panic patterns we’ve established. Getting professional help is not a sign of a lack of trust in God, so long as we don’t depend solely on medication or therapy and leave God out of our healing process.

Fear builds on itself. It grows out of doubt in our ability to cope. And that it can freeze us in place or move us toward God. But knowing how fear works is only half the story. Discovering how God can move us beyond our fears is what we really need to figure out.

The Bible contains a book called the Psalms. Most of the Psalms are songs or poems written by Israel’s King David. As a boy, David was the one who stepped up and took on the giant Goliath when none of the soldiers in Israel’s army would. David learned early what it meant to face his fears with God’s help. But later in life, after David had become king, he wrote quite a bit about his struggle to keep on fighting the fears that came his way.

Because of the openness and honesty of David’s Psalms, his songs often read like a life journal. This makes the Psalms of David a great source of God-oriented guidance on how we can move beyond our fears. David tells us in Psalm 55 that the first step in moving beyond fear is to do a fear audit. David wrote wasn’t afraid to admit to himself and to God what was creating fear in his life. Here’s his list of fears from the beginning of Psalm 55:

"I am overwhelmed by my troubles. My enemies shout at me, making loud and wicked threats. They bring trouble on me, hunting me down in their anger. My heart is in anguish. The terror of death overpowers me. Fear and trembling overwhelm me. I can't stop shaking." (Psalm 55:2-5)

David dug deeper and discovered why he was so afraid. His fears were being caused by real people, who were really angry at him and David was convinced they were angry enough to hunt him down and kill him. Those seem to me like pretty good reasons to be afraid.

Then David shares how these threats were affecting him. His heart was in anguish. The thought of being killed was terrorizing and taking over his life. When David analyzed his fear, he had to admit he was so unsure of his ability to survive. His shaking body proved he was shaken to the core.

Have you ever been so intimidated by the people or events of your life that you could lie in bed and feel and hear your heart pounding with fear or anxiety? At the peak of my fears my body reacted by keeping all system on high alert. Adrenaline up, heart rate up, blood pressure up …this was a perfect set up for panic to show up, and it did. If you struggle with fear affecting your life, here are some valuable questions to guide you through a fear audit, "What’s going on?" Describe your feelings and behaviors. "What’s threatening me?" List the things that are intimidating you. "What doubts are behind my fears?" Remember, fear is a response to not feeling equipped to cope, find out what’s behind your fears?

As I pulled apart my pile of fears, I was surprised at what I found. I was in my 30s and discovered I was bothered by the fact that nearly half my life was over. At the same time, I was a relatively new dad of two boys and wondered if I would have what it takes to be a good parent. I was under heavy pressure to perform at work, and there were many other big and little issues. Put them all together, and like David, I was overwhelmed.

To move beyond the fear in your life, you’ll need to make your list and dig as deep as you can. You need to know what’s in your pile of fears and what you’re really afraid of. For David, he was afraid of being killed, for me I think most of my fears revolved around the fear of failure.

After you’ve got your fear audit in hand (and it’s not a bad idea to actually write it out) you’re ready for step two in moving beyond your fears: measure God. Now it’s time to take our fear lists and hold then up against the character and resources of God.

In another of his journal entries, Psalm 27:1, David shows us how he used this fear fighting strategy. He wrote, "The Lord is my light and my salvation—so why should I be afraid? The Lord protects me from danger—so why should I tremble?"

David knew in his head that God was committed to his deliverance, that God was committed to protecting him, so he needed to get that truth translated from his head to his heart and to his shaking body.

Don’t overlook that little phrase David just used, "The Lord is my light and my salvation." Think back again to our childhood days. How much of a fear killer was it when you were lying in bed scared to death and your mom or dad came in turned on the lights? They may have even stayed with you until you fell back to sleep. Their ability to turn on the light chased away our fear.

David tells us that’s exactly what God does for us too. He is our light that reveals what is real and what isn’t. He is the more powerful, fearless one who comes in and stays with us until our fears go away. To rid ourselves of our fears we have to list them and then compare our lists against God’s abilities and resources asking ourselves questions like, "How big is God?" "What are his resources?"

As we get to know God better and learn to trust him more, God gets bigger and our fears grow smaller.

That sounds too simple, doesn’t it? That’s because there’s more. We DO need to list out our fears and we DO need to measure them against God. Then, after we’ve gotten everything in perspective, we need to personally invite God to help us. Step 3 in moving beyond our fears is to ask God to fight your battles.

David tells us how he did this. "Morning, noon, and night I plead aloud in my distress, and the Lord hears my voice. ...God who is king forever will hear me and humble them… (Psalms 55:17&19)

Two important things to note: David doesn’t offer us a magic bullet or a quick fix here. He says that all day long…morning noon and night he would plead with God to help him keep his fears at bay. When the threats are big and our fear pile is deep, that’s continual, unending contact with God may be required.

The second thing to note is that David asked God specifically to "hear him" and "humble them." He was saying to God, "God, you take on the people who are threatening me and making me so afraid."

Then David invites anyone reading his story to follow his example. He challenges us with these words:

"Give your burdens to the Lord, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall." (Psalm 55:22)

If you find yourself hampered by worry or anxiety or any kind of fear-based emotion, I’d encourage you ask this key question: "Can I trust God to handle this?" God has promised that he will not allow anyone trusting in him to slip and fall. Even if you not 100 percent sure you can trust God that much, you can still do what David did when he was scared to death, you can ask God to fight for you.

When I was faced with the facts that I didn’t think I had within me the resources to get into a plane and fly back to Ireland, the birthplace of my fears, I made a bold move that turned the tide. At a meeting of church leaders I told them that I was really in doubt about my ability to do what I needed to do to take our work team to Ireland. I laid out all my fears and doubts (my list) to them. I told them, "At this moment I can’t do this, there’s no way. But I want and need you to pray with me that God will take on my fears and give me the strength to do what I’m convinced I can’t."

I prayed hard and often that winter. That group of leaders also seriously prayed for me and with me.

We asked God to fight for me and against my fears. You can use that same approach. Build a prayer support team.

Our team went to Drewstown. It was the first American work team to go to Drewstown House after its current director, John Bailie, took over. John didn’t want us to come, he was afraid we would make a mess of things, and he knew how headstrong and pushy Americans could be. But God worked me through my fears and John Balie through his, and now nearly ten teams have been over there in the past decade with more than $50,000 invested in the place. A friend of mine who has led many of those teams told me about a year ago that every time a new team of Americans comes over, John Bailie tells them about the first pastor and his team who came and how God used them to change his life and dramatically change the future of Drewstown.

I was thrilled when I heard that, but I remembered and will always remember and give credit to the one who got me and my team there, God who took my fear list and took those fears on and allowed me to find the peace and strength to move beyond my fears and get my life back. And that’s step four in moving beyond our fears: Find God’s peace and live.

I got my life back and fund peace when I took the steps necessary to move beyond my fears. David told us how and so did the Bible’s Apostle Paul who wrote these words: "Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."

I hung on those words they supplied me with the perspective and peace I needed to trust God and move back into living at peace.

God doesn’t promise to remove all the scary stuff or intimidating people from our lives, but he does promise he will always be there with us and be there for us to turn on the light -- the light of his truth. He will help us see how big he is, so that in the face of fear and worry and anxiety -- even panic -- we can trust him and determine that we won’t run and hide. With faith in a God who is bigger than our problems we don’t have to shut down or back down.