We Have Nothing To Fear But ...

You are familiar with these words that Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke on the ocassion of his first inauguration as President of the United States on March 4, 1933. As the economic depression began to take a firm hold in the United States, Mr. Roosevelt was elected to bring change and hope to the American people. In 1932, the year of his first election, the unemployment rate was at 23.53%; the next year it had risen to 24.75%, the bottom of the depression. The American stock market had lost 90 percent of its value between 1929 and 1933. The nation's unemployment rate continued to porpoise during his first two terms between the high of 1933 and a low of 14.18% in 1937. These percentages represent between 12.8 million and 7.7 million unemployed Americans, respectively. By the time of the 1940 presidential election, Roosevelt's third run for the White House, unemployment had decreased to 14.75%.

I can certainly understand why Mr. Roosevelt made this famous statement during his inaugural address. I certainly wouldn't want a president who was elected in the midst of a crisis saying, "Folks, sit down, shut up, and strap yourselves in because we have no idea where or when this sleigh ride is going to end!" This might have been true, but it would not have been wise for any newly elected leader to make this statement. More recently, on March 13, 2009, Mr. Larry Summers, who is President Obama's top economic advisor, said that the "excess of fear" must be stopped before economic recovery can begin, even citing Mr. Roosevelt's nothing to fear statement of 76 years ago.

I think they have got their finger on the right pulse. The problem is fear, and there are many things that we should rightfully be concerned about. But I am not convinced that they have an answer. Now, I know this seems simplistic, but watching these men tackle this very serious problem reminds me of the television series House. You know the doctor runs from diagnosis to diagnosis of a patient who is days, hours, minutes away from dying; pitting his staff against each other and himself; flagrantly violating hospital rules and being rewarded for it by turns in the clinic. Most times he wins, sometimes he loses. But the last scene is usually of himself contemplating his most recent case, and never seeming to learn anything from it. It is Sherlock Holmes, graduated from Harvard Med, and addicted to painkillers because they help him do his job.

But President Obama and Mr. Summers' patient has the worst disease of all. Fear. You know the fear I am talking about. The fear that seems to not only create a chasm in your belly, but which so focuses your concentration that you become unaware of the conversation around you. The type of fear which forces you to ask the question, "What am I going to do if...?" and leaves you trembling at the response. That type of fear which takes hold of you so deep within your being that you become consumed with it, unable to function. The type of fear which quickly moves to a despair that no person outside of yourself can be of any help. I don't think Mr. Obama has any clue of how to deal with that fear. But Jesus Christ does.

If we have any hope in this life, whether that life be characterized by economic ruin, the loss of family through divorce or death, or the receiving of the sentence of death because we have inoperable cancer, that hope is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. To lay hold of that hope, we Christians must humble ourselves in prayer. Not the type of praying we have been doing for so long, with our lips moving and our hearts far from Him. But praying as if our very lives depended upon it, for our lives do.

Do we pray like Moses, interceding for the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai? Do we pray like Daniel? Do we pray like Solomon, pleading for wisdom? Do we pray like Hezekiah while Sennecharib is at the wall? Do we pray like Jesus? Why not? Have we forgotten all the benefits of the Lord? Have we forgotten what He has done in response to such praying?

The great weakness of the church is our prayerlessness. If we are to see any relief of our fears, it will come only upon our knees as we beseech God, who delights in mercy, to visit us because perfect love, and only His perfect love, casts out fear. It is time we went to prayer.