Rejoice With Trembling

¹“Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.” (Psalms 2:11). I’ve always struggled with the idea that fear is something necessary for our relationship with our Heavenly Father. I know that there are positive aspects to fear and that when the scriptures use words like fear in relationship with God, they are trying to capture feelings of awe and reverence, but I guess I’m just too intimately familiar with some of the darker aspects of fear that it’s not something that I really want to dredge up when I am trying to draw closer to God. But isn’t it great to know that we can feel fear and serve God anyway? God sometimes asks us to do some pretty scary stuff. I often feel like telling God that His faith in my ability to handle challenges is wildly misplaced. But feeling fear doesn’t disqualify me from being of use to my Heavenly Father. When Christ and His disciples were being tossed about on the Sea of Galilee, Christ didn’t tell them that He wasn’t going to help them until they all stopped being such big babies and got over their fears already. When Moses walked into the Red Sea, I am sure that he was trembling, but he did it anyway, and despite his fear, the miracle came. Maybe the fear never truly leaves us, but that’s OK. We can serve God, we can even rejoice, while we are still trembling with fear. It’s Ok for us to have small moments of joy even in some really dark storms. It doesn’t invalidate our fears or trivialize the gravity of our situation for us to try and find something to smile about even through the tears. I wish none of us ever had to feel afraid or small or weak or hopeless, but if we are feeling all of that and more and the Lord asks us to help Him with His work, then we can serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling and know that somehow it will all work out in the end.