How to Overcome Fear With Prayer

Earlier this month, my family and I traveled down to Austin, Texas to watch our boys run at the Cross Country State Championships.

By “travel,” I mean that when our girls got out of school at 3:42, we drove 4 hours and 15 minutes to a hotel where we stayed the night.

That involved driving in the dark, on unfamiliar back roads. There is no interstate that goes from our small Texas town to the city of Austin. It just doesn’t exist. Curvy, two-lane highways with no shoulders and traffic going in both directions is the best it gets. Oh, and by the way, it’s deer season.

Someone had recently told my husband about Waze. It’s similar to Google Maps but is supposed to be better. I was already familiar with it, as my BFF that drives me to my doctor appointments used it on the way to our last visit. So we faithfully followed the voice coming out of his phone.

(I’m sure there is a blog post about trusting the GPS more than Jesus in there somewhere, but I’ll have to save that for another day.)

Scary Stuff

At one point, we were on a road “the voice” had instructed us to take. It was extremely curvy and we felt a little uneasy. We rounded a turn to find ourselves in a construction zone with no warning. The road seemed to drop out from under us, there were pylons on each side of our car, what could only be described loosely as a bumpy dirt road underneath us, and a car in the other lane.

I’m pretty sure my heart stopped with the pavement.

When we finally got off the abhorrent road, I was stressed to the max.

To make matters worse, just a short way down the nice, highway with a wide shoulder, the pickup in front of us slammed on its breaks. It came to a complete stop in the middle of the road in a 70 mile per hour zone.

Why?

(I’m so glad you asked.) There was a car on the shoulder that had hit a deer. There were already police on the scene, the driver of the truck just wanted to see what was going on. (Yes, I am assuming, but there didn’t seem to be any logical reason for it to stop.)

By the time we finally pulled into Austin, my nerves were on edge (to say the least). And I wasn’t even driving. In the end, my stress level and nerves ended up making it even worse on my husband.

Don’t get me wrong, my husband is a great driver. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, because I do. However, in situations like we were in, it was the outside stressors that had gotten to me. And it was his driving that had kept us safe.

At one point, I realized that if I kept focusing on everything outside the car, I was just going to make matters worse. So I did what I always do when I’m scared. I started to pray.

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3 Reasons You Can Overcome Fear with Prayer

1.) Prayer Refocuses Your Mind

Praying takes your mind off what you are afraid of and puts it on Jesus.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

Colossians 3:2

2.) Prayer Can Calm Anxiety

In addition to changing your focus, prayer can also help calm your anxiety. When I stop to pray, I ask God to help me trust in Him. To remind me that He is in control. And during that process, I start to breathe deeper. The panic ceases.

3.) Prayer Can Put Things In Perspective

When my kids were little, I remember they were afraid of storms. I remember it because I was, too. But I was the mom, and I had to be responsible.

There was one specific day my husband was at work and he needed something. So I had to load the kids in the van and take it to him. The weather wasn’t bad, but it was cloudy. It was enough to make me uncomfortable (I was really scared of storms).

But God had recently brought me to the book of Job, and it had become something I clung to on rainy days. Specifically Job 36:26-37:24 it talks about how God is in control of the weather. I remember talking to the kids about how we were safe because God was in control of that storm. I knew that there was a small possibility that it could get bad real fast and something might happen to us. But I also knew that if it did, that God would have known it was going to happen, and He wouldn’t be surprised by it. I don’t know why, but I haven’t been afraid of storms since that day.

Thus, whenever I am afraid, I start to pray and remind myself that God is in control. That He knows what’s going on and what will happen. I pray that He will help me to trust in Him no matter what comes our way.

Do You Have Any Tips On How To Overcome Fear?

So what about you? How do you overcome your fears? Share your thoughts and comments below!

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P.S. If you liked this post, you’ll also like my devotional book Christmas is Coming. It’s filled with devotionals that (as one reader put it) are saturated with Scripture, personal antidotes, and Bible stories, that speak to the soul and add depth and meaning to the birth of our Savior.

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