Prayer for Overcoming Fear: "God, because You are with me, I have no reason to fear. Help me to stop worrying. Help me to relax and rest in the promises of Your Word. I know You are with me because the Bible says so. I also know You never will give me more than I can handle. Lord, thank You for giving me the faith to trust You in this situation, and the strength of character I need to get through it in perfect obedience to Your Word. I pray right now for Your wisdom and guidance, Your favor and protection. And in the name of Jesus, I receive Your peace. In Jesus' name, Amen."
Father Richard believes that we must learn to name and to live with our fears instead of merely denying them or projecting them onto others:
Our age has been called the age of anxiety, and I think that’s probably a good description for this time. We no longer know where our foundations are. When we’re not sure what is certain, when the world and our worldview keep being redefined every few months, we’re going to be anxious. We want to get rid of that anxiety as quickly as we can. I know I do. Yet, to be a good leader of anything today—a good pastor, manager, parent, or teacher—we have to be able to contain and hold patiently a certain degree of anxiety. Probably the higher the level of leadership someone has, the more anxiety they must be capable of holding. Leaders who cannot hold anxiety will never lead us anyplace new.
That’s probably why the Bible says “Do not be afraid” almost 150 times! If we cannot calmly hold a certain degree of anxiety, we will always look for somewhere to expel it. Expelling what we can’t embrace gives us an identity, but it’s a negative identity. It’s not life energy, it’s death energy. Formulating what we are against gives us a very quick and clear sense of ourselves. Thus, most people fall for it. People more easily define themselves by what they are against, by whom they hate, by who else is wrong, instead of by what they believe in and whom they love.
I hope you recognize from this common pattern how different the alternative is. We might catch anew the radical and scary nature of faith, because faith only builds on that totally positive place within, however small. It needs an interior “Yes” to begin, just as the “Yes” of Mary began the entire process of salvation. God needs just a mustard-seed-sized place that is in love—not fear—that is open to grace, that is thrilled, that has found something wonderful.
CAC teacher James Finley shares how Jesus is a model of how to say Yes in the midst of our deepest fear:
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sweat blood because he was afraid [Luke 22:44]. It is possible that he was infinitely more afraid than we could ever be. But the difference is: Jesus was not afraid of being afraid, because he knew it was just fear. . . . We are afraid of fear because we believe that it has the power to name who we are, and it fills us with shame. . . .
Jesus invites us to discover that our fear is woven into God’s own life, whose life is mysteriously woven into all the scary things that can and do happen to us as human beings together on this earth. This is liberation from fear in the midst of a fearful situation.
References: [1] Adapted from James Finley, Thomas Merton’s Path to the Palace of Nowhere (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2002), CD.
Richard Rohr finds hope amidst terror by anchoring oneself in contemplative, loving awareness rather than reactionary fear. He teaches that divine love acts as a "womb" of safety, even while experiencing suffering, urging a shift toward radical, non-dualistic trust in God's presence
. Key insights include:
Radical Resilience: Shifting from a "fight or flight" mode to a "prophetic" stance, which critiques destructive, fear-driven systems with love.
Woundedness & Resurrection: Embracing the idea that one can be both wounded and resurrected simultaneously, mirroring Christ, rather than needing to be perfect or unhurt.
Contemplation in Action: Using contemplation to "safeguard" a inner space of peace, enabling action that radiates light and love rather than bitterness.
Transcending Fear: Recognizing that while fear is a natural response to terror, it can lead to dangerous, "tunnel-visioned", and self-centered behavior.
Rohr encourages seeing the physical world as both a hiding place and a revelation of God, which helps maintain a sense of safety and meaning.
Dear Lord, I come before you this morning with an open heart and mind, ready to receive your love and grace. I confess that I often allow fear to consume me, worrying about the future and the unknown. But I know that you are with me, guiding me every step of the way.
Lord, I ask that you cast out all fear from my heart, mind, and soul. Help me to trust in your perfect love, knowing that you have a plan for my life. I surrender my fears to you and ask that you replace them with faith and hope.
As I go about my day, I ask that you be my guide and my protector. Give me the courage to face any challenges that come my way, knowing that you are with me. Help me to remember that I am never alone, and that your love surrounds me at all times.
Lord, I also pray for those who are facing difficult situations today. I ask that you give them strength and courage to overcome their fears and trust in your perfect love. May they feel your presence and know that you are with them, even in the darkest of times.
Thank you for your unconditional love and grace, which sustains me each day. Help me share that love with others and be a light in the world, casting out fear and bringing hope and peace.
I pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, who is perfect love.
Dear Lord, my mind is racing and I am overthinking things that are beyond my control. I confess I am worried. Help me, Lord, to stop doing and start trusting. Calm my anxious heart and fix my mind on You. I cast my burdens upon You and ask for Your peace to guard my mind and heart. I choose to trust that You are working on my behalf, even when I cannot see it. In Jesus’ name, Amen."
Richard Rohr writes that holding the tension of paradox helps us grow in consciousness and love.
All the great religions at the more mature levels learn and teach a different consciousness, which we call the contemplative mind, the nondual mind, or the mind of Christ. The levels of spiritual development begin with dualistic, exclusionary, either/or thinking and become increasingly nondual, allowing for a deeper, broader, wiser, more inclusive and loving way of seeing.
If we are to live on this Earth, we cannot bypass the necessary tension of holding contraries and inconsistencies together. Daily ordinary experiences teach us nonduality in a way that is not theoretical or abstract. It becomes obvious in everything and everybody, every idea and every event, almost hidden in plain sight. Everything created is mortal and limited and, if we look long enough, paradoxical. By paradox, I mean something that initially looks contradictory or impossible, but in a different frame or at a different level is in fact deeply true.
I am talking about just holding the tension, not necessarily finding a resolution or closure to paradox. We must agree to live without resolution, at least for a while. This is very difficult for most people, largely because we have not been taught how to do this mentally or emotionally. We didn’t know we could—or even should. As Paul seems to say (and I paraphrase), hope would not be the virtue that it is if it led us to quick closure and we did not have to “wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24–25).
I think opening to this holding pattern is the very name and description of faith. Unfortunately, in Christianity, faith largely became believing things to be true or false (intellectual assent) instead of giving people concrete practices so they could themselves know how to open up (faith), hold on (hope), and allow an infilling from another Source (love).
We must move from a belief-based religion to a practice-based religion, or little will change. We will merely continue to argue about what we are supposed to believe and who the unbelievers are. We need contemplative practices to loosen our egoic attachment to certainty and retrain our minds to understand the wisdom of paradox. [1]
Contemplative prayer is largely just being present: holding the tension instead of even talking it through, offering the moment to God instead of fixing it by words and ideas, loving reality as it is instead of understanding it fully. In our daily lives, this prayer is most commonly articulated as a willingness to say, “I don’t know.” We must not push the river, we must just trust that we are already in the river, and God is the certain flow and current.
That may sound impractical, but the way of faith is not the way of efficiency. So much of life is just a matter of listening and waiting and enjoying the expansiveness that comes from such willingness to hold. [2]
