When I was twenty years old I had an intense interest in songwriting. I wanted more than anything in the world to sign a publishing contract and have some of my songs recorded by major artists. I knew it was a brutally competitive industry, but many people had told me that my songs were pretty good. More importantly, I felt that I was “special” and God would make a way for me, without much effort on my part. Of course, now I know that there is a name for that: it’s a mental disorder called Delusions of Grandeur. To a trained professional, this kind of magical thinking would have been a small signal that my spiritual life was dangerously bordering on a psychotic break with reality. But never mind, because back then, all this crazy God-talk fit perfectly into my hyper-holy spirit-filled outlook on life.

So I entered a few songwriting contests. That was the extent of my plan. I sincerely believed God would take care of the rest. One of the songwriting contests led to a publishing contract with an upstart publishing firm out of Los Angeles, headed up by a well-known and reputable artist. Lo and behold, it did appear as though God came through in delivering the goods on this far-fetched dream. Soon I received actual correspondence with a real, live music executive and producer – a name I actually recognized from the credits on the liner notes on some of the albums I owned! First order of business: this guy wanted me to craft my songs to sound more like the Psychedelic Furs. It was the early 80’s, after all. I got right to work.

“Praise God!” I thought to myself, with a combination of excitement, spiritual arrogance, and a sudden validation of artistic superiority. I made an extra effort not to sound too show-offy at the next bible study meeting. I found that if I pressed my lips together real hard and furrowed my brows slightly, it gave off the right effect of modesty.

When it was time to share our prayer requests and praises, I waited until a couple others had shared, and then I chimed in. “Umm, I have a Praise.” I was looking down at the floor, concentrating on maintaining that sincere expression on my face. “I was signed to a contract with a publishing company, and I am just so thankful to the Lord to that He is choosing to use my gifts and talents to touch millions of lives.”

Notice how I said that I ‘was signed’ to a contract rather than “I signed” a contract. There’s a big difference, you know. It made me sound like I was pursued by several publishers who all wanted a piece of me, a rising star among songwriters. What I left out was the part that said, “This was the only thing that happened to show up, and I have never met these people in person, and all they heard was a couple of songs, and I know nothing about the publishing industry or what the heck it was that I signed.”

I continued: “See how child-like faith can lead to miraculous results?”  This I posed as an important lesson in humility for those lesser-talented friends sitting around the circle at College and Career fellowship group that night. They nodded enthusiastically, saying how they knew I was special all along, from the moment they saw me first leading the worship team.

Unfortunately, within a matter of months, this publishing company went out of business, and that was that. The phones were disconnected. No more correspondence with a fancy LA music producer. No more false modesty to worry about with my friends. I just sat, paralyzed, on my bed in a dejected trance, listening over and over again to the gravelly voice of the Psychedelic Furs on my turntable, singing, “Heaven – is the whole of your heart… And heaven – don’t tear you apart…” What does that even mean? I didn’t know what to do next.

Twenty-eight years later, I’ll tell you what I should have done next. What I should have done, was to get off my ass, pack my suitcase, move to Nashville or Los Angeles, where all the action was, and tried beating down the doors of other, more established publishers and record companies for a couple of years. If it didn’t work out, then, fine. Go to Plan B, back to graduate school. Or even to plan C, which didn’t exist yet, but certainly could be arranged. At least I would have given it a shot. But I was too afraid and intimidated by the unknown.

Instead, I figured it was the end of the road for me with music. I gave up – quickly, easily, and without hesitation. I didn’t mention anything about this to God, because I knew we would both be embarrassed by it. I wanted to spare Him the awkward conversation. The novel experience of “not getting exactly what I wanted from God just when I wanted it” didn’t fit into my theological framework at the time. How could God set up such a tease, handing over to me something that I had dreamed about for so long, and then just snatching it away? Why would God do that to me? It didn’t compute. So I just kind of buried it, and went on to graduate school to do something else.

I was good at academic life. I knew how to go to lectures and study and write essays and take exams and get really good grades. I liked the way it was already structured for you, and all you had to do was show up on campus and plug in. The only decisions you had to make were housing, a meal plan, and your choices of coursework. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that music business thing — getting in a plane by myself and going to a big city where I have never been before, where I didn’t know anyone, and then finding a job and an apartment and meeting new friends, this I could not fathom. On top of that, the thought of actually taking initiative, making phone calls, scheduling appointments, approaching complete strangers about doing business? Competing with other musicians who were probably more talented than I was? This was terrifying to me. I couldn’t do it. You might as well have asked me to jump out of a flying airplane.

I occasionally have a recurring dream which goes like this:

I am in a concert hall stadium that is packed with thousands of people. I am standing in the wings, off on the left side of the stage, looking out at the vast crowd. The stage is empty except for a beautiful black grand piano set up in the center. It suddenly dawns on me: the crowds are waiting for me to perform! I start to panic. And I’m thinking, “How did I get myself into this? I don’t know what to play! I haven’t practiced anything for years! This is so wrong!” But the time has come, and I am pushed out onto the stage. I walk slowly to the piano, pull out the bench, and sit down. I look down at the keyboard, trying to remember what it was that I am supposed to do. The crowd is patiently waiting. I am utterly terrified.

I believe that the strength of our faith in God can be directly measured by how often we are terrified. If you haven’t had that nauseous, sinking feeling in your stomach lately, then maybe you have not been exercising your faith enough. And you are probably not growing.

Fear is inevitably the thing that holds most of us back from reaching our potential, or from even trying. That’s not really breaking news, or anything. There are volumes of self-help books devoted to this subject. But I believe it is a healthy exercise to visit this from time to time, to assess the trade-off between our fears and getting anything accomplished in our lives. I have discovered that fear, goes hand in hand with faith and fulfillment.

I was not raised to face my fears or to even name them, for that matter. Instead, I grew up thinking that fear and discomfort were things that I should run away from. Predictably, I often ended up disappointed. My approach during my early adult years went like this: if I wanted something badly enough, I thought I should PRAY REALLY HARD and wait for it to happen. I honestly believed that if something was meant to be, then I really didn’t have to do anything, but just wait for God to “show up.” Instead of taking action, I would pray, fast, pray harder, wait on the Lord, read the bible looking for divine messages, and hope. Usually nothing happened, and I would chalk it up to “not God’s will” and try to move on to something else. I was very good at over-spiritualizing my disappointments, and of course it allowed me to avoid ever having to take responsibility for anything.

Let me tell you, it is a tortuous state of being to have huge dreams and no tolerance for fear. So instead of pursuing a career in songwriting, I made the trade off to safety and comfort by doing things that were more familiar, but not necessarily aligned with my idea of God’s dream for my life at the time. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, to be brutally honest about it, I just didn’t have the balls. That’s right, you heard me. And after giving this a great deal of thought over my life, I believe that’s exactly what God is going to tell me when I stand before him at His eternal throne on Judgment Day.

Once His infinite engulfing stream of love has covered me over, so that I know I’ll be okay no matter what, He’ll look at me and say (in so many words), “Brad, you have no idea what you missed out on, because you were so afraid of so many things. Remember that music thing?” I’ll cringe and go, “No. I mean, well, Yes.” Then I’ll try to change the subject. “Hey, that’s a lovely beam of light shining over there! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that color before! Is that an angel or…”

He’ll cut me right off and stare me down, forcing me to admit the harsh truth about my behavior. But in a loving way, of course. I will have no choice, but to face the music.

“Do we have to bring that up right now?” I’ll ask. And He’ll say. “Yes, I want to talk about it. Listen, Brad, it was you, not Me. You didn’t give me much to work with, you know? You did have a choice, my son. And you chose to indulge your fears.”

I believe we’ll all get a little spanking on that day. And maybe not for the things we think we should. We are all so horrified about being called out for our embarrassing sins, but what about all those times we just crapped out because we didn’t have the guts to do something that would have made a big difference in our lives, or someone else’s? I can imagine God’s comments to the line-up of some of the friends and acquaintances I’ve known over the years – His commentary on how we all fell short of our true potential in life:

“My child, you could have accomplished tremendous things with your career!  And the influence and impact you could have had for my kingdom! But you were so timid. You held back. Why?”

“Son, you could have paid a little more attention to your wife, and at least TRIED to learn how to put her before yourself, but you were so self-centered and terrified of intimacy! So much love was left out. You apparently didn’t have the cajones for a real loving relationship.”

“You? You could have stooped down a bit to see other people’s points of view once in while. I was hoping that you would become a little more humble, and learn to listen, but you were so insecure with your fragile little ego that you had to be right all the time. Why were you so afraid of being vulnerable?”

Etc. etc. etc.

And why shouldn’t we be scolded for holding back, being scared, not having enough faith in God, or in ourselves? I have no doubt that God wants us to face our fears head-on, to courageously deal with them, whether it’s speaking in front of a crowd, or taking on more responsibility at work, or going off on that mission trip, or standing up to a peer. This is how you can grow, how you start to see God working in your life. If we are too caught up with the idea of being comfortable, then we’ll never know what we are capable of. We will never know what God might have in store for us.

Not long after I killed my songwriting career, by God’s mercy, He took me through some other circuitous routes where I learned the lessons of how to overcome my fear and false pride and self-sabotaging behaviors. Getting married to a bold and intelligent woman was a big step in the right direction. In the process, I developed some new dreams – dreams for a successful career in business, and a full and loving family life. I started attacking my fears head on by taking on various assignments and jobs, increasing my responsibilities even when I wasn’t sure if I could do it. But you know what? I did do it. Sure, there were bumps in the road every now and then, but with faith in God and support from my wife, I got up and kept going. The more I went out on a limb and tried new things, the more successes I had and the more confident I became about my capabilities. God honored and blessed my hard work. After a while I just got used to the idea of being nervous, anxious, and even terrified sometimes. It’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s part of taking risks. It’s part of growing in my faith. It’s part of living.

 So go ahead and embrace those crazy dreams that God put in your head. Attack them, head on. He wants to show your potential – you are capable of way more than you think you are.

 Go on, what are you afraid of?