Fear: The Gift from God You Didn’t Want
“How was it? Are you excited?” ..Conflicted Memoirs from Our First Visit to L.A.
A month ago, I rolled into Los Angeles presuming to find America’s promised land of palm trees and high culture. I’d heard all my life about that L.A. “sunny-and-73” vibe. That Pacific state of mind.
“How was it? Are you excited?”
Instead, I found smog and poverty.
“How was it? Are you excited?”
The homeless, numbering some 40,000, camp in tents and de-facto huts on sidewalks and underpasses. Their $900 monthly stipend from the government does little more than permit a gasp of air inside the misfortune-cycle swallowing them whole.
“How was it? Are you excited?”
An old WeWork building stands outside my hotel room, rising from the ground like a splinter sticking out the side of Silicon Valley’s failing prosperity gospel. The lonely structure—once full of starry-eyed millennials drinking beer and kombucha, trying to save the world and get rich from behind a MacBook screen—is now just another sad relic from another sad story about another dream that died in this city.
I look down at my phone, and the WeWork building’s solitary, 1-star review on Yelp has me wondering: how many other dreams have died here, in starry-eyed L.A.?
“How was it? Are you excited?”
Staggering rent prices for even tiny apartments in the city lend new meaning to my neighbor’s concerned question from a few months ago: “wait…why are you moving to L.A.?” …He used to live there. He got out. Everyone’s getting out nowadays.
“How was it? Are you excited?”
The Hollywood sign looks grey through the pollution. I thought it’d be bigger.
“How was it? Are you excited?”
Everywhere we go, the absence of green grass in the city’s sprawling concrete jungle reminds me we’re not in the Appalachian foothills of northeast Georgia.
This city isn’t home. Its culture, not mine.
“How was it? Are you excited?”
The American Excitement Religion
Hello. I’m Jon, a new missionary. I’m moving to Los Angeles on assignment in early 2022.
Recently, my wife and I flew to LA for a few days to meet with important missions people. It was also our first time seeing the city in person, months after we committed to moving there, and years after we’d begun praying about it.
While there, we the saw city naked without its Instagram filter. Where was the dreamy paradise influencers always seem to be posting about?
After returning home from our trip, we started hearing the same two questions on repeat:
…How was your first trip to L.A.?!
…Are you excited?!
Many have asked. And I appreciate them asking. I do. They’re being polite and good-natured. The folks asking are interested in our lives.
But these can be hard questions for new missionaries to answer genuinely. Are we “excited?”
Still, I get it. I’ve asked this same question plenty of times to plenty of people about plenty of things. We all tend to associate excitement with goodness because our society runs on the pursuit of happiness (i.e., that which most gratifies us).
In our rich, developed, liberated world of Western society, it’s our inalienable right to be happy and therefore excited, no? Isn’t life best measured by the amounts of happiness and excitement we attain?
And if that’s true, isn’t excitement a reliable metric for measuring God’s good, perfect, pleasing will?
“How was it? Are you excited?”
Dear friends, here’s the real answer I only give when I have time to explain it:
“…Honestly? No, not really.
I’m not really excited to move to Los Angeles.”
And the second part:
“Actually, I’m terrified.”
Then comes the comedic array of socially conditioned reactions. The surprised fidget. The confused “ahem.” The forced smile hiding concerned questions people are too polite to ask:
“But… aren’t you going as a missionary?
Aren’t you excited to be a missionary?
Didn’t God, like, tell you to do this?”
To questions 1 and 3, yes. I’m going to LA as a missionary. And God did “tell” me and my wife to “do” this.
But how we define “excitement” in Western society’s microwave-gratification culture is not exactly how I would describe what I’m feeling. “Excited” is a word that comes pre-loaded with lots of American-Dream baggage. Excited is one of our little American idols, a religion of emotion. And the baggage of that subtle “I’m-supposed-to-always-feel-excited” impulse isn’t often easy to carry while walking out hard obedience to Christ’s leading.
The reality is: behind the hype and smiling photos and cheery missionary newsletters, there’s a person obeying a painful calling. And that person has a lot of reasons why he’d prefer to stay home where his friends and family are. Where he feels known. Where he has the culture figured out already and local coffeeshops that celebrate him. Where there’s a steady job and a paycheck that shows up like clockwork. Where Saturdays are for hiking Mt. Yonah in the morning and watching Georgia football in the afternoon with Mom’s famous buffalo chicken dip.
All in all? There’s a big part of me that would rather stay where my personality feels cozy and safe inside familiarity, insulated by routine from the threats of fear and failure.
Yep, I’m a missionary. This guy. This guy with the hair.
But underneath that title (and hair), there’s spirit wearing flesh. There’s glory being toted around in a fragile jar. And these days—after seeing the immense need and unfiltered, not-super-flattering vision of Los Angeles, our soon-to-be, brutally expensive, metropolis home—I’m feeling a bit more like Gideon hiding in the winepress than David brandishing Goliath’s head on a field of victory.
Translation? I’m scared. And I feel small.
Fear: The Gift From God You Didn’t Want
…But this isn’t a pity party (could have fooled you, right?).
This isn’t a pity party because the inverted logic of faith tells me when I’m feeling scared of a God-thing it almost certainly means I should walk straight toward the God-thing that’s scaring me.
For the last 11 years of following Jesus with my life on the altar (“sold-out” for you 90’s youth group kids), I’ve noticed that faith usually means picking fights with fear rather than finding clever ways around it. Like being the scrawny kid who intentionally seeks out the playground bully and says, “Yo. Might I interest you in a brawl today? And how about tomorrow too?”
Opposite the convenience-and-efficiency-based logic that characterizes our American consumer world, faith often asks us to work harder-not-smarter and take more risk rather than less.
Why? God doesn’t want us missing out on glory. And when we orient our lives around maximizing safety and comfort, we typically end up A) needing little faith, B) mistaking temporary treasure for the kind that’s everlasting, and C) operating beneath God’s greatest purposes for our lives.
For that reason—and I really, really hate this principle—God’s kindest gifts are often the things that terrify us the most.
First, they keep us humble and hungry. They remind us we actually don’t have what it takes, naturally. Without grace, we’re all too small. Without God’s vision, none of us truly see.
Second, they teach us what trust and hope actually are. We tend to appreciate God most when we really, really need him to be God. We trust his provision most when we’re stripped of our security. We cling to hope most when we leave the land of self-sufficiency to follow a whisper.
Third, they create space for God to show himself mightily on our behalf. There are some lessons in faith you just can’t learn on the shore. You’ve gotta climb in the boat and weather some storms. But we climb in that boat knowing that, man: God loves to flex his faithfulness—and He doesn’t get tired of doing it. It’s not a burdensome, begrudging thing when the Father works for the good of those sons and daughters he calls into his glorious purposes. He actually does love us (and like us), after all.
Interpreting Fear Through The Lens Of Faithfulness
After seeing God’s faithfulness these last 11 years every time I’ve taken a risk on him, I’ve begun letting this simple algorithm guide the way I process my emotions at times like this, when nerves and doubt and fear are loud. When the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak:
If the fear you’re experiencing is not coming from
…A) sin or distance from God,
…B) a misunderstanding of who God is, or
…C) healthy fear (like, “run from the bear! Don’t drink the poison!”)
…then fear is usually a signal you’re heading in the right direction. Because the “right direction,” in God’s perspective, is not necessarily the one that produces the most jazzy, starry-eyed excitement. The right direction, in God’s perspective, is the one that leads to the most faith expressing itself in the most love resulting in the most glory. And the collateral damage in following God’s right direction is often your safety, coziness, and familiarity.
God aims to produce holiness, not comfort, in us. He aims to mortify our flesh, not give it a cute name, and treat it like a pet.
His direction, therefore, is marked by sacrifice, gut-wrenching obedience, self-denial, and cross-carrying. It means leaving behind Mom’s famous buffalo chicken dip and the green grass and hills of Appalachia for the cracked, congested city streets of God’s next season.
So, back to the original question: am I excited to move to Los Angeles?
Well, under our culturally-baggaged American definition of “excitement,” no, not exactly. Maybe one day I’ll fall in love with L.A. Maybe one day it’ll feel like home.
But right now, it just doesn’t. I don’t relish leaving the known for the unknown. (My homebody personality’s against me on that one. Just ask my adventurous wife who actually likes to travel.) And now that I’ve seen L.A. and realized it’s not the utopia pop-culture would have you picture, any sophomoric “excitement” about living in a super cool, vibey city I may have been feeling is (temporarily at least) buried underneath a large pile of my insecurities and that oh—too—familiar feeling of smallness.
The truth is, I’m currently terrified to move to Los Angeles.
But by faith, that’s exactly why I’m going.
By faith, my wife and I are walking straight toward the thing that’s scaring us, sensing that the storm of uncertainty ahead contain secrets of God’s faithfulness we simply can’t discover by observing from a safe distance.
By faith, we believe that this thing that’s terrifying us is, by Kingdom logic, God’s next great gift.
Dear friend: what are you afraid of right now, and what’s causing that fear? Is it possible that the nerves/uncertainty/smallness you feel are actually signals that you’re right where you should be? And God is leading you, with a steady hand, exactly where he knows you need to go: toward less self-sufficiency and more faith?
If so, be encouraged when your feelings don’t add up. Hope and trust and obedience are only sometimes correlated with excitement, and God isn’t grading your unpredictable feelings. God’s faithfulness gives space for our emotions to wander even as we choose to obey. Because the truth is, glory and treasure sometimes hurt. Sometimes, they feel more like pain than pleasure, and taste more like dry cornflakes than fine dining.
And that’s okay because, “…he who promised is faithful.”
-Hebrews 10:23