You Don’t Have to Fear What Hides in the Dark

Following God doesn’t always mean taking the easiest path. Sometimes faith requires perseverance when you’re tired, uncertain, or unable to see how things will work out. Yet true worship is about more than singing songs or gathering with other believers. It’s a daily choice to honor God, trust His promises, and remain faithful even when the journey feels long and the destination seems far away.

When circumstances test your faith, God invites you to keep drawing near to Him through prayer, Scripture, obedience, and praise. Worship can become an expression of trust when you don’t have all the answers or when following God costs you something. Rather than allowing exhaustion, disappointment, or uncertainty to pull you away from Him, you can learn to recognize His faithfulness along the way. Discover how to persevere in your walk with God, worship Him through challenging seasons, and find renewed strength by keeping your heart focused on His presence.

Highlights

• Why worship sometimes requires sacrifice, perseverance, and a willingness to trust God through uncertainty

• How following God faithfully can mean choosing the difficult path instead of the easiest one

• Ways to worship God when you feel tired, discouraged, or unsure of what lies ahead

• Why worship involves daily trust and obedience, not just singing or attending church

• How prayer and Scripture can strengthen your faith during a long or challenging season

• How to recognize God’s faithfulness even when you haven’t reached your destination

• Practical ways to keep your heart focused on God and continue following Him when the journey feels difficult

Click to Listen to Signs of Life: UM News Podcast Season One | UMNews.org

Join us this Fall for Season One of "Signs of Life," an original podcast from UM News. The journey begins in Atlanta, hearing how a book from an icon of the Civil Rights movement is bringing relationship and understanding to two congregations seeking to bridge divides. Then to Belfast, learning about the Northern Ireland Peace Process and the Methodist connection that was—and is—an essential part of healing and peacemaking. Finally, at the Global Young Peoples Convocation in Dublin, explore the world of translation and interpretation through diversity, language and culture.

UM News Podcast Season One | UMNews.org

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Full Transcript Below:

You Don’t Have to Fear What Hides in the Dark 

By Deidre Braley 

Bible Reading:
Since the children have flesh and blood, (Jesus) too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. - Hebrews 2:14-15

Our children have become afraid of the dark. Our daughter sleeps with her door open now, to let in a crack of light, and many nights after bedtime, our son wanders out of his room and calls down the stairs for me. 

“I’m scared,” he will say, bleary-eyed and slumping. In the cocoon of his room, he imagines the beasts he has read about in his books. He hears noises he can’t identify. He looks outward, and all he can see is darkness, and he shudders to think of whatever lies hidden within it. 

Downstairs in the kitchen, all the lights are on, and it still smells like whatever we had for dinner. I am packing lunches, presetting coffee, and wiping down counters. Everything is in order. In this brightly lit space, his fears feel distant, improbable. I am watching over him, and I am certain no beasties will get him tonight. But as I lead him back up the stairs, through the dark hallway, and into his bed once more, it is as though I am seven years old again, too. I see the shadows. I know what it’s like to lie awake, afraid of what hides in the dark. So I lay beside him for a while, then I rub his back and tuck the covers up under his chin, to make sure nothing can get to him there. 

And when I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind racing with existential dread and worries about looming disaster and grief, I am no different than my children: in the darkness of my room and my limited understanding, these threats feel as real as real can be. There is no doubt about it—the human experience can be terribly frightening. 

What I like to remember during these times is myself as a parent, standing in the brightly lit kitchen, knowing that even if my child is feeling afraid in his particular room, I am presiding over the whole house, and that he is safe and that everything is in order. Though he may not sense it when the lights are turned off in his own bedroom, he is actually surrounded on all sides by light and love and security.  

I think it is the same with God and us. 

But we are not just contained within his care and the light of his goodness. Because God did not choose to stay in the brightly lit space, where our fears were distant and removed from his

reality. Jesus—God in the flesh—came to dwell with humanity and was, as it says in Hebrews, the “pioneer of their salvation” (2:10). He engaged with the darkness and wrestled with the power of death—that darkness that haunts us mortals and keeps us lying wide-eyed and terrified in our bedrooms at night—and came out on the other side gripping the keys to death and Hades (Revelation 1:18). He entered into our greatest nightmare with us so that we wouldn’t have to leave in fear of what hides in the dark all our lives. In doing so, he showed us that he has the final say, that he holds the ultimate power, and that we are children who are surrounded by his light. 

Intersecting Faith & Life: 

In the book of Revelation, John records what the new creation looked like in the vision he received from God. He writes: 

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.” (21:23-25) 

One day we will live in a place where there is no longer any darkness to fear—no beasts hiding in the dark and no dread of the future looming beyond what we can see. Though we long for that place now, we already have a God who is, by his very nature, light and life and love. His glory is already radiant. His power is already all-encompassing. And his presence is already here, through his Spirit dwelling with us. So the next time you wake up in the night and your mind begins to race with worries, try this prayer: 

God, I am so afraid, and everything feels so dark. But I know that you are God of theliving, and that you are also God of the light. Please come into this darkness with me andilluminate it with your presence. Please help me to see my circumstances from yourstandpoint: in a brightly lit place, totally surrounded by light. Amen. 

Further Reading:
Hebrews 2
Revelation 21

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