Fear not!

for this speech for more than a week and all seemed to be going down the drain.
The more I stared at the people in front of me waiting expectantly to hear my speech, the more I got frightened.
The urge to run out of the room became stronger. Then, taking a few breaths, my lips started shaping the very words that I needed to say and each word I spoke seemed to increase my confidence.
I found myself moving around and prancing across the stage, thus giving me control of the situation.
Things started to fall into place, just as I had planned.
The war had been won.
Now, how many people get tongue-tied when they are faced with an opportunity to speak in front of many people, even though they know they have been longing for that opportunity for a long time?
How many are afraid to get up on that success road because they have fallen once and are afraid to get up again?
How many people freeze during a job interview, not because they don’t know the answers to the questions being asked, but because they get intimidated by the atmosphere in the interview room or by the number of people also waiting to be interviewed for that same job?
Some are afraid to stand up for themselves because of what people will say about them, whilst some have dreams that they desire and are afraid to try because they feel there is something hindering them from making that dream come true.
Some men or women are afraid to commit to a relationship because a parent walked out when they were young.
Fear is a feeling that is present in every human being: the only difference is that some are controlled by it while others control it.
Franklin P. Jones once said “Bravery is being the only one who knows you’re afraid.”
It is then, when one decides to challenge their fear that they’ll realise that “fear is only as deep as the mind allows”, as counsels a Japanese proverb.
The greatest mistake one can make in life is to continuously fear about certain prospects.
Fear, as one author said, is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real.
This is true because we tend to believe what is not even there, but what is only in our mind.
To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your path, and don’t worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest, as said by one unknown author.
Obstacles can always be changed to stepping stones that can easily be climbed.
It is said you block your dreams when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.
Daniel Waldschmidt once said: “It’s not what you are willing to do that will make you successful. It’s what you are willing to do without until you get there.” You gain more in trying and lose more in running because the “what ifs” do not build but destroy you.
There is only one way to proceed: feed your faith and your fears will starve to death, as one author said.
The Christian journal, CBN.com, underlines the existence, as addressed in the Bible, for example, of “the destructive” fear.
“God has a lot to say about unhealthy anxiety and what to do about it,” says one of the journal’s “Teaching Fact Sheets”.
“As our creator, He knows better than anyone how worry can stifle our faith and damage our relationship with Him. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the message is the same: do not fear; be anxious for nothing.”
God has such reassuring messages such as, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do no be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
“For I know the plans I have for you: Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Other authorities state that fear itself may have the effect of bringing that which is feared — so you better not fear at all!
Think of Job when he lamented that, “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” (Job 3:25).
Did he not invite the worst upon himself and had to see all those calamities!