Fear Verses Faith

“Fear can infect us early in life until eventually it cuts a deep groove of apprehension in all our thinking.  To counteract it, let faith, hope and courage enter your thinking.
Fear is strong, but faith is stronger yet.”  ~Norman Vincent Peale

I came across this quote today and it struck a nerve with me. Why? Because I live in an almost constant state of fear; I have very little in the way of faith. Fear is a basic survival mechanism of escape and avoidance; whereas, faith is confidence in a belief such as God and or trusting in the truth of someone or something.
Truth is that I trust in my fear, it has been with me for as long as I can remember. I have survived for as long as I have because of my fear. How then do I over come my fear and replace it with faith? How do I trust in the truth of a relationship with God when I cannot do that with another person? I know that I have to start somewhere in walking in a faith based relationship with God. I have been told that to start this walk that baby steps are what I should take. I don’t agree with this at all. Because even in the effort to take baby steps I still am wearing God’s shoes. Thus I will continue to stumble and fall. His shoes do not fit my feet no matter how small I make my steps. The simple fact is I must first learn to crawl, after all crawling is the foundation of learning to walk. However it goes even further back than that, before a baby can even begin to crawl they first must develop trunk control. This is by doing something that sounds so simple, sitting up. To sit up it takes the baby immense core control along with trust that the hand that is at its back will help keep it from falling over or will catch the baby as it falls.
 So here I am thinking that I truly must become as an infant if I am going to let go of my fear and let faith take its place. To do this I must first sit and trust that the hand at my back will catch me as I fall.  As I trust, sitting with God’s hand at my back, I will evaluate my fears and give them over to Him one by one so that I may learn to crawl, to humble myself into trusting in His truth that He loves me as I am. Then I can someday walk in what I have seen as peace and love in God, as well as having peace and love within myself.