Pentecost on Repeat
The Holy Spirit Burns Away Fear
What are you afraid of? Most Americans, when surveyed, listed “corrupt government officials” as something they were very afraid of, with “People I love becoming seriously ill” as the next most common response.1 Those fears are notable in that neither are within the control of the person experiencing them, yet they are both deep, existential fears. Fear is an effective motivator for doing nothing. It is almost undefeated at making sure the status quo remains. Fear lacks imagination, it makes excuses for inaction, and whenever it does act it has no regard for the safety or humanity of others. Fear sets in, gets under the skin, finds its way deeper and deeper into the heart.
Fear can also be the prison seemingly well-meaning religious people find themselves in. Fear of divine punishment—where good is done only out of complusion or terror—this is the secret vision of God buried deep in the minds of many self-professing Christians. Good done out of compulsion or fear isn’t good. Doing the dishes because you don’t want to get hassled isn’t love. God doesn’t hold you hostage. Faith isn’t some version of Stockholm Syndrome. This isn’t the Christian vision.
St. Augustine once wrote:
Those who did what the law commanded without the help of the Spirit of grace did so out of a fear of punishment, not a love of righteousness. And for this reason God did not see in their will what human beings saw in their action; rather they were held guilty as a result of what God knew they preferred to do, if only they could have done so with impunity.2
That’s not Christianity. Doing good because you’re afraid God, or your neighbor, might get mad at you if you don’t isn’t a life affected by grace. So how does one overcome fear? How do we break out of this prison of religious obligation and fear of cosmic retribution?
God’s love is poured into our heart. Not by anything we do, not by any choice we make. But by the will of the Perfect Love that drives out fear. “You put this love in my heart.” The flames of the Holy Spirit pour into the heart and burn up anxieties and fear and disordered desire and then the Spirit creates delight for the things of God, so that we act in a way that we would not act on our own. We all the sudden become the kind of people who naturally do the things of God. We are given the words to say at the right moment, we look forward to serving others, we delight in righteousness. Delight is, for Augustine, the only true motivator. You do what you love.
The Pentecost story—this coming Sunday is Pentecost—is not just a story of a one time event in which the disciples were given the Spirit and then the church was born. It’s also typological for how the Christian life works. The disciples were holed up in a locked room, scared to death as John 20 tells us. These guys were so terrified, so ill equipped to be the messengers of the Kingdom, locked away out of fear of punishment or retribution and then minutes later they are boldly proclaiming the Gospel to the same people they were hiding from. The Holy Spirit, the great fear-eraser, the great anxiety reliever, had burned up any excuse the apostles had left. Fearfulness and faithlessness are symptoms of sinfulness, and the cure has to come from outside of us. It has to be poured out in bulk on our hearts.
Pentecost repeats itself in my heart everytime I admit that I am scared, face that I can’t do it on my own, and ask the Spirit of God to transform my heart. There are spiritual practices I utilize, but all of them are grounded in the fact that I am unable to affect any change in myself. I can not predict, conjure, or force the Holy Spirit. I can remember my need for a Savior who isn’t me, and remember the Gospel. And when I do, little by little, the Holy Spirit burns away the things holding me back, reorders my desires, and compells me to acts of righteousness. This rhythm of me scared in a locked room and the spirit comforting me and emboldening me is called sanctification. God transforming my desires into the desire to repent and delight in Him, this is the miracle, just as transforming the apostles from scared people in a locked room into agents of the Kingdom of God was the miracle of Pentecost, not just tongues of fire.
GOD, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
https://news.chapman.edu/2025/10/21/what-americans-fear-most-in-2025-chapman-universitys-annual-survey-reveals-top-fears-and-the-psychology-behind-them/
Simeon Zahl quotes this passage on p. 193 of his incredible book The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience. I commend it to you!
You are so right to point out that we cannot affect change on our own… all true and lasting change comes at heart, by the means of the Holy Spirit and as a fruit of our desire for it. Changing external behavior by our own will is folly.
Amen, amen. Great song choice. And more importantly a great reminder that the Holy Spirit is so critical to my life in Christ.