In his conversation with Martha, Jesus put a challenge to Martha. He told her to believe in him “I am the resurrection, anyone who believes in me even though he dies will live. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Martha responded yes to Jesus even if she did not fully understand him.

In my life, I always find the Lord's challenges very difficult and scary. There were times when confronted with his challenge, my initial reaction was a loud No. I always had to wrestle with him for a long time. The reason for this is that I was afraid of what he wanted.

I was afraid of the uncertainties and difficulties that I expect to face. But in scripture, we always read God telling his people, 'not to be afraid'. Someone said that there's 365 instances in scripture where the Lord says, 'Do not be afraid'. One for every day of the year!

In the original Greek, the word translated as fear or afraid means to be terrified to the point of paralysis.

I believe that fear is healthy in our faith. Without fear, we become proud, thinking that we can do this on our own. With fear, we become conscious of our helplessness without God. We get to acknowledge our dependence on God.

What is not healthy is fear that paralyses us.

Therefore: faith is not the absence of fear – but it is a realistic confidence in the Lord.

This requires radical trust in Jesus himself. This is very hard but if we really want the life that Jesus has for us, we need to step out in faith and say yes to him.

When we say yes to Jesus, we need to do the next thing: obey him.