"Fear Not, Nor Be Afraid"

I've heard it said that thes admonition, "Fear not!" (or some iteration of it) appears 365 times in the Bible. I've even said it here on this blog. But I never did the work of verifying this statement by looking them all up and counting them. Instead I searched online for a simple list with all 365 references listed for me so that I could ponder a fresh one every day. And in my search I came across Melinda Martin, whose Etsy Store is called Minister's Wife. She actually did the research, and you know what she found out?

There aren't really 365 "Fear Not!" statements in the Bible!

In fact, there are just over 80 occurrences of "Fear not" in the King James Version, and another 30 or so similar times other words with the same meaning, such as "Don't be afraid," are used. She created the beautiful graphic above, including all 112 references she found. If you want to see the list of all the verses actually written out, you can check out her blog post here.

Maybe, like me, you'd like to have a copy of Melinda's printable and work you way through the verses over the course of the next few months. Just click on her Etsy store link and get instructions for downloading it.

While the idea of a "Fear Not!" for every day of the year is appealing, if we'd just take hold of one or two, or all 112 of these admonitions, and really hear what the Lord is saying to us, and obey him, it would change our lives!