How to Live Unafraid with guest Grace Fox

Do you want to know God more intimately and live unafraid? Come join our guest, Grace Fox, as she delves into the many names of God, all with their own meaning and promise. You will find yourself more drawn to Him than ever!

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We’re told in Scripture that God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear, and yet so many of us struggle with that very emotion in our lives. Sometimes even debilitating fear.

Guest Grace Fox is here to share what God has taught her about living unafraid. 

About Grace Fox

Grace Fox is a popular speaker at women’s events internationally. She inspires hope, courage, and transformation through God’s word. She has served as a career missionary for more than 30 years. Grace has written 14 books and published hundreds of articles in magazines.

She’s a member of the First Five Bible Study writing team for P 31 Ministries and is a co-host for a podcast called Your Daily Bible Verse.

Her book, Finding Hope in Crisis: Devotions for Calm in Chaos, won the Golden Scroll Devotional Book of the Year Award in 2021. Keeping Hope Alive: Devotions for Strength in the Storm won the same award in 2022.

Her newest devotional is titled Names of God: Living Unafraid. You can learn all about her at GraceFox.com. 

Thanks to our sponsors on Patreon, we’re able to offer an edited transcript of the podcast! 

Living Unafraid

Erin: Welcome listeners. We are delighted that you’re here with us today. And you might even hear my smile. We have a guest, Grace Fox, and she’s on a boat somewhere in Canada! 

Karen Ball: In fact, Grace and her husband have been living on their boat for six years, and they have discovered all kinds of people to share God’s love with. Welcome, Grace.     

Grace Fox: Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to be here with you all. 

Erin: Of course, we’re going to start by asking you what ‘the deep’ means to you? 

Grace Fox: It means going into a hard place, and yet it’s a rich place. It’s a place I might not necessarily choose for myself because it might hurt and I don’t like pain, but it’s often in the hard places, the painful places of life, that we grow the most. 

Karen: It’s true. We don’t want to go there. But so often God forces us there, kicking and screaming.  Whenever Erin and I meet together, we read from a devotional called Streams in the Desert.  

What I most appreciate about that devotional is it addresses the fact that, by following Christ, we are members of the fellowship of suffering. Living the Christian life is not easy, but we have an almighty God and Savior who help us to get through it.  

Know God Better

Grace Fox: And maybe the deep shouldn’t be a place we dread or think of it as a frightening place to be. Maybe we should start thinking of it more as a place of invitation, where God says, “Come with me. You wanna know Me better? Let’s go to the deep.” 

Erin: Both are true. It’s hard and it’s great.  So, Grace, we mentioned in our intro that you have a new devotional release about living unafraid. What compelled you to focus on the names of God as a means to overcome fear?

Grace Fox: Back during Covid days, I thought about women being in isolation just like I was. And it occurred to me that maybe they were hungry to fellowship with other women, like I was.

Many years prior I wrote a book called Moving From Fear to Freedom, A Woman’s Guide to Peace in every Situation. And then I had done a Bible study to go with that. 

So pulled that out and put it out there, asking women if they’d like to do the study with me on Zoom.

Eighty women said yes! I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know how to do small groups on Zoom. But a woman who had signed up contacted me and she said, “Grace, do you need help with the technological part of this?” And I said, “Absolutely!”

So off we went with a seven- or eight-week study. And as it came to an end, the ladies were asking what we were going to do next? And I went, “I don’t know. What are we gonna do next?”

What’s Next?

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But in my own quiet time reading, the names of God just kept coming up. Not any particular names of God, but the words “name of God” or “God’s name.” Such as “in God’s holy name,” or “We will praise God’s name.”

And I kept thinking, what’s the deal? It just kept coming around. Finally I realized God was trying to get my attention. And so I offered that––to study God’s names together. I wrote the curriculum as we went, week by week.

It was a massive undertaking, but I learned so much and saw how there is tons of material to explore. 

When I met my managing editor around that time, she asked me for other book ideas. I pulled up my laptop and went through a list of what I’d been studying.

She listened and when I said, “What about a book on the names of God?” She said, “Yes, Let’s do that.” So that’s how this was born. 

A Devotional Study

It’s actually a devotional study. It’s seven chapters, written in a devotional style, with stories and biblical teaching and a prayer and questions at the end of each chapter. It’s a Bible study for groups or individuals.

I envision somebody sitting across the table having coffee with a friend and doing this, maybe one-on-one as a discipleship tool. And then there’s a QR code at the end of each chapter where you just point your camera and up will come a fifteen-minute video teaching.

Karen: How fun!

Why Study the Names of God?

Grace Fox: I’ve learned so much about the names of God and how understanding each one can change our lives. Because understanding God’s character frees us to live unafraid.

Erin: I really like the notion of studying God’s names, because God’s name is who He is, but it’s also what He does. And if we connect those things better we can apply who He is to our situation, and understand how who He is affects who we are and what we need. So I love how it’s all woven together.

Grace Fox: Years and years ago, my husband and I were missionaries back in Nepal. Our son was born there, and then on our second child was born, but she had hydrocephalus––too much water on the brain.

The doctors told us we had to take her back to North America on the first flight available for a surgery to save her life. Well, back then there weren’t a lot of international flights. Maybe one every three days or so.

Then, when the airline found out I had had a C-section to deliver this baby, they refused to take me because I was a medical high risk. They didn’t want me, or my