I am a family doctor and I see in my consulting room individuals on a one to one basis. On my desk lies a packet of tissues- because so many, when they say what is wrong, begin to cry, even though, outside the consulting room, they manage to be so composed that no one would notice anything was wrong.

From the speech given by Dr. John S. Lester at Caux on August 8, 2001

A middle-aged man came to see mewith a cold. Most people yreat colds themselves, they don't need a doctor. So after advising him what to do to manage his cold I said, "Is there something else on your mind?" He hesitated for a moment and then admitted to a very personal problem. As he prepared to leave he told me that this was the fourth time he had been to see a doctor because of this problem but it was the first time that he had plucked up the courage to speak about it.

It is important for you to know where I come from. I am white, male and middle-aged. I am married, have two grown up sons and one young grandchild. I am a Christian and I attempt to follow Jesus. Are you afraid? Are you ever afraid? Most of us probably like to feel that we are not particularly people- so I need to be a bit more specific.

I have noted five different kinds of fear. There are, first of all, the phobias, irrational fears of one specific thing - snakes, spiders, birds, crowds, lifts, heights, flying etc. This, if you like, is a medical fear - it comes in the realm of a doctor and a psychologist. Above all it is a fear of fear. Most who have a phobia keep quiet about it but have strategies for avoiding it. The person who is afraid of being stuck in a lift prefers to use the stairs because "the exercise is good for me".

The second fear, another medical fear, is almost the opposite, but is similar in intensity. It is generalized anxiety, when we feel afraid of everything. It is often linked with depression.

The third fear is a normal response to external pressures. Those who live under the cloud of civil war. Those who face torture or oppression. Those who face starvation.

The fourth fear fear is inner fear. Fear of failure, fear of being left out, fear of not coping, fear of being corrected, fear of not finding a partner in life, fear of not making marriage work, fear of what other people think of us. Above all fear of what certain people think of us. These are all similar fears. They are internal, self-absorbing, selfish fears because they make us think only of ourselves and how we are doing. I call them the imprisoning fears.

The fifth fear I will call the universal fear, because it comes to most of us sooner or later. It is the fear of illness, of suffering, of dying and of separation from loved ones. Now there are many houses on the street in which the house of fear is situated. There is the house of ambition, the house of power, the house of lust, but the house of fear remains the address of many of us who may also pay visits to the other houses.

I want to explain why The Times of London recently carried on article about ambitious men who carry their mobile phones and notebook computers on holiday and spend the time contacting the office. The article suggested that it is not because they are ambitious but because they are fearful that, if they don't keep in touch with the office, it will reveal to others and to themselves that they are not indispensable.

Let me suppose that you worry about whether you will ever get the right partner. Many years ago society, at least in the West, started to say that it is okay to have sex whenever you want it. This encouraged people to visit the house of lust. But many felt left out. They were afraid of how their friends would regard them. Wouldn't you really prefer to wait for marriage? Wouldn't you rather enjoy romance of courtship and leave sex until later? You would prefer to marry someone who has never had sex with anyone else, wouldn't you?

There is a little word called purity. It means being totally true to the best. A pure chemical is one that is not adulterated by other things. Impurity is so often encouraged by fear. It lives in one of the rooms of the house of fear. Purity on the other hand lives in the house of love.

We need to look for a moment at the house of love. THe house of fear is a house of selfishness, of self-centeredness. The house of love is totally different. It is the house of selflessness, of other-centeredness.

Love, in its fullest sense, is a gift that is given to us as you come in contact with God. Such love is universal, leaves no one out and can be given equally. And that is what it means to live in the house of love- it is the house of God. When we live in that house we reflect his love to others. We don't possess it, we reflect it.

I want to speak to house who want to move from the house of fear to the house of love. Moving house is a major undertaking. It starts with the realisation that one needs to move. It goes on to the search for the best place to move to. Then there is the move itself, the journey. All life is a journey in time. We learn as we go along. But there is also the journey of faith. Faith is the bridge between fear and love.

Faith implies obedience. Obedience comes from the Latin word for listening. So perhaps our first need is to learn to listen. It is not something we are very good at. We live with noise rather than silence. Caux is a wonderful spot for discovering this kind of listening which comes when we give time and space and quiteness to it. This is when we listen to the small 'sounds' within, to conscience and to the whispers of God.

When I was about eight years old I was encouraged to take my three-year old sister to post a letter. This invole walking along a pavement beside a main road, which I was forbidden to cross. As we walked along ferocious dog came along the pavement towards us. My sister was afraid of all dogs, let alone hostile looking ones and I felt afraid too. So I grabbed her hand in my first conscious turning to God I said aloud, "Dear Jesus, pleasr take this dog away." Instantly it turned aside, crossed the road and disappeared. This is a childish memory but one that I have always remembered. It was the beginning of my learning to trust God. It was the first time that I began to realise that in some way fear and faith are opposites.

I want to make two further observations. I saidearlier that faith is the bridge between fear and love, and that faith is obedience in action. The point is that if you take steps of obedience then events work out in a way which builds faith further. The bridge becomes stronger.

The second observation is this. A natural scienist who was also an evangelist to the students of his day, one hundred years ago, said that obedience is the organ of spiritual sight, just as the eye is the organ of physical sight.

This is what I was discovering for myself. As I obeyed, the results in life and in my own spirit, revealed the nature of God in me- revealed something of love to me. So all these incidents- and there are so many of them I could tell- transported me from the house of fear, over the bridge of faith, to the house of love.

In medicine one of the potent is the dear of missing something. The decisions doctors take can so often affect people profoundly. As I go on, and learn more, I seem to know less or rather feel certain about less. I become more aware of the pitfalls of the unexpected and, curiously, I can be more afraid than I used to be.

The other day I saw a very ill child. He had a high temperature. I was quite worried about him, and I resolved, though I did not say this to the mother, that I would phone later in the day to see how things were. I arrived home at four in the afternoon and went straight to my bedroom and prayed for this child. I expressed to God the fact that I was worried that what I had done was not enough, and I asked for the child's healing. At six I rang the mother. "How kind of you to call," she said. "But there is no need to be concerned. Just after four his temperature suddenly came down and he seems quite back to normal now."

Nowadays people talk of 'evidence-based medicine'- which means that not too much weight should be put on the 'case' and that one should seek the evidence of the outcome of hundreds of cases. So I cannot prove anything. All I can say is that I immediately said privately to God- Thank you! Obedience is the organ of spiritual sight.