What Naeem Fazal taught me about walking through the valley—not around it
We often think of faith as the antidote to fear. If I just have enough trust, enough Scripture, and pray hard enough—then the fear will go away. But in my conversation with pastor and author Naeem Fazal, he reminded me of something both uncomfortable and freeing:
Faith doesn’t skip the fear. It walks straight through it.
Naeem’s story isn’t abstract. It’s grounded in real life trauma, tragedy, and the kind of fear that most of us don’t post about. And yet, what emerged from his journey wasn’t a life scrubbed clean of difficulty—it was a life formed through it. He describes how we want to cling to Jeremiah 29:11 (“plans to prosper you”), but we forget it’s spoken to people already in exile. People stuck in a hard place for a long time, and with year of exile still ahead of them.
What if that’s where faith actually grows? It’s in the low points, the difficult seasons that our faith has a chance to thrive as we draw closer to God.
It struck me that Naeem doesn’t offer a five-step plan out of fear. Instead, he offers God’s presence in the middle of the mess. He talks about post-traumatic growth, the idea that what breaks us can also build us. Not because pain is good, but because God is near. And hope—even fragile, trembling hope—can still carry us forward.
For those of us facing fear in this season—whether it’s personal loss, cultural chaos, or quiet internal pressure—this episode is a reminder that courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is movement with God in the midst of our circumstances.
Fear isn’t always a wall to climb. Sometimes, it’s the valley you walk through on your way to something beautiful. The valley can seem never ending, but God gives you enough light to take the next step across the valley, and Jesus is with you every step of the way.
Elliot W. Sands is the Executive Director of Faith First and host of the Live Faith First podcast. He spent 17 years as a pastor, including five years as a school principal, and even co-founded a health-tech start-up. Elliot and Penny have walked through quite a few valleys, and found that even in the darkest days God was with them.
