Love or Fear?

Peace family, is your life characterized by love, or by fear?

Some things have been pretty heavy on my mind, but I realized last night that I’ve been letting fear color my situation, instead of love. In fact, the more I think about it, the more facets of my life that I see fear has taken a stronghold, instead of me resting in the love of God. I want to encourage you today to lean on God and trust him! I want to do that, too!

In I John 4:18, the Bible says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” (ESV) When we function out of fear, we make desperate decisions. Our judgments are clouded. We live looking towards punishment and negative outcomes, being reactive, instead of focusing on what is good, on God’s past faithfulness to us, being proactive, and on positive outcomes. We are thwarted from really experiencing the fruit of the spirit in our circumstances.

Peace family, we all have areas of fear in our lives. Sometimes it doesn’t look like fear; sometimes it looks like worrying, being angry, wanting control, obsessive planning, choosing not to plan, controlling other people, letting others control us, or choosing to sin.

At a certain point, I (and you) have to believe that God knows better than I do. He cares more about the people that I love and the problems that I face than I do. I have to believe in His goodness, and trust that He knows how to glorify himself in my life better than I do. My pastor pointed out that we always end up doing want we want to do most, even if we have conflicting desires. I want to believe in God’s love for me so strongly, that obeying him is what I want to do most. I want my perspective to be about what glorifies him, not trying to find my own ways to comfort myself or meet my needs.

Peace family, that’s my prayer for you today. May God’s love for you be so much realer and so much deeper than any of our places of fear, and may you be preserved by his truth.