I've written in the sidebar that I think the antidote to fear is trusting God. But how does that start? Really start? It's been a pretty big ball of wax for this fearful heart.
Allow me ask you a couple questions.
What is your perception of God? Or better, how do you picture Him looking at you?
Is He standing there with His arms crossed, forever disappointed in you? Is He perpetually shaking His head declaring "not good enough" at you? Or is He distracted maybe, focusing off elsewhere on the "better" Christians, those more mature, faithful, and serving?
Do you know that He delights in you? Yes, you. Do you know that He thinks of you? Do you know, in your experience, that He in on your side? Do you know His love for specifically you?
I believe that the place to start when addressing fear issues is: God's love.
1 John 4:18 says:
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment and the one who fears is not perfected in love."
Perfect love casts out fear. There is no perfect love except God's love for us. If we are afraid, then we don't know His love. Oh, we know some of His love. But we are not perfected in love.
Think about what perfect love is. It is absolutely unconditional. It is always constant. It always desires the utmost best for us. It never wavers for even a split second. With that kind of love, what is there to be afraid of? If I really understood God's goodness and His love for me, I wouldn't struggle with crippling fear issues. Clearly, I am not perfected in love.
So...in my journey, God's love is the starting point. I remember one day sitting in church. I had recently become aware of much dysfunction in my life and I'd been going to counseling and some wonderful groups the church offered. I had been challenged to believe God's love for me in ways that I'd never dared think of before. One day sitting it church something hit me. I realized that all my Christian life, what I had really believed was that God loved me merely as a part of the general "world" that He "so loved." I felt like I was just thrown in there with "the world" and He had to love me... for salvation. But when it came to Everyday Me, that was a different story. When I really looked at my heart and my fear and my behavior, I realized I did NOT believe He loved me or accepted me. It was as if He loved me unto salvation and then said, "OK, now you've got to measure up to earn My daily love." (Oh you foolish Galatians! Gal. 3:1-3)
Suddenly that day I understood how I had been perceiving God's love. I'm a visual person so I often grasp things through imagery. I saw my previous view of God's love as if it was a blanket over all of us. Spread out flat it sort of hovered over the collective us. I caught a new glimpse of God's love that day. It was as if God's love was separate blankets covering each individual's specific shape as a person. God's love is specific. I saw for the first time that God loves specifically, exactly and precisely me. God loves specifically you. And all that is specific about you He loves.
But in order to cast out fear, God's perfect love has to be believed. And trusted.
THE BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY to drive out fear from our lives IS A QUEST, a quest to know and believe God's love, and to experience it. Believing and trusting His love for us will drive out our fear. Now that sounds like good news!
"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,
that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with power
through His Spirit in the inner man;
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,
and that you,
being rooted and grounded in love,
may be able to comprehend
with all the saints
what is the breadth,
and length,
and height,
and depth,
and to KNOW the love of Christ
which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God."
~ Ephesians 3:14-19
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