By Daniel Garner
"Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love" - 1 John 4: 18 NLT
"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death" - Thomas Paine
There are some funny things that go wrong when a car ages.
Whenever I got back from my deployment overseas I bought a "Hey, I'm still alive!" car for myself. Flash forward a few years and I've become a master of the use of duct-tape and repaired fuses. For example, my left blinker won't blink more than once; I have to push the stick down manually repeatedly.
And then there are the bigger things.
Things that go so pants-wettingly wrong you question the very existence of why that feature exists in the first place. Like when the automobile fates get tired of you laughing at the slow but inexorable aging process and decide to turn off your automatic headlights on a dark country road where you could have just sworn you heard banjos.
Definitely a new kind of fear!
But needless to say that there are different types of fears. I'm a full-grown adult and pastor (surprise!) but there's still a small part of me that gets nervous before speaking at the pulpit. But then there's the big fears, the mortal ones. The ones that make us stop in our tracks when we encounter them. I remember the first time I ever heard an explosion when I first got settled overseas for my deployment. I had only been in country for a few hours and I was so used to explosions going off during drills in mobilization training that the transition from "oh, it's just a drill" to "whoa wait, that could be the real deal" froze me, for a split second, in my tracks.
The thing about those kind of fears though, is that whatever it is that we fear has domain over us. And if we fear something for to long it can become our prison. Even if it's something that we enjoy; if we fear we'll be incomplete or lost without it, it still has domain. A prison we make for ourselves out of beautiful golden cords is still a prison. But fear is meant to be overcome. 1 John 4: 18 says "Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced His perfect love".
God loves all of us. Yes, even those who proclaim on T.V and radio that God is dead or could never love someone He loves them still. That love is the kind of love that makes Him want to always be a huge part of our lives, and it's the kind of love He asks us to accept that can replace all of our worst fears. Accept God, add His love and subtract that fear and we have a faith that can weather anything.
We always have the potential, and ability to conquer fear. It takes courage that we're all capable of to make change in our life. Even if we feel that we cannot. Because even when we can't do something, the Lord can and it is He who gives us strength.
The Takeaway: We all have fears, but with faith in God we have by our sides the power to overcome any fear; no matter how big it is to us!