What are you afraid of? Do you live with fear? Has it taken hold of you? How do you know if fear has taken hold of you? Have you assessed your behavior and attitude? Would you like to rid yourself of fear? Do you know it is possible? Will you take the steps needed to do it?
Fear can rule our lives without us even knowing it. The obvious expression or experience of fear is when we are scared when something unexpected happens or being afraid and worrying that something bad will happen. In these situations, there is outward manifestation of fear.
We don’t always recognize the fear that is not outwardly expressed by shock or tears. Yet, a very large portion of the world lives with fear. It manifests itself in prejudices, hatred toward others, isolating yourself from the world, and even in broken relationships. Fear can rule our lives in several different ways.
Prejudices are nearly always a result of fear—the fear of the unknown. We will state we do not like the group of people, but fear is the under lying factor. We do not really know them and have made no effort to know them and the fear of not knowing creates the prejudice. This prejudice can then manifest hatred toward that group.
Fear can also cause relationships to fall apart. It may be due to having our hearts broken at some earlier time in our lives resulting in a fear of that happening again. Fear keeps us from fully committing ourselves to someone again. Therefore, our future relationships only get so far until we put an end to them before we feel that heartbreak again.
John tells us the only way to overcome fear is through love. As we grow in our love for others, learning to love as God loves us, fear is driven out of us. The closer we get to the perfect love God has for us, the less fear we live with. We can experience God’s love as we open ourselves up to him.
I pray we open ourselves up to God’s love. I pray we ask God to help us grow in our love for him. I pray each one of us will ask God to help us love others as he loves us and drive out our fear. Experience God’s love. Grow in love. Ask God to help. Drive out your fear through love.
1 John 4:18-19 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.
Marty Pressey 