I misread this verse so many times.
I used to think that if I was afraid, it meant that I was not loving God enough.
If I loved God more, then I would not be afraid.
This love, which is perfected among us (1 John 4:17), is not our love for God, but God's love for us.
"We love because He first loved us." (1 John 4: 19)
If we find ourselves still fearful in some way, the answer is to understand more about how much God loves us, how much God loves me!
He loves me as much as He loves Jesus, because as He is, so are we, so am I in this world!
The answer to fear is not something that we have to do, or some feeling that we need to conjure up.
We need to understand more about the fullness of God's love for us at the Cross.
What He did there, taking away all our sins, all our shame, all the reproach, and offering us the perfected grace which takes our worst and makes us first - that is what the Cross is all about -- that is what God's love for us is all about.
For too long, I kept paying attention to how I felt, as though my fears or upsets would frustrate God's grace in my life.
That is simply not true:
"7Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8: 37-39)
Nothing can separate us from the love of God: nothing. So, we must not use our feelings as the final judgment or determination of whether God loves us or not.
Love is seeing more of Jesus and all that He has done for us.
When I was troubled about my past, when I was afraid of the future, the lies that would assault my mind always pressed me with "Where's the proof? How do you know that nothing bad will happen to you?"
That fearful assault brought so much bondage into my life.
Today, I understand the answer -- the Cross is the proof of God's protection in my life. The New Covenant which God the Father cut with God the Son at the Cross, where Jesus is my perfect representative, has made all the difference.
That is the proof -- not what I am thinking at ay time, nor the feelings which may follow.
The source of the stressors in my life began and now end with the truth that Jesus Christ is living in me and watching over me. His resurrection from the dead is the divine receipt that all my sins are put away and gone forever.
Here is the New Covenant written out for all to receive:
"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)
When we understand (know) the truth, then the truth sets us free, and this truth is the truth of the Gospel (Galatians 2: 5, 14) and the same truth which John invited the Beloved Gaius (and everyone else) to walk in (3 John 2-4)
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