I Feared Being Afraid

I was in such pain when I was working at a charter school in San Pedro, CA.

The pain was too much for me.

I had this chronic sense of panic and pressure in my life.

I had to keep my feelings high and upbeat all the time, twenty-four seven.

Or God would not be with me.

I had misinterpreted this one verse:

"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." (Isaiah 26: 3)

I kept thinking that I had to have a peaceful, quiet, eternally limited mind.

In other words, mind control.

No!

We have the mind of Christ today because of what Jesus did for us at the Cross:

"For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ." (1 Corinthians 2: 16)

God does not look at us, but rather He looks at His Son, who is the Perfect Man at His Right Hand.

Still, I feared being afraid, convinced that what I was thinking and feeling on the inside would determine with Jesus was with me or against me.

Why was I believing wrong? Because I was not reading Scripture in the Light of the Son and His Finished Work.

Here is another verse which I had misunderstood for a long time:

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love." (1 John 4: 18)

When I read this passage, I had been focusing on my perfect love. As if!

We love because He first loved us (1 John 4: 19)

So, the love that John is writing about here is not our love for anyone. We cannot love anyone or anything in and of ourselves.

We need His love for us, before we can share the same with anyone else.

No one had ever told me how much He lavishly loves me. When things went bad in my life, I assumed that I had done or not done something. I was also angry with God, because I wonder at length why He had not helped me.

Never did I realize -- He was helping all the time, when I would let Him. Even when I was resisting His help, He did what He could.

Perfect love casts out fear - His perfect love casts out our fear.

If we are afraid, we should not think for one second that we are blocking His love.

Rather, we do not understand how much God loves us.

For too long, I spent more time trying to figure out or reach out for His love for me.

In reality, He was actively loving me, and my trying to get His love or feel it -- that was frustrating my understanding.

Did Paul not write:

"31What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 32He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?  " (Romans 8: 31-32)

Then

"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 8:38-39)

Nothing can separate us from God our Daddy (Romans 8: 15), not even our fear!

There is nothing to fear, not even our fear, for as we understand His perfect love for us (Ephesians 3:16-19), those fears melt away.