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Overcoming Fear

Contrasts help us understand ourselves and the world around us.  Some people are more contrast-oriented than others.  You know the type…”black & white” personalities that see everything through worldview-lenses that turn everything into one extreme or the other.  It helps them make sense of things by comparing them to the contrast-types they carry around in them.  I’m kind of like that.  It has its benefits & detriments, just like all character traits.  (Hm…benefits & detriments in itself is a contrast…).

Anyway, for most of my life I thought that the opposite of LOVE was HATE.  It ends up, I think I’ve been wrong about that.  Love and Hatred as emotions are secondary….but both can become deep-seated enough in us as to because part of our default personality settings.  However, there’s a difference.  Love begets love.  We love because we have been loved….We hate because of something deeper and more sinister.  we hate because we’re afraid of something.  Perhaps we’re afraid of appearing weak or stupid, or afraid of not being in control.  Fear, in the end, is a lack of trust in God’s Sovereign Goodness, it’s giving-in to the belief that God is responsible for the pain & suffering in the world, and that He cannot totally be trusted.    
Today I’m being challenged on this, and reminded of the Godly Truth we have access to because of Jesus.  I pass along that challenge to you.  Let’s live in love…doing so overcomes fear by definition.
1 John 4:7-21

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

 13This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19We love because he first loved us. 20Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

By catalystshawn

Shawn is the founding Minister/Executive Director of Catalyst NW, launched in 2007. Before starting Catalyst, Shawn was a full-time Youth Pastor and Church Planter in traditional churches for 13-years. Shawn and his wife Marina live in Tualatin, OR, and are actively involved with Grace Chapel in Wilsonville. They have 2 adult kids who are their pride & joy, one funny little dog, and a cuddly cat.