There is No Fear in Love

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 1 John 4:18

What do you fear? You’ve heard the axiom that F.E.A.R is False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear is that emotion that can cause issues we face to seem bigger than life and can and has caused us to freeze, fight or flight. Yet today think on 1 John 4:18, “There 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.” Phil Jackson from Red Letter Christians

Afflictions

In First Thessalonians chapter three scripture says, “We sent Timothy, our brother and God’s servant in the gospel of Christ, to establish you in your faith and to exhort you, that no one be moved by these afflictions. You yourselves know that this is to be our lot.”

So many are in the middle of tough times, if that’s where you find yourself, be encouraged.

I came across this from E. Stanley Jones this morning: “The point of help that Timothy brought was that Christians should not be moved by afflictions, that it is our very lot as Christians. This cuts across the thinking of many present-day Christians; for they think the special favor of God is shown by their exemption from afflictions. They are in the success mentality of modern life instead of in Christ. To be in Christ is to be different, therefore persecuted. Society demands conformity; if you fall beneath its standards it will persecute you. Hence this is our lot.”

When life gets difficult it doesn’t mean God is mad at us or that we must have done something wrong, sometimes it’s just the opposite. Oh, and if everything seems to be going your way thank Him, it’s not because you’ve done something to gain special favor, He loves you, don’t take the credit.

Cloudy

As followers of God, sin no longer separates us from Him but clouds us from Him for the moment. We get to choose how long the moment is. We need to turn back to Him immediately not take our punishment into our own hands and prolong the cloudiness. This only causes us to feel more unloved which leads to more clouds.