Daily Devotional: Worry & Fear, The Antidote to Fear
This is an opinion column.
DO NOT BE AFRAID
“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.”
1 John 4:18
REFLECTION
A lot of the fear that lives in us is not really about circumstances. It is about what we believe those circumstances mean about us.
- If this fails, it means I am a failure.
- If they leave, it means I was not enough.
- If things fall apart, it means God is punishing me.
- If the worst happens, it means I was never really safe to begin with.
That kind of fear is not primarily a fear of the situation. It is a fear of the verdict. And John puts his finger on exactly that when he says fear has to do with punishment. Underneath so much of our anxiety is a deep, unexamined belief that we are on shaky ground with God, that His love for us is conditional, that one wrong move or one bad season could tip the scales against us. That belief is a lie, but it is a very old and stubborn one.
The antidote John offers is not more self-confidence or a better coping strategy. It is love. Specifically, perfect love, the love of a God who has already rendered His verdict on us in Christ and it was not punishment. It was adoption. It was redemption. It was the declaration that nothing in all creation can separate us from His love. When that love gets down into the places where the fear lives, it does not coexist with it. It drives it out.
Being made perfect in love is not a one-time experience. It is a gradual, sometimes slow, deeply personal process of allowing God’s love to reach the specific places in us where fear has set up residence. Today is a good day to let it in a little further. To let the love that has already claimed you speak into the fear that is still trying to convince you otherwise.
What fear in your life is rooted not in the situation itself but in what you believe the situation says about you or about God’s disposition toward you, and how does the truth of God’s perfect love speak into that specific belief?
PRAYER
Lord, we confess that some of our deepest fears are really fears about whether we are loved and whether we are safe with You. We have believed more often than we realize that Your love for us is fragile, that our circumstances are evidence of Your verdict on our worth. Today we receive a different truth. Perfect love drives out fear. Your love for us is not conditional on our performance or our circumstances. It is settled, declared, and unshakable. Drive out the fear with the love that has already claimed us. Amen.
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