By: Gen. Jim — 6/6/19
It’s great to have both love for Christ and faith in Him. The apostle John wrote: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts our fear…” (1 John 4:18). But why do we still fear when we love Christ?
There is godly fear and human fear; the first is good, the latter, no good. Hebrews 11:7 speaks of Noah was “moved with godly fear…” Godly fear is the product of love – we love the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit because we want to please them and they are pleased in us. What causes a marriage to fail as far as faithfulness goes? One of the two gets eyes for another man/woman. I always assumed that if I loved my wife and she me, we would not commit adultery.
Many Christians are not only fearful but live incredulously day-by-day. Let me put “fear” in another light; many Christians live not in the fear (awe) of God, but live fearing persecution from the world, therefore, they are displeasing to God. They fear being persecuted and put Christ to open shame. They live a lie and evade (prevaricate) the gospel calling to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1), hence they become fatuous (stupid!).
We must admit that most live relatively free from persecution for the faith. Oh, a little mockery and some ridicule may come their way, but the Bible states infatically that those who live godly will suffer persecutions… and we’re not meant to let persecutions make us fearful but faithful. Jesus said “If the whole world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18). My experience has been that it has been the so called Christians that persecute.
Persecution/opposition for our faith is the cup to drink from. Jesus drank it. The early believers drank from it. God’s purpose in either sending “P” or allowing it, is that we’ll become UNSHAKABLE in our faith, not that we live in pathos when our faith is tried. If not careful we can become sardonic, full of trepidation whereby our Christianity becomes a dichotomy, a contradictory.
We must learn to STAND for our convictions, when we stand – no matter the cost or pain, we gain spiritual strength (but we feel like one hell of a failure at times!). Luke 12:11,12 tells us not to be anxious when brought before authorities. But we fail! We rise up again!
We live in a time when the whole world is fearful – of the future. Feed your faith and starve your fears to death!
