No more fear !

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love prevents fear, for fear has torment ; and he that feareth is not fulfilled in love." 1 John 4: 18

Since the fall of Adam and Eve to the Garden of Eden, fear accompanies the lives of men. It is a reflection of our profound guilt, felt more or less diffuse. Basically, we are afraid of ourselves and of God, of that "voice" that leads us to measure the distance between what we are and what the holy God is. How can we free ourselves from it ?

We must first recognize the reality of our fear as a sinful human being. It was then that the "voice" that frightened us came to tell us all at the same time :

- "Fear God, for this is the whole of man" (Ecclesiastes 12: 13).

- "Fear not, beloved man" (Dan 10:19).

Through our fears, we understand that we have moved away from a holy God. They maintain in us the consciousness of our insufficiency, of our initial state of sinfulness. But the divine message does not end there: when we take our true place before God, he comes to tell us that the ultimate punishment, which causes our deep fear, has already been borne: God Himself has come to take it away in Jesus Christ. And this because he loves us with a perfect, eternal, immutable love. I am a "beloved" : no more fear !

So, is the Christian never afraid ? No, faith does not remove fear. It is legitimate to worry about our children, to fear an illness or an accident, to fear a difficult examination. As long as we are on earth, our fears retain a pedagogical virtue : they remind us that we are fallible, limited human beings in an imperfect and dangerous world. Our fears then lead us to rely on God and His grace. But our fear is no longer guilty ; we bring it to our Heavenly Father and overcome it in the gradual knowledge that we have of our God. The psalmist said of the righteous : "He will not fear bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord" (Psalm 112: 7).

And it is a fear that the believer can definitely hunt: that of losing the love of God. Just after the verse of the day, it is said : "He loved us first," and his love is the same even in eternity.

Source (To pleasing the Lord)