torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love."
So, my reasoning went something like this: If I get afraid, God must not love me, or that I had cut of fellowship with God. With that kind of thinking, I found myself fighting a needless and fruitless two-front war. On one hand, I was trying to maintain or restore my relationship with God. On the other hand, I was trying to fight off my fear.
Of course, the following scriptures make very clear that I do not create, nor can I prevent, God's love from flowing through me:
"And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our
hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." (Romans 5: 5)
and
"Nay, in all these
things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
"For
I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
"Nor height, nor
depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8: 37-39)
Nothing can separate us from God, for God is love (1 John 4: 16), and God dwells in us through Christ (Colossians 1: 27) and through the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5: 22-23)
In fact, the same chapter in First John explains that His love is perfected in me:
"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of
judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4: 17)
If there is any one thing that can break the illusion of fear away from our minds, it is that God the Father does not see us in our sinful, fallen bodies and minds. Instead, He sees His own Son:
"And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." (1 Corinthians 3: 23)
and
"Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular." (1 Corinthians 12: 27)
We are so close to God through His Son, we are one with Him:
"I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the
world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved
me." (John 17: 23)
– but we still live in a fallen world that will tempt individual believers to get afraid. We have the Holy Spirit’s love bursting through us.
If you feel afraid, just rest in the grace and knowledge of the Lord, knowing that He who is within you is greater than he who is in the world (, and that includes yourself. We are no longer fearful people, we are no longer our thoughts and feelings:
"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto
God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6: 11)
"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered
himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God?" (Hebrews 9: 14)
We have no need to be afraid of even doing something wrong. Our fallen minds may be tempted to fear, but the believer can reject such a temptation by resting in the knowledge that we are even cleansed from the sense of judgment, of the even the foreboding possibility of wrong-doing in our lives!