Fear, nothing to be afraid of (Ep. 1)

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (1 Jn 4:16–20). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Fear, nothing to be afraid of

Fear is a very useful chemistry in our brains designed to prompt us into action. That is the point of fear, to push us into action. We are accustomed to classified our reactions to fear into categories like fight or fly and other less popular such as Posture and Submission. The Christian response to fear, however, is always the same: go to God.

Fear should be nothing more than a built in prompt to remind us to go to God, rely on God, trust in God, fear only God.

Gen 12: 1 - God tells Abraham to move without giving him a destination or the grand plan.

That’s where God’s people go when prompted by fear through out the Bible. Moses was constantly doing so.Job did so. David went to God in times of fear, psalms resulted. One of the loudest changes from occurred to the disciples. Before Holy Spirit, they are reacting fight of fly mode, hiding, and denying any involvement with Jesus. After the baptism with the Holy Spirit, the only reaction fear prompts, is a bold stand with God. They go to God every time fear strikes. Peter , the guy who denied Jesus and went into the witness protection program for fear of joining Jesus at the cross, is now preaching the gospel boldly for everyone to hear. It’s not that the fear disappeared, he knew the risks of doing that (Peter and John did spend a night in Jail shortly after), he responded to fear by going to God and obeying him. Remember Peter and his fear of failure: not anymore. When he comes to the lame beggar, Peter has nothing to give. After acknowledging his failure to the beggar “Silver or gold I do not have,” he is not paralyzed by fear. He goes to God “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” In Acts 4:23, after they received threats from the chief priests and elders of the temple, “They raised their voices together is prayer.” That’s pattern, fear prompts God’s people to seek him, to go to him, to worship him, to obey him, to serve him.

The Fear of the Lord is that exactly that. It applies to anybody who have the habit to respond to fear by going to God.

Job is introduced as “perfect, just, one who feared God and avoided evil.” (Job 1:1)

Abraham is congratulated as one who “fear God” for not withholding even his son from God (Gen. 22:12) . Abraham learned that. He responded to fear differently when the scary dude liked his Sarah. He introduced himself as her brother.

Cornelius is described as God-fearing person. This is interesting because he was not part of the church yet.

Fear of the Lord is the only right response to fear

Fear is a prompt to remind us to go or return to God’s presence.

What passage of Scripture you have been going back to during this challenging times?

Next Episode: Fear, something to be afraid of

Every time I hear the news fear strikes me with worry about the future and where our country is headed. Under the excuse of Public Health and have set some very unamerican precedents. Under the pretense of NECESSITY any friendly government can turn into a dictatorship. My reaction is to go to God in prayer and turn the news off. I don’t need to know the future to have peace today.