Many fear the Lord –and I do not mean reverential fear–I mean they are afraid of Him. Have you ever had a dog that feared you and would not come to you when you call?
Picture from – urdogs.com .
The caption for the picture above reads: – “That beautiful little dog, kept cowering like that, avoiding any eye contact with almost anyone. That dog was just all alone and broken.”
Does that break your heart? This describes millions of people all over the planet. These are the little ones Jesus came to save and He is still seeking them. The enemy of God has blinded them, wounded them and misrepresented the Father to them. To many people, any mention of God as a Father evokes in them anger borne out of fear. Others do not get angry outwardly, but inwardly they withdraw into self pity and self loathing. Instead of being angry at those who hurt them, they are sullenly angry with themselves, blaming themselves in agreement with the predator that hurt them.
Only through coming to know and believe the love that God has for us will fear be eradicated and nullified.
Read again the Spirit’s words through John the “Beloved disciple…”
And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
1Jn 4:17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.
1Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.
1Jn 4:19 We love Him because He first loved us.
John (and therefore God) wants us to have boldness in the day of judgement. BOLDNESS! He wants us to be able to stand before His Holy presence in the fire of God with no fear at all. But in most people fear causes us to retreat from God and life, because we fear being judged as a failure. We fear failure because we think it is up to us to succeed. We have not come to see who we really are and Who it is who does the living in us.
We are not alone and separated from God trying to somehow be a loving person. If you have the Son of God in you, you have Love, Life and all things. When we only see ourselves as we used to be, we cannot help but be run by fear. We so much want to please God we are afraid of not pleasing Him. We want Him to tell us what to do to please Him, so we can run out and do that thing. We stop doing a whole lot of things that we imagine must be displeasing to Him. All that we do is borne out of fear of His displeasure. We think it is all up to us to please God somehow….He seems so hard to please though….maybe if I try a bit harder?
It is a breakthrough of sorts when we come to realize that in our old self we do not believe that God loves us. Instead we are afraid of God and strive to serve Him out of that fear. We eventually come to see and to acknowledge the torment that we live in.
Fear involves torment – there is no fear in love.
- People are afraid of missing the rapture
- Afraid of displeasing God
- Afraid of outer darkness
- Afraid of Hell fire
- Afraid of being disfellowshiped
- Afraid a being a castaway
- Afraid of being exposed in their sin
- Afraid of failing
- Afraid their children will never be saved
- Afraid their children will reject Jesus
- Afraid they will die without ever fulfilling their destiny in God
- Afraid God will not help them if they do not tithe, do not attend services, do not read the Bible.
- Afraid of what other people think of them
- etc etc
The torment and frustration may last a long time for us until we come to see by the Spirit that the Old Man of sin that we WERE died on the Cross and is crucified. We are not that condemned sinner any more. We are a new creature in Christ Jesus with a new nature. The old nature is gone.
The problem for us is that we still think like the old nature thought. The old nature – the old man- (Romans 6:6) could never please God, never understand spiritual truth, never walk by faith, never love God or anyone else to the degree that God wants…never attain to anything in God. NEVER!! Solution? God put our sin nature on Jesus Christ and crucified it/us with Him. Done!
Consider yourself dead to sin but alive to God. Romans 6:11
All of the fears that are hurled at us come from outside our inner man.
When John says we have known and believed the love God has for us, he is speaking of the spirit. This knowledge is first of all in our spirit, then gradually spreads out to the soul.
The old covenant was based upon our obedience to God or else we will not be blessed. The new covenant is established upon better promises and depends upon a better Life than our old life. The new life is Jesus Himself, come to live in you and be you. He already knows and believes the love God has for us. We learn to abide in His love simply by acknowledging it and speaking it to ourself.
The outer man- the soul, wants to see evidence of God’s love before it will speak of it in a personal way. But the way of the Lord is to speak by faith of that which we do not yet see in the natural….or feel in our emotions. We speak of the love God has for us as if we already fully know it and feel it. This is the walk of faith.
If we still have torment it is because we still have fear. God does not want us to fear Him. Slaves fear their master, because the master can harm them. God wants sons, not slaves. Our old father mistreated us, but God never will. He wants us to rest in the knowledge of His love for us.
The Jews were under the old covenant and as such were still in a slave mentality. But in the new covenant a person-Jew or Gentile – receives the spirit of adoption whereby we cry out Abba Father. God sets us free from the spirit of bondage and slavery through faith in Jesus Christ.
Not just believing that Jesus is a real person, or God in the flesh…but believing that He is now your life– your true inner self. How can God find fault with you if Jesus is your inner self? How can God expect that we have no fear in the day of judgement UNLESS we be perfect? Here is big clue for us.
If we are separate from Jesus and responsible to be like Jesus–then we will NEVER HAVE BOLDNESS in the judgement day. Therefore it proves John’s point in 1 John 4 where he says the most amazing thing…
FOR AS HE(JESUS)IS, SO ARE WE IN THIS WORLD. 1Jn 4:17
All fear of failing God is eradicated when we see that this is indeed the truth about us. When we speak it about ourself the power of this truth releases grace for it’s fulfillment in us.
Fear demands we run from it, or turn and fight it…..that is our downfall every time.
What we learn to do every time fear yells at us is to speak words of faith about who we really are and who we are joined to in perfect unbroken union.
