Following Him is always worth it. I get sidetracked and messed up and my mind may work circles around the same event for years, but I am getting free. Today I lived free from my stinking thinking again. There was a time or two that I had to remind myself not to go down that road, but for the most part I had a pleasant day.
I spent some time with God at noon today because I was running out of spiritual strength. It was actually about 2. That was really good. It was about fear and love. Sometimes I wonder how bad of a Christian I must be to still experience fear. After all, haven’t I ever experienced His love? He says perfect love casts out fear, so why do I still have it? How do I experience perfect love, so I can get away from this mess? So this was my journaling at noon:
Could it possibly be that fear is overcome by love? Perfect love casts out fear. Yet I wonder why I live so much of my life afraid. Have I never experienced His love at all? Was what I experienced imperfect? Is it possible for God’s love to be imperfect if experienced in a small quantity in a broken way? Would not His love be always perfect?
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Could we say that fear is an evil, and love is a type of good? Do not be overcome by fear, but overcome fear with love. For the scared child, who trusts no one, only love will woo affection. For the abandoned, neglected and beaten puppy, only love will overcome fear and over time win the heart and undying devotion of the mongrel.
As for me? Have I never loved because I fear or is my doing [serving] proof love is overcoming my fear? I want to serve. I want to lay down my life, but I am afraid. But I stubbornly keep my gaze fixed on Him. I look not to the right or left. I feel the valley. I feel the fear. I hear the voices saying I won’t live but die. Yet I trust Him. I believe Him. Love for Him persuades me. Self-preservation drives me into His arms. Fear, or perhaps a healthy fear, of ever turning from Him again, compels me to run to His love,seeking only to follow, only to worship, only to behold Him. For someday I will fully know Him. Today I succumb to His wooing. His gentle call for me to follow. I come, and humbly bleat, [Hey, everything needs some comic relief!] “I will.”
So those were my poetic-ish thoughts at noon. We are just ready to start our moral inventory in step study. I am a little bit afraid. The next two weeks I am getting to be honest about all my relationships in life. How many times am I going to repeat doing this? It is a bit like torture. I was thinking about this today and how as a leader, do I really have to keep this up? It did occur to me that maybe asking myself these questions once a year (or once a day) for the rest of my life would be a good thing! How could it be bad?
Over the last few weeks, someone gave me freedom without even knowing it. They were speaking into my life about witnessing and helping people grow; they said something that has freed me from so many fears. I think that is all I can share here, but it has been so nice to embrace confrontation instead of run from it. To know if I am rejected, it is okay. To know I am only half the conversation. It is okay if the other half gets mad.
I love Jesus.
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. – I John 4:18
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – Romans 12:21
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