Perfect Love Casts Out Fear: Part 2

1 John 4:10,16,18,19
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins...So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him...There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear...We love because He first loved us.

“To know and to believe the love that God has for us.”
This phrase struck me pretty hard when I read it today. I had ventured into 1 John 4 to see the passage that contained the phrase, “Perfect love casts out fear,” and found this sentence to be vitally descriptive of how I was brought to the place where I allowed Perfect Love to cast out my fear.

It is one thing to know the love of God...it is another thing all-together to BELIEVE that love for ourselves. I can pray 10,000 prayers for any person with utter confidence of the Lord’s heart for them (no matter where they stand or what they have/haven’t done), I can believe with full assurance for others with ease (no matter the impossibility of the situation). But the Lord brought to my attention a good 8 years ago my hesitation to trust His heart for me.

I’ve been on a strange healing journey over the last 2 years...arguably, it probably started with this moment with the Lord eight years ago: I was reading in John 5 the story of the man at the Pool of Bethesda. I had read it many times before, I had marveled at the interaction the Lord had with him: He had been sick for 38 years, and Jesus walked up to him and asked him, “Do you want to be healed?” Before this time, I had always thought, “What a weird question; OF COURSE he wants to be healed.” But the man doesn’t say, “Yes.” Instead he tells Jesus why it isn’t possible. As I read this story on this particular day, I felt like Jesus stood in front of me, looked me in the eye and said, “Do you want to be healed?”

And I did not say, “Yes.” Even though I wanted to be healed, I hesitated. And as I considered why this was, I had to own up to this fact: While I did not doubt God’s ability to heal me, I doubted His heart for me. An ugly reality I had to face. And folks, I am clearly not a fast learner...it took me SIX years to trust the Lord enough to ask Him to heal me.

I was considering how I got there. What brought me to a place where I knew AND believed the love God has for me? While there are probably a zillion factors that play into this, I am going to tell you what happened to me in this season I am leaving.

My brother Noah died in August of 2012. It was a startling and costly blow to my family and my heart. It cast me into a valley that I trudged through for two long years; many days were spent simply curled up in a heap of sorrow because I had no strength to stand. From the moment of the phone call, I wrapped my arms around the Lord and dug my fingers into His sides; clinging lest I lose my grip on the One thing that I was certain of.

Grief is a complicated beast: You can’t speed it up or slow it down, it just comes as it will and you deal with the waves as they crash into you, wading through the aftermath of your losses. But the Lord was with me, and His gentleness surprised me and overwhelmed me as I encountered it again and again. Because that grip I had when I was thrust onto the path of grief, the embrace that allowed me to feel secure with the Lord, it failed; my fingers were not strong enough and my arms atrophied.

But in a place of utter weakness, where I had nothing within myself to keep me, no strength to hold myself up; no zeal to remain...in THAT place I was kept, I was upheld, I was encompassed in the holistic embrace of the Lord. He was so gentle in my failings, utterly compassionate in the place I lay; He did not condemn me that I had nothing to offer Him, no courage to reach out. Instead, He seized the opportunity of my stillness and chose to display His love for me in a way that I had never known. I simply received it; unmerited, indescribable, surprising and precise affection. And it changed me forever.

And while I am sure it was not the only thing that swayed me in the direction of trust, it is the most vibrant one I see as I ponder my season, and I am overwhelmingly thankful.

“To know and to believe the love that God has for us.” There is such security there. I wish I had the words to tell you.

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear: Part 1

Changes of seasons lead me to places of introspection; of consideration of the season that is passing to understand what I bring with me into the one I will enter. I really do believe that some of the sweetest times I have with the Lord are as seasons close--no matter how sweet or how bitter--because inevitably when I look, I see His hand, His wisdom, His kindness, His love, His care for me; I see the ways He has honed and shaped and sifted and faithfully worked so meticulously to sanctify and grow me; I see what He has done. And all of this pondering inevitably leads me to sit down and write...the completion of understanding and the springboard to testifying.

So here I am. Sitting in front of a keyboard finally, prepared to put into words why this phrase sums up the last 4 years: “Perfect love casts out fear.”

The Lord brought me a mentor and she has been a great gift to me. One of the things that stands out to me in our conversations is that as she sees me from the outside, she points out things I can’t see...to her, it is vibrantly miraculous when and where I stand without fear.

I was raised in fear; it was pounded into me from the pulpit, it was used to manipulate and control me. I was an easy target, as I wore my emotions on my sleeve and my little heart desired to please. To find and to feed my fears wasn’t difficult, it resulted in me seeking to regain control: Before I knew Jesus, one of the few things I found was able to subdue my fears was to control my environment and do things on your own terms. Fear caused me to control and to distrust.

Then I met Jesus, and I found verses in scripture that told me things like, “Cast my fears upon the Lord for He cares for you,” and “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” And my life changed. I gave up my need to control my fears and simply threw them at the cross.

And then I walked with Jesus for years, and I found verses in scripture that told me more things like, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me,” and “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?...Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.” And my life changed again. I found that I didn’t need to pick of my fears to cast them, that instead they simply dispelled in the presence of the Lord.

And then I kept walking with Jesus for more years; I walked with Him through season after season; through the losses, the joys, the failures, the triumphs, the pains, the afflictions, the trials, the glories of my life. Day in and day out, He has been with me in my moments and He showed me verses in scripture that said things like, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent,” “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness,” and “I will protect him, because he knows My name.” And my life changed again. I found that there is peace that transcends life’s circumstances, peace that does not give way to the things that should cause me to fear because it stems from a source that is unchanging and unhindered and unswayed by the enormity of my need, the limitations I hold and weaknesses I carry. I have found myself in such a place of security in the hands of the Lord that fear doesn’t arise where it has a thousand times before even if there are a thousand very real reasons to. And though I have always said that I am fearful by nature, I find myself now trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the Lord can change a person’s nature.

I keep finding myself wondering, “Where is my fear?”
I am standing on unfamiliar ground, marveling at what has happened to my heart.
I do not know where my fear has gone, but I DO know that it is the perfect love of the Lord that has cast it out.

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1 John 4:10,16,18,19
"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins...So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him...There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear...We love because He first loved us."