Faith without fear – Devotion for
I have always found fear to be a useful thing. Fear heightens my sensitivities, and it gets the adrenaline flowing. Fear makes me more aware of my surroundings. Fear keeps me from doing some stupid things (the word “some” is very important here). Fear helps me give things their proper respect. Fear can be a useful thing, I have always believed. Yet there are so many passages in the Bible that tell us that we should not fear. Joshua is told many times to be strong and courageous. Throughout Isaiah and Jeremiah the people are told “do not fear.” And just today I was reminded of how we should not fear through reading John 14, and in particular verse 1: “ Do not let you heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.”
Today I read a passage from Meditations of a Hermit, by Charles de Foucauld, who proclaimed, “One thing we owe to Our Lord is to never be afraid.” He went on to state that to have fear causes 2 issues with God. One, fear means “that we forget him; we forget he is with us and is all powerful.” The second is that our fear means that we have not fully accepted “thy will be done,” since all that happens is according to the will of God. Now for me, faith without fear is something that I need to work towards, because there are truly moments that I have plenty of fear. But when I am reminded of what my fear represents (my lack of faith that God is truly there and my lack of faith in what God has ordered for me), then I believe that I can work on living a faith without fear.
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