Fear Not

Over the last few weeks I have been gripped with a new awareness of how much I fail in my relationships to truly LOVE, especially in my relationship with Jon. I love him more than anyone in the world, but after 3 years of marriage, and now pretty close to adding children to our family, I am being hit with a deep heart realization of the deficiencies in my character - patterns of interacting (or should I say re-acting!) that haven't changed all that much since Jon and I started dating way back in 2006. And I am realizing that many of these sinful patterns are driven by FEAR. Jon has told me for a long time that I have a problem with fear. And while I have agreed with him, I feel like recently my eyes have been opened in a new way to how crippled I am by fear, and how it's not just something to shrug my shoulders at, but is a deep, ugly, sinful root, from which many other sins flow. My defensiveness, my avoidance, my reactivity, my insecurity, my inordinate desire for the approval of others - all of these stem from fear. Fear of rejection, fear of conflict, fear of not being heard or respected, fear of being misunderstood... I am just a really fearful person. And I don't want to be! I am not content to minimize this sin anymore.

One of my favourite bloggers, Sara Hagerty, wrote a blog on fear called When Life Leaves You Flinching that I have been reflecting on, and one quote from this post that rings true as I wrestle with this is where Sara says: Fear grows, wild, where love does not. That line is like a paraphrase of 1 John 4:18, which says: 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. When I live from a place of fear, I am not living in love. I have forgotten that I am loved by God, forgiven and accepted into His family, regardless of my performance. And as a result, I am incapable of truly loving others. Giving way to fear actually prevents me from loving God and the people around me. I can only love God when I believe, at a heart level, that He has first loved me (1 John 4:10). And I can only love others when I am resting in that extravagant love of God. As Sara says, the love of God can't share a room with fear. 

So, my vertical relationship with the God of Love directly impacts all of my horizontal relationships with people. In my marriage, I can either relate to Jon out of fear or out of love. And when our kids come home to us, I can parent them either out of fear or out of love. The two are mutually exclusive. When I am giving way to fear, I am actually failing to love, which is a big deal! It's a sin against the God who purchased me with His blood. I am forgetting that I have not received a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but the Spirit of adoption as [a daughter], by whom I can cry, "Abba! Father!" (Romans 8:15).

Even though I am convicted about this in a new way, I'm so aware that this isn't just something I can change myself. I need the Holy Spirit to change me. I need to get the gospel deep in my heart more - to KNOW the perfect love of God that drives out fear. Yet, at the same time, I know that I still have a part to play in putting this sin to death, and I want to struggle with all of His energy that powerfully works in me (Col 1:29). One of the interns at our church preached a sermon a few weeks back and he talked about putting our feet on the throat of sin and killing it, in response to all Christ has done for us. That is what I want to do with fear in my life. I want God to show me how to kill this sin; how to repent in each moment when I am tempted to give way to fear. I want to love Jon, our children, and people in general, unconditionally... in light of the unconditional love that I always have in Christ.