There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. -- 1 John 4:18
Fear has to do with punishment as regards the Lord. In our everyday lives, fear rules much of
what we do because we fear loss, injury, and harm. Another way to think of courage is to
consider the opposite state in one form of fear – a very common one – panic. When we panic we lose our presence of
mind. We lose control. We rush forward. Forty thousand years ago, out on the Serengeti,
if a human heard a lion cough nearby, panic had something of a place. We might not be descended from the folks who
did not feel the need to get elsewhere in a hurry, or who stood still and asked, "Whadaya reckon that was, Floyd? Floyd?". Nevertheless, the value of panic is very limited and
narrowly applicable only to immediate physical threats. Even then it can often do
more harm than good, as we see in the aftermath of human stampedes in stadiums
or on Black Friday at Wal-Mart.
Acting deliberately requires courage, and, while it might
seem paradoxical, being deliberate allows us to be decisive. Fear, you see, has already made the decision
for us. When we act out of fear, we act
without intention. We are driven by the
potential for loss or harm, and, if we are not careful, alarm-driven decisions
will become our default mode and our habit.
Many of us heading out to work in the morning are already in
fear mode. We are grabbing coffee and
bags, handing off other bags to the kids who have to get their coats on and get
strapped into the car seat. We fear
there might be traffic tie-ups between the house and the daycare, between the
daycare and work. We are in dread of
being late to work again. We do what
other people do all day long, following the herd, afraid that we might miss out
on some amazing, wonderful thing that we never enjoy because we are living in a
hurry.
I believe in saving for the future, saving for a rainy day,
investing wisely, working hard, and being prepared for difficulties. If, however, I lack the ability to control my
mind in courage, I will always be trying to save more, gain more, do more. I will live in constant trepidation that I
have made that wrong choice or that some great catastrophe is about to overtake
me. I will hurry through life, grabbing and snatching experiences and things while missing the meaning and significance that is available only to those live deliberately and patiently, breathing deep of the Spirit.
Some great catastrophe may over take me. But God is able to work all things together
for my good. Not all things are, of themselves, good. It doesn’t matter. My Father loves me, and, if I am willing to
trust Him, He will take crippling, devastating setbacks and turn them into good
in my life. Perfect love casts out fear.
As Paul puts it in 2 Timothy 1:7, God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. We are free to act with good, sound judgment, wisely, cooly, intentionally. Our
Shepherd is with us. We are not a flock
that may be stampeded over a cliff by the sound of the storm or by long shadows
of the lion, the wolf, or the bear.
