Sometime late in 2021, a phrase from 1 John 4:18 started running through my thoughts. “Perfect love casts out fear.” I’ve been wondering on that phrase and studying around it trying to figure out the mechanics of the thing. I have a lot of fear and I would love to be rid of it. It’s plagued me all of my life, and frankly, I’m tired of it. I want to be free and courageous and ready for anything God has for me.
The context around the phrase sheds some light.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 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. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 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 4:15-18
Perfect love is God’s love—and when we enter into relationship with Him through Jesus, the love of God is given to us through the work of the Holy Spirit. This confirmation of salvation takes away any fear of judgment we may have regarding the end times or the end of our days when we meet God face to face. The payment for our sin has been paid in full so we have nothing to fear. Jesus took our punishment for us on the cross.
But how does this help us not be afraid in other areas of life?
The answer came to me recently through an unexpected source. I was reading the book, “The Power of Showing Up: How parental presence shapes who our kids become and how their brains get wired” by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. The book is a simple yet detailed explanation of Attachment Science—how children, beginning at birth, form secure or insecure bonds with their primary caregivers based on whether or not they believe the caregiver can be trusted to meet their physical, emotional, and relational needs.
Children who have parents that attend to them when they cry, feed them when their hungry, make eye contact, play, cuddle, and do various other things on a consistent basis that communicate their love and commitment to caring for them form a strong attachment to that parent which also frames their view of the world.
Children who don’t receive consistent attentive care come to believe that the world is a scary place and they are on their own to meet their own needs.
Furthermore, children who are told to ignore their feelings (when parents say, “Don’t cry. You’re not hurt. They aren’t scary—go give them a hug.” etc.) learn they cannot even trust themselves and the messages their body is giving them.
These same children grow into adults who struggle with fear and have difficulty forming trusting relationships with themselves and others. This impacts every aspect of their lives, including their view of and relationship with God. But, as the authors state in The Power of Showing Up,
“History is not destiny!”
Science has shown us that children with insecure attachment can develop secure attachment with a change in parental behavior. Similarly, adults can learn to overcome the insecure attachment of their childhood by examining and understanding their past and then making changes towards secure and healthy relationships in their present.
“The acceptance and forgiveness that arise with making sense of your life are profoundly liberating. In many ways, we come to forgive ourselves for the adaptations we had to make, and to accept not only who we’ve been, but who we are now inviting ourselves to become…By doing your own personal inner work and earning a secure attachment, you break the cycle of insecure attachment and improve the lives of generations who follow you.”
The Power of Showing Up, p. 72
What hopeful words!
The most beautiful and profound lesson I have learned in this study of attachment is that just one healthy adult in a child’s life can make a profound difference for their attachment and development. And as adults, one healthy relationship can help a person heal from past developmental trauma.
We were made to help each other heal!
Beyond the human plane, we can also find healing when the one healthy relationship we enter into is with Jesus. We often struggle with our relationship with God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit because we attribute to the Trinity the attributes of our parents. We may feel God is cold and distant, angry, or unable to meet our needs in some way.
But if we can realize that any belief about God that is negative is also untrue, we can begin to accept His perfect love toward us. His perfect love can heal our brains and restore to us a sense of peace and belonging we may never have experienced with a human being. God is the perfect parent who is always there to help us through, even when trouble comes. God will never leave us or forsake us. (Hebrews 13:5) Furthermore,
“Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
– Romans 8:38-39
If we can learn to open our hearts to God’s healing, He will make us new. He will heal our broken places, filling the cracks with hope and courage and new life.
The fear that has been my constant companion for years may always be a struggle to some degree, but it doesn’t have to be the defining feature of my life. Leaning into God’s love and power and truth can make a way for me when I haven’t been able to see a way forward in the past.
I believe He can do the same for you.
I’m praying that this year LOVE takes the wheel in our lives and leaves fear on the side of the road. Will you join me? Let’s be road trip buddies into the freedom of God’s love and purpose for our lives.
I am guest posting today at JosephIregbu.com. I hope that you will drop by his site to read the post “Do It Afraid” but also stay awhile to be encouraged by Joseph’s writings and his story of hope. (Which is pretty incredible, I might add.) Sign up to receive his posts via e-mail and you will also get his free e-book, Lines of Impact. You might also want to check out his 90-day devotional called Selah: A 90-Day Journey of Grace and Peace. It’s a great encouragement and available on Amazon. Joseph has been a personal encouragement to me and his writings have blessed my heart. I plan to have him guest post here soon, but for now, please get to know him on his home turf.
“I’m overwhelmed.” “I have so much to do.” “I don’t have enough money.” “How is this ever going to work?”
Sound familiar?
There are times in my life (like today) when these questions and a dozen more crowd my mind and make it hard to breathe. If I allow myself to play these thoughts in my mind, by the end of the day I am completely overwhelmed, frustrated, discouraged and have accomplished nothing. Why? Because all of my energy was wasted on worry.
David understood this very thing. In Psalm 61 he prays to God and confesses that he is completely overwhelmed. He requests help to remember that he had a higher power, a shelter, a strength that was greater than himself and his problems. We need to do the same.
Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer. From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I. – Psalm 61:1-2
We have a Rock to run to for protection from the storms and for safe haven from the rushing waters that threaten to overcome us. We can choose to stay where we are and drown in our emotions, or we can cry out for help. We can’t climb the cliff ourselves, but when we call on the Lord to rescue us, He is quick to reach out and lift us to safety.
Your circumstances may not change. You may still have a to-do list a mile long and a list of bills to equal it. What will change is your heart. You will have peace that no matter what happens, Christ has a hold on you. You aren’t going to fall to your death. You will be able to take one step at a time with a mind free of worry because you have given your fears over to the only one that can really do anything about them.
Sometimes I think we women tend to worry and fret and plan and manipulate as a way to control the situation. We feel that handing our fears to God is giving up. We think that if we let Him work out the details that things won’t happen the way we want them to. But what we fail to realize is that we aren’t in control no matter how much we try to be. The only thing we are doing when we hold on to our worries is adding sin to our already difficult situation. This pulls us away from God instead of drawing us to Him.
So the next time you are tempted to push play on the recording labeled “What am I going to do?” push pause instead. Take a moment, or several if necessary, and take your concerns to God. Let Him know what the problem is and ask for Him to intervene. Ask Him for the peace needed to think clearly, the grace to leave the problem in His hands and the wisdom to know what to do when the time is right to act.
Do you have a special verse that you turn to when you feel overwhelmed? I would love for you to share it with us in the comments section. It may be just the thing that someone needs to hear today to take courage in the trial they are facing.
Everyone is afraid of something—and not usually just one something, but a lot of somethings. The list of common phobias is extensive.
Attribution: KickAss Pics (Forgive the name please. I didn’t choose it!)
Reactions to fear
Avoidance
Fear can be paralyzing or motivating depending on how you handle it. Personally, I am afraid of spiders. I don’t care if they aren’t poisonous, there is something just inherently evil about something with that many legs creeping about my house. My common reaction to spiders is avoidance and delegation. In college, my friend Naomi was my designated spider killer (and I kept her quite busy). After college, my roommate and I had a deal. She killed the eight legged creatures and I disposed of the lesser legged intruders. It was a great partnership.
Procrastination
There is also a great deal of fear wrapped up in my writing. This manifests as procrastination. What if I say the wrong thing? What if someone disagrees with me? Will people expect me to have all of my life together and be disappointed when they find out I have a basketful of faults that I struggle with every day? If I let it, these fears will keep me from writing. They cause me to delay posts my heart is begging me to share and they turn every chapter that I write for publishing into a spiritual battleground.
Motivation
My greatest and most personal fear is personal harm. I believe a lot of people share this fear or something like it and that it is paralyzing us in our efforts to reach the needy of this world with the power of Christ. However, I believe that my fear of being raped is part of what motivates me to fight on behalf of the thousands of women and children that face that reality every day in the multi-billion dollar sex industry. The Lord has given me an enormous burden and passion to help these souls, in part, because I am so afraid of becoming a victim myself.
Control
When Jesus visited the Gadarenes in Mark chapter 5, he had just performed an amazing miracle. He had cast out a legion of demons from a man that had been so tormented by them that he was forever crying out and cutting himself. Any attempt to restrain him had failed. So the people of the town avoided him as he roamed the graveyard and mountains near the city. Jesus came along and had compassion on the man. He cast out the demons who then entered a herd of pigs causing them to run into the sea to their deaths.
You would expect the people to be angry at their loss of livestock and income at such a turn of events, but that isn’t what the Bible says happened. It says that when the witnesses to what happened told the other townspeople, they were afraid and begged Jesus to leave their region. I’ve always wondered at that. It would seem that if they weren’t angry at him for the loss of the pigs that they would be grateful that a legion of demons had been sent away from this neighbor of theirs, and by nature of his proximity to their families and homes, had been afflicting them as well. But instead of offering their thanks and praise, they ran Jesus out of town.
Results of letting fear rule
Recently have I started to see this story in a new light. I realized people are afraid of what they can’t control and what they don’t understand. Things like homelessness, human trafficking, divorcees, single moms, low income families. These problems don’t have easy answers. Dealing with people in difficult circumstances can be draining, costly and even dangerous. So instead of showing them the love of Jesus and letting loose the power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts as we minister to them, we turn away, avert our eyes, come up with excuses not to help, turn the channel on the news broadcast, or even blame them for being in such a mess. We do what the people of the Gadarenes did—we ask Jesus to leave us alone.
What are you afraid of?
So I wonder—what are you afraid of? What is it that you feel motivated by the Holy Spirit to do, but that you aren’t sure what might happen if you try? Is there something you’ve always wanted to attempt, but never felt like you were qualified or the time was right? Jesus wants to do amazing things through us to change our lives and those in our communities. We have to let Him work through our fear. We have to invite Him into the mess and let His Spirit cast out the inner demons keeping us trapped in complacency.
Face your fears with Jesus
Let Jesus bring life and healing into your fears. Can you imagine what other miracles the people of that town missed out on because they were afraid? Don’t be like them. Face your fears and let Jesus have His way with them.
