Fear. That's it. Fear
Fear is defined as an aversion to a person, place, activity, event, or object that causes emotional distress and often avoidance behavior.
Ok, so what is it. In the purest of viewpoints it is what drives our everyday lives. It dictates our schedules, our relationships, and even our love itself. Fear can put us in such a state that we cannot function otherwise without first considering our fear. It is amazing sometimes that we can even function at all with each other based on our collections of fears in our communities. Fear is what makes you lock your doors, hide your money, keep your kids indoors, limit driving, limit interactions with others, and even limit the love we have for others.
And lets look at that a little closer. We limit our feelings towards our fellow men and women based on our fears, whatever they may be. If we limit our feelings towards them, do we not also limit our feelings towards God himself. Are we the type of people that say I Love God completely, knowing full well that we do not mean it, knowing that our all knowing Lord knows we don't mean it completely. So if that is true, why do we even say it, are we afraid of what anyone would think of us if we said that yes I limit my feelings toward Christ based on my fear. Truth is, no one would ever say that, and sadder is the truth that most of us feel like this. Imagine when you walk into a social setting, church for example, and someone asks 'how are you?', what is usually your response. You lie, you and I always lie. What are we afraid of? How is it that we are less afraid of the judgment of the Lord than we are the judgment of our brothers and sisters. Why do we care so much what other people seem to think of us, and so little about what our God thinks of us, shouldn't it be the other way around?
Are you afraid of snakes? Why? Are you afraid of heights? Why? Are you afraid of cats? Why? Are you afraid of society? WHY?
Here is the ultimate conclusion in my eyes. Let me see if this can help you with your everyday fear. It 'IS' the fear of the Lord that drives all of our other fears. It is the fear of death itself that is the foundation of all our other fears, no matter how big or little they are. It is ultimately our fear of dying and facing the judgment of God, and God alone. So considering that, do these other fears even exist? Your faith in fear is not unlike your faith in the foundation of your governments monetary system. Money is just paper, you trust your government, and that trust puts a value on the money itself. A one hundred dollar bill is just a piece of cotton with the numbers 100 printed on them, it has no value, it has no meaning except the value you place on it, if you believe it, it is so. The same can be assumed of our fear. We place all of our emphasis on our fears. We let our fears tell us what we can and cannot do, where we can and cannot go, every aspect of our lives is based on whether or not we have the courage to do it. So if we place a value on our fear, doesn't it become that much greater, do we not empower it with qualities it does not have? If we were to put a whole bunch of counterfeit bills in the world would that not devalue money itself, you would not know what was real or fake, the system would collapse. Can't we do that with our fear, realize that fear is an emotion, it is not real, it has no value. You feel happy, you feel sad, and you feel afraid. Why do we live lives based on the negative aspects of our emotions, should not the want and desire to be happy be what dictates our schedule? But it isn't. We are a collection of addictions and fears.
And here is the final thought. We claim to be Christians. We claim to love our God and believe in his son Jesus Christ. We believe in the trinity and the resurrection do we not? If we truly believe that, if that is the life we are trying to achieve, what is there to be afraid of anyway?
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