From Fear to Love: Moving Mountains (2)

 

By: Carole L. Haines 

 We are learning that God’s love is understood by us in a twofold manner, this is based on the verse,  

“We have come to know and have believed that Love that God has for us.” (1 John 4:16)  

We come to know it, then we choose to believe it. This choice is pivotal because fear tends to cause us to remain where we are and hunker down, instead of stepping out in faith. We must make the choice to believe God’s love. My husband said this to me when sharing about this very thing. 

“Fear, worry and doubt put us in a defensive posture. When we are in this posture, we don’t experience God, Life, Each other and even ourselves the way God intended us to.” Bruce Nevin Haines 

Faith and fear are entangled with each other. Like an embrace that eventually becomes a strangulation. Faith is not the remedy for fear, as we learned in 1 John 4:18-19) 

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.“

But fear and faith certainly dance together. If fear is leading the dance, it decreases our ability to walk by faith. We must change dance partners in our life and let God’s Love be our new Lead. With God in the lead, we learn to trust Him more than anyone else, more than we trust ourselves, this yielding leads us out to freedom.
For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. 
(Romans 12: 3) 

We’ve each been allotted a measure of faith. Jesus says we only need a faith the size of a mustard seed. We have our little mustard seed faith, and we want to bring it and set it before the Lord. Then what? Where do we go next? What do we do next? 

One of the hardest parts of bringing something before the Lord is leaving it there. I get triggered all the time. I was just triggered by something this afternoon. What is a trigger, you may well ask? A trigger is anything that sets us back into an old way of responding or behaving. Those of us with Anxiety or Depression are triggered by different things. For those struggling with Addictions to food, alcohol, drugs, etc. The trigger will be different. 

 I think triggers are as unique as everyone’s experience and personality. But it’s important for us to learn what our triggers are and where they come from, so that we can be best prepared to respond to them in a healthy way. As we learn constructive ways to respond to fears, it will help us in moving our mountains. More on that next time. Be Blessed, Dear Believers, and I hope you are enjoying this LIVE study.