Fear Not, Part 3

Yesterday we ended our study with a discussion of being whole in every part of our lives. God wants us to enjoy our lives to the max, and we cannot do that if we are always dreading and fearing and worrying about everything. God is our Heavenly Father Who wants us to lean entirely on Him and cast the whole of our cares upon Him for He cares for us with great love.

In Matthew 10:31, Jesus told us: Fear ye not therefore; ye are of more value than many sparrows.

You are very valuable to the Lord. He paid the ultimate price for your well being in every area of your life when He laid down His life that you might live eternally. He saw your face when He was struggling in the Garden of Gethsemane and when He hung on the cross as your substitute, bearing your sins and sickness and disease. Can you see the value of that love for you? Let’s go back to where we started several days ago with 1 John 4:18---There is no fear in love….

The opposite of fear is faith. Fear is actually faith or confidence in what the devil can do. Faith is confidence in what God has done already for you. You see, the interesting thing about fear is that the devil and all his demons have been stripped of their power by Jesus and the only power they have is what we give them with our worry and fretting and doubt and unbelief.

I find it very interesting that we are the ones with the power, cowering under the burdens of whatever the world and our flesh and Satan put on us. Here we are as the giants cowering in fear from a little imp. Do you want to know why we cower in such fear? It is because satan has a way of blowing up into huge proportions whatever it is that has come against us until it looks like a huge mountain.

And I will grant to you that it seems pretty intense at times. That is when we must remember who is in us. Greater is He Who is in us than he who is in the world. Faith is putting our entire confidence in that Greater One instead of trying to figure out what we are going to do to get out of the problem or to rectify the situation. We must leave it in the hands of the Lord and follow His directions. That is really what trust is all about.

Your own natural children, when they were little, trusted you to take care of them. They didn’t spend all day every day trying to figure out how you were going to take care of them. They didn’t even give it a thought. They were too busy playing and enjoying themselves. Well, that is the way our Heavenly Father wants us to be. We are to be too busy enjoying life to even consider what we are going to do. Daddy will figure it out. I know that sounds like I am oversimplifying life, but haven’t we as adults complicated life by our intellects, by pondering what to do. The Word of God tells us to lean on, trust in and have confidence in the Lord, to cast the whole of our care upon Him because He cares for us with a deep love.

Instead of focusing on the problem, which brings a sense of dread and fear, we must focus on Jesus Who brings peace, joy, and faith to take care of whatever comes against you and me.
Psalm 27:1 states: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

There will always be challenges in life and situations to overcome. But we must also focus on the fact that God is always with us; He never leaves us nor forsakes us; He is our Heavenly Father and He has the power, the ability to take care of every situation we ever encounter and make us victorious and successful every time. It all hinges on our letting Him do it.