“My perfect love casts out all fear”.
I know this
is a passage out of Scripture, so I pick up my Bible, along with my pen, my
notebook and my coffee and head into our early morning conference.
I John
4:18 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves
torment. But he who fears has not been
made perfect in love. We love Him
because He first loved us.”
In this
life long crazy “journey with Jesus”, He leads me along some unfamiliar pathways.
When the Holy Spirit enters a life, one can be sure that changes are about to
take place. Habits will be changed and
the old ways will be ditched, but not always as we might expect or in ways that are
easy to manage.
The Lord
operates on a whole different plain than we do.
His thoughts and ways are so much higher.
I think about the raising of Lazarus and how Jesus turned a funeral into
a party and a celebration of resurrection life.
All Mary and Martha wanted was a healing for their beloved brother. But instead they got a firsthand outrageous
lesson on the Deity of their good “friend” Jesus and His power over death.
Perfect love
casts out fear.
For years,
I have thought about that “perfect" love as being the love of God for us. His perfect love for His created and in
Christ we need not fear. Today as I
ponder His words, a different perspective begins to emerge.
The Holy
Spirit reminds me that His fruit is love; unconditional love, perfect
love. When I stop the usual thought
stream, and application of His love for me or my love to my temporal world of people,
I can pick up on another place of application and that is my love relationship with
my Lord.
I confess
that just like Jesus said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing”, when it comes to
operating in love, there is never a greater truth told. Human love is selfish and conditional, self-exalting
and self-centered in what and how it tries to bring the benefit to self.
Unconditional
love is the ultimate virtue for man.
Unconditional love held Jesus on the Cross.
Unconditional
love for each other is not the only place of necessary operation. Unconditional love for our Lord and Savior, our
Heavenly Father and indwelling Holy Spirit is a place where many of us may not
be operating at that depth of love.
Perfect
love casts out fear.
If I feel
a perfect love from God, all the fear of judgment and punishment goes
away. But if I do not have the
confidence in the Lord’s perfect love for me, I might live in constant fear of
impending disaster. But then to switch out a
perfect love FROM the Lord to a perfect love FOR the Lord and the picture changes
somewhat.
Love is
the fruit of the Holy Spirit and apart from Him I cannot love as Christ loves.
Jesus, the
Son, loves the Father unconditionally.
His life and obedience unto that brutal death on the Cross is the
evidence of His unconditional love for the Father. Likewise, His unconditional love for humanity
was evidenced by that same brutal Cross.
Jesus
said, “If you love Me, you will obey my commands”. How many
are the times when His commands cross our human will and put unconditional love for
Him to the test?
The Holy
Spirit lives inside us to bear His fruit through our lives. His fruit is
nothing less than the virtues of Jesus AKA His character qualities. Over our lifetime, His role is to bring us
into the conforming image (character) of Jesus.
Today I
realize my human conditional love for my Lord where fear dictates, is less than
the perfect unconditional love that dwells (in potential) inside me. Today I
need to cast off the imperfect conditional love that fear exposes and challenges obedience and in repentance
ask the Holy One to work out and bring out His unconditional love for My Lord
as well as for all the humans in my life.
Today, I
pray I can begin to bear the fruit of His unconditional, perfect love for each
one of the Trinity in obedient surrender and live where perfect love casts out fear.
The Spirit
is calling. Can you hear Him?
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