Stress,worry,fear etc & the Christian

Let's talk about fear today because that's been brought up a couple of times already. One thing I do want to point out however is that when we are feeling worried or depressed the root of those feelings is often if not always fear. If you think about it, it makes sense.

You're worried about not being able to pay your bills, why? Because you don't have the money and don't know where you're going to get it generally. So you pray that God will provide, but you're still worried. Why? Because you're afraid that He won't. You fear that He will decide for some reason--perhaps because you "haven't been good enough" lately that you deserve to fail and therefore He won't provide the money for the bills or the means to get the money.

Or let's look at depression. We'll use the bills scenario again. You're now depressed because you haven't been able to pay your bills and things are tight and have been for awhile. You've asked God for help but it doesn't seem to be forthcoming...at least not when you want it to be--like preferably yesterday or at least right now. So you get depressed. You're depressed in fact because you're afraid that God has abandoned you or somehow decreed that you are to be made to deal with it on your own without His help. You can think of all kinds of reasons that He has decided that. So the root of the problem is that you fear God has let you down and isn't helping or won't help you.

I'm sure we can each now look back at various circumstances in our lives and see where fear was the root cause of our worry, anxiety, or depression. Often the fear is that we somehow have failed God or that He has or will failed us. We know, every one of us that we're not worthy of any blessing we ask God for so when times get really hard we kind of assume that it's our fault.

Now, let's look at what God says about this.

1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

No "not made perfect in love" does not mean that the person isn't saved! It simply means that they are not "complete" in love yet. The original word translated "perfect" means more like the perfection achieved when we are complete, mature in our salvation.

Fear isn't from God unless it's the "Fear of the Lord". The fear we're talking about here began in the garden of Eden.

Genesis 3:9-10 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

Fear was birthed by the first sin and it is now part of our old sin nature. But remember at our salvation God gave us a new nature, and made us a new creation. That fear we feel from our sin nature is alien to our new nature!

Our whole walk with God from the moment of salvation to the day of the rapture is becoming more mature in our faith so that we express more of our new nature and less of our sin nature. Then on the day of our blessed hope, the rapture, we finally are rid of our sin natures for good and receive our new bodies.

As we walk with the Lord and grow in our faith we exhibit more and more of the fruits of that new Spirit within us:

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

As you can see the very opposite of fear is part of the fruit, the consequences, of living in our new spirit. There is no fear in love!

Anxiety, fear, depression--it's all replaced more and more by God's peace when we have learned to trust Him and trust His Grace and mercy in our lives, until it's totally gone.

God is the one who works this change in us, but we must cooperate with Him in this too. We must strive to always put Him first, stay in communion/prayer with Him and stay in His word to learn more of Him, for it is only through knowing Him better and becoming closer to Him that our new spirit grows. This is what it means when we say like John did, that we must decrease so He can increase.

John 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease.

The more we are filled with Him, the less our old sin nature will have it's way with us. The more we trust Him, and trust in His love and our salvation, the more we will know, not just believe, that we have no need to fear anything. This next verse from Romans shows this very well:

Romans 8:15-16 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Here are a couple of other verses to show you that fear isn't from God, but rather He desires us to accept His peace in it's place.

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Isaiah 26:3-4 You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Thankfully God also gives us some practical ways to overcome fear, anxiety,worry, depression etc. when we do fall prey to them. I've discussed this before in other studies but I don't think we've covered it here, so I'll go over it again tomorrow for us.

 

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