How to Banish Fear
Hello my friends.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
1 John 4:18
To be perfected in love is to lose the fear that i deserve to be punished, that I am a mistake, that i need unhealthy help.
What do I mean by this?
That you and i need to be rescued by anyone but God.
Of course this is risky and fraught with the potential to misinterpret life and to attempt to go it alone.
For example, someone can read this passage or my words here and decide to go cold-turkey off medications. This is not to say, however, that it would not be best to ween off certain meds, but there may be a wise and a foolish way to do this.
Looking deeper into this one passage we can see that being perfected in love is something done to us, which implies that it involves a particular relationship — one with God.
Within the definition of love there is this idea of the need for relationships. One unhealthy attempt at loving one’s self is to exclude or downplay the importance of others. If nothing else, this is an unloving act.
Therefore, consider this.
Perfect love can only come from a perfect source and you and I are not this source. After all, we are the ones with fears.
And for me to receive this love and apply it to my life requires, not just changing my mind, but allowing my mind to be changed.
And my mind can only correctly and perfectly be changed when I am in fellowship with God.
This means it isn’t a momentary thing — a blinding lights sort of encounter.
Rather it is a daily walk and communion. It is stepping into the still point where other voices in my head can grow quiet in order for me to be changed by Perfect Love.
In time I will be able to learn to hear and trust a voice in my head that is absolutely for me coming from someone who I continue to grow in confidence that He will never leave nor forsake me. It is He who banishes my fears.