Tuesday, November 22 , 2016
You hear it in songs, you read it in poems, the idea that if the person you love the most, loves you back, nothing else matters. I was thinking about that truth recently as I heard an old song I hadn’t heard in years. It’s first stanza goes this way: “The snow is snowing / the wind is blowing / But I can weather the storm! / What do I care how much it may storm? / I've got my love to keep me warm.” The message of that tune is obvious: Bad days, problems of every kind, even strong cold winds don’t matter much when the love of our life loves us. That is especially true regarding God’s love for us.
Perhaps, that is what the Apostle John had in mind when he wrote: “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.” (1 John 4:18) If we’re honest we’ll all admit that fear plays a bigger part in our lives than it should. We fear things such as our finances, health, jobs, relationships, old age, even the day of tomorrow, and that can be understandable. Nevertheless, we should not let those thoughts cause us to forget that if God is with us and loves us, these things really don’t matter all that much. Living in constant fear torments the soul, or at least robs us of our peace of mind, and that is not God’s plan for our lives. In fact, Jesus said in John 10:10 that He came to earth so that we could have abundant lives. To live with continual worry or constant fear can never be considered an abundant life.
With this country still reeling from the effects of the depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said these now famous words to the American people in his 1933 Inaugural address : “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” I believe that, in Christ, this goes even deeper. We should not even be afraid to be afraid. What I mean is that worrisome or fearful thoughts will pop up from time to time. Let them come. When it does happen, however, those very thoughts should immediately point us to a greater truth that nullifies it all, the truth that God loves us. To me, the clincher to that truth is what Paul wrote in closing the 8th Chapter of Romans where he said that there is absolutely nothing or no one who can separate us from the love of God. This includes whatever fears we may have about our health, finances, jobs, or any other thing. Remember Tom Hank’s line in the movie, “A League Of Their Own”, “There’s no crying in baseball”? Well, I don’t know about that one. I do know that this one is true: There is no fear in Love. God’s perfect love drives it out.
God’s promise for today: (Romans 8:31 KJV) “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
