Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

Perfect love casts out fear. You can’t be in love if you have fear. And fear displeases God because it is the absence faith. And you can’t please God without faith. So we must live continually in love not fear!

Perfect LOVE

Love is no joke. The difference of living in love and fear is simply the difference between life and death. Love connects us to God and His Life and fear places barriers up from our experiencing His Life. It is almost impossible to dwell in fear and enter love. While perfect love will cast out fear to confront its waywardness, we can’t actively choose fear and remain in love.

I have met many people who the love of God was actively pursuing them and they simply couldn’t access it. Why? It appeared they lived in unbelief and resistant to the truth of Love. I do know fear blinds us and makes us unable to love God, others and ourselves. This is the nature of fear. It robs, kills and destroys…life.

I have to confess that in the past I have dwelt in shame and fear and as a result closed my heart off to God. When I have gotten hurt by being vulnerable and loving, I chose to forgo the path of love to protect myself. It was just too painful, too much work and made me too susceptible to being hurt. What I found is while I assumed my heart remained “protected,” it also remained closed. Eventually I noticed that I began to wither and my joy wilted. After a season of protecting my heart from love, I would notice my relationship with God began to falter. Yes, being closed to love prevented me from living in His love and Life.

Fear of LOVE

Here is what I discovered, you can’t close off one part of your heart without killing it in total. To block yourself from loves reach and possible hurt, locks me out from all aspects of life. Resisting possible pain prevent me for the opposite, joy and wonder. I became a drone and mechanical to the tasks of life. To not love is to diminish life.

So as I walk this globe I am choosing to remain open to love. It is vulnerable and scary at times but the alternative is to be robbed of all the many expressions of life.

We recently had Charles Carrin (92 years old) visit our church to speak and pray with us. It was an amazing time. One thing I noticed about Charles is he was lavish to love. He didn’t protect his heart but gave out over and over. As a result the Word of God, the passion of the Spirit, and the joy of the Lord abounded from him. He teemed with life because he was opened to love.  He ends most interaction with, “Love you BIG!” These aren’t mere words, the truth is evident and demonstrated so obviously. I personally choose to follow his example and remain in love. Love is God and we connect to Him through loving not fearing or remaining safe.