Work Out Your Fear

What do those things you fear reveal about you? Have you ever considered the need to evaluate your responses to your particular fears, the ones that seem to paralyze you from responding in positive and constructive ways?

Are your fears real, or are they based on valid reasons? Have you conditioned your thinking over an extended period of time and your fears have now become deep rooted and captivating? They are settled in and you are left terrified and threatened by them? You live in constant vigil and are controlled by what if, and an imminent when? When will what I fear reveal the truth about me? What will others think? Can I face the truth about myself?

Usually we are afraid of those things we dread about a situation, person, or experience. Dread reveals a reluctance to be placed in a situation as the experience of it causes anxiety. It reveals what our deep thoughts and heart focus is. We are terrified and shudder at the thought of what will occur.

Dread and anxiety reveal our innermost weakness, and we don’t like it. We hate what our fear exposes, and we hate the control our fear has over us.

What are those fearful things that hold you captive?

1. Self-image – what others think of you, how they see you?

2. Your weakness being exposed – fear of man?

3. The consequences of what you fear, and how you’ve allowed it to affect others?

4. How denying your fear escalated a problem creating deeper and more significant problems – for yourself, and others too.

When this has become your reality, it proves your love of self, preservation of self – your self-image is more important than doing what is right. True love is far from your actions. You are controlled by love of self. You hate your fear, but love yourself too much to expose it and work through it.

It is time to face reality – love and hate cannot coexist. One will be victorious over the other. It is time to work through your fear – those things that hold you captive.

Which is it?

Face the facts.

• 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).

• For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control (2 Timothy 1:7).

• For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" (Romans 8:15)

• Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:28-29).

• A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breathes out lies. A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain, but knowledge is easy for a man of understanding (Proverbs 14:5-6).

• The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will (2 Timothy 2:24-26).

#fear