16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 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.
– 1 John 4:16-18
Some of us find thrills in the emotional ride of having fear – we watch horror movies, we go to amusement parks, go skydiving, bungee jumping etc. For some of us, the idea of fear manifests itself in the adrenaline pumping, feeling of helplessness, or a haunting of bad experience and failure. We’d rather stay as far away from that feeling as much as possible. All of us have some sort of fear – whether we’d like to admit it or not.
Fear is put into the minds and hearts of people almost every single day in today’s society. It is often controlled and manipulated using fear and driven by fear. Whether on television, the daily newspaper, we read about shootings, diseases and epidemics, statistics about health, economic instability, political tension and so many other things. Even marketing tries to sell to us products or services influencing us to think we cannot survive or be socially accepted without them. The truth is, we cannot keep living in fear – it gets tiring, and it gets draining. It leads us into places where it becomes a curse in our lives. Because of fear we fight, we have war, divorce, depression, crime, and because of fear we have injustice. We have a society that hardly looks in the direction of hope. But as children of God, we cannot live in fear any longer. We must begin to live our lives in the hope and love of Jesus Christ.
It is so easy for us to look at reality before us and feel like we can’t overcome the issues and problems of our lives. The failures of our past lay heavy influence on our perception of the future that we can hardly see or believe that God could do much greater with you and I. For some of us, we tried, and we fell down and weren’t able to make it on our own strength, so now we’ve given up. We stay in that place of intimidation. But it is during those times that we need to trust in the Lord who loves us and keep pressing forward. We must begin to live in love and not in fear! Because God’s love is far greater than any hate. He in himself is greater than all that we could ever fear. His power is greater than any volume of darkness could behold. God’s authority is unfathomably above the enemy that attempts to knock us down.
The truth about God’s love for us is: God does not count our failures, nor does he assess our worth on our successes; He is not conditional in his love for you like those in your life who have walked away from you; His love for you is consistent and never changes, even when people have; God is not out to destroy you, but is always on the pursuit to love you more and build you up.
Today, may you live not in fear nor insecurity. But know that when we choose to live in love, we live in the authority of God’s hope, power, and authority.
Live in love, not in fear. Because God’s love is far greater than all we could ever fear.
One Year Bible (oneyearbibleonline.com):
Exodus 12:14-13:16
Matthew 20:29-21:22
Psalm 25:16-22
Proverbs 6:12-15
T H E O P H I L U S 
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