1 John 4:18 says, “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. ”
Act 14:21-22 says, “When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. ”
What was it like to be Peter or James or John or Paul? Each knew God personally, yet suffered persecution for telling people about Him. What about Abraham or Moses or Elijah or Jeremiah? Each of them were doing what God asked them directly to do, yet they suffered.
Even so, each of them could not be swayed from what God was asking them to do. When Paul was chained to guards in prison, he was singing. When Peter was due to be executed the next day, he was sleeping soundly. John was still exiled on the island of Patmos when he was 90. At 75, Abraham left all the security of his home village in a time and culture where all your security was based on your village. Jeremiah endured much persecution and isolation trying to get Israel to turn back to God before they were finally conquered and exiled to Babylon. Why were Mother Teresa and Billy Graham willing to dedicate their full life to spreading the message of God?
What drew these people to make such sacrifices. The power of the Gospel. The power of trusting God based on experience and being a part of His good plan for His children.
It is easy to get caught up in the troubles of this world and forget that it is a blink-of-an-eye time in our eternal life where we get to see the result of us running things our own way. An honest look around at all the strife in this world and we should recognize our ways don’t work. We each think our ways are best, but so do the people with whom we disagree. Our root problem is thinking we are right rather than trusting that God is right. But God works all our troubles together for good to grow and mature His children. Those that trust God’s ways will be ready for an eternity of wholesome relationships in a place far more beautiful than here.
One more sub-topic on perfect love casting out fear is the assurance that once you are saved, you will go to Heaven – guaranteed. There are some denominations that teach you can lose your salvation. But that goes against the Bible verses that say you cannot lose your salvation. They use verses out of their context and we go into those verses in our topic titled “Once saved-Always saved”. For example, Philippians 1:6 “He who began a good work in you will complete it” and Ephesians 1:13-14 clearly reminds us that salvation includes “a guaranteed seal by the Holy Spirit”. An important principle to understand is that it is God that seals us, not our fragile faith. The Holy Spirit will keep us from falling away.
God is our loving and wise parent. Not everyone has a good example of that in their life, but a loving and wise parent will love their child no matter how bad they become. They may implement some consequences or boundaries, but they will love their child their whole life. Good moms do that and so do good dads.
Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11 is commonly called the Hall of Faith because it talks about people that had seen enough of God to fully trust Him for the outcomes not yet seen. It lists the trials and hopes of the people in the list.
A small child may be afraid to jump into a pool, but if their loving and wise parent is there calling them to jump into their arms, they can overcome that fear. God is far more loving and wise than we can understand, but He gives us enough information to fully trust Him if we will just seek, listen to and trust Him.
Perfect love casts out fear!