Rising Fear

On top of the universal fear that God says enslaves every human being there are seasons of fear. Like the bush fire that moves from the understory into the canopy and then develops a life of its own, fear can feed off terrible, unexplainable and unstoppable events and flare into an all consuming conflagration. As Christians we can find ourselves shrinking back from a clear and assuring understanding of how the Gospel deals with and speaks about our fear. Fear and anxiety are mentioned widely in the Scriptures. We often confuse them in modern usage. Some get confused by what seems to be contradictory Scriptures in which all fear is cast out only to reappear in teaching about our everyday walk of faith. Where our fear is still flaring from our image of God, his presence or his absence then every present terror will fill us with dread. Where love has exorcized this dread then our life in this present world takes on a very different form. By grace we come on Sunday to consider these important issues.