All Things Nu

The Solution to Fear

There is a bottom line to fear.

There’s a lot to say about fear. This is part 20 in the series, after all. No doubt, fear is complex and multifaceted.

For being so intimidating, though, fear has an Achilles heel. A Waterloo. In fact, when you get right down to it the solution to fear is … well, pretty simple.

It is love.

I realize how trite that sounds, how insignificant and soupy. But play it out in your head.

Think of what fear does, how it operates. Fear questions. It introduces doubt. It divides. Fear minimizes and marginalizes. Fear distracts. Fear is inwardly directed, and is a catalyst for selfishness. Where fear is, there is defeat and depletion and fatigue.

Fear does all this by remaining hidden, flying under our radar. Fear hides in the shadows so that we’re never really sure why we’re afraid or even what it is that makes us afraid.

Now contrast that with love. Love accepts. It resolves and clarifies. It introduces trust and security. Love draws near, and unifies. Love prioritizes and maintains. Love excels. Love focuses. Love is outwardly directed, and is a catalyst for sacrifice. Where love is, there is hope and desire and passion and commitment and energy.

Love highlights. It reveals itself, turns on all the lights and removes all the secrets and doubts. Love cannot, will not, be hidden.

“All We Need Is Love…”

So, it’s really that simple, eh? Let’s just love more. Bring home flowers, give away clothes or money, buy a gift; random and intentional acts of kindness and service … loving stuff?

Not necessarily.

Fear is not an activity. It is a state of being. It is an element of identity. We act afraid because we are afraid.

And so it is with love. Love is not an activity as much as it is a state of being. We don’t perform acts of love to become loving people. We perform acts of love because we are loving people. The action is a product of what’s going on inside.

That’s why John (who incidentally named himself simply as an apostle “whom Jesus loved”) could say that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4.18). Love displaces fear. It pushes it aside. Fear must retreat in the face of love, in the same way that darkness retreats in the face of light.

It’s no wonder we stay afraid. Fear remains powerful as long as we continue to set our focus on trying to defeat fear. That’s like trying to be clean by not getting dirty: It works so much better when we just take a shower.

There is a better way, a most excellent way.

God Is Love, and So Can We

God is love. God loves us, no denying. But the reason he can love us is because he is love. Perfect love.

If Jesus is God, then Jesus is love.

If God’s work in the lives of his followers is to make us like Jesus, then we can be love. As we progress through our faith journey, we can be transformed, increasingly so, into an identity of love.

If we can be increasingly identified by love, then we will also be less and less identified by fear.

As we are identified with love, we are removed from fear.

This is the final solution, the key to unlocking the great mystery that is fear. It is possible for us to live without fear. To live each day less and less under fear’s influence because we live each day under love’s influence, united with God.

We will love, more. And so we will fear, less.

So now, I encourage you to invite God into a conversation as you ask yourself,

“What needs to happen for me to be more identified by love?”