“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom ‬‬shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

Psalm 27:1 (NKJV)

Everything that we will accomplish in life will be dependent on Jesus and our faith in Him. So, we need to shut the door on fear. It has been said, “Fear tolerated is faith contaminated.” And fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, whether real or imagined.

Fear caused Adam and Eve to get the wrong image of God. Adam said, “I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Fear only shows us the “naked” side of life and causes us to fear or imagine bad things happening to us, real or not.

All my life, before Christ, I imagined God waiting to punish me for who I was. Little did I know, the condemning thoughts I had were not coming from God but from the devil himself. The devil operates by fear. God operates by faith. Fear painted the wrong image in my mind. I saw Him, not as a God of love, but a God of paybacks, a God of judgement and punishment for my wrong doings. So, I thought, “If I am going to hell, I am not going sober!”

Like Adam, fear was driving me away from the very One that loved me and could help me. So, I ran from God for many years and one day, I ran right into Him and found out that God was not mad at me. He was madly in love with me. Fear is dangerous to the soul and destructive to our spiritual health. It is harmful to every relationship we have.

Pastor Cesar Castellanos says that the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. Fear is a spiritual force just as faith is a spiritual force. Fear produces torment and mental suffering. Faith works by love. The Word says there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Just as perfect love casts out fear, fear can cast out faith. Thank God we have been set free from a spirit of fear and have been given a spirit of love, power and a sound mind – the ability to have right thinking patterns.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
At the beginning of this year, Pastor Art encouraged us to live free and fearless. He said that in order to live free and fearless, we would need to operate in confident love. We can have this confident love by being like Jesus according to 1 John 4:17.

As Jesus is, so are we in this world. How is Jesus? FEARLESS. We need to be FEARLESS! This year let’s walk in FEARLESS obedience. Whatever He asks us to do, let’s do it FEARLESSLY. You must settle it that you are FEARLESS in Him. If we walk in bold love, we will walk FEARLESS. (Elder Henry Acevedo)

TODAY’S DECLARATION
“God has not given me a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind! I will walk FREE AND FEARLESS.”

TODAY’S BIBLE READING

• Old Testament: Isaiah 46-48; Proverbs 27:1-14
• New Testament: Luke 23:38-43; Hebrews 10:19-39