Believers should expect that God reasons through life’s issues differently. God’s thinking is the opposite of this world’s thinking (Isa 55:8). The world injects fear into people’s lives through media news, Internet conspiracy, social media gossip and slander, governmental controls, and mankind’s own inclination towards fear and suspicion.
Even though Christians know that “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7), our fleshly appetite for negativity challenges Christ’s sufficiency in these matters. Fear produces feelings of separation from God’s power and love, having no relationship with the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit always works to affirm God’s power and love, which always produces self-control. Anything else is not of God’s Holy Spirit.
Sadly, fear has become fashionable, empowering all kinds of wrong thoughts and behaviours. But in Christ, “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” (1 John 4:18). God’s children bow their feelings to the supremacy of God’s love, striving to grow towards His perfection of love within us (2Co 5:14).
Jesus even spoke reassuringly of the fear of martyrdom, “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…” (Matthew 10:28). While this world uses the words of people to shift your focus onto the enemy’s ability to hurt you, we rest in the unchallenged and eternal security of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus called His disciples to a belief that conquers inner turbulence, “let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1). This is big belief in a big God and a mighty Saviour whose relationship with redeemed saints cannot be sabotaged.
Christians are not victims, crippled by those who oppose Jesus. No, “…everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4). Christian faith governs emotions and should focus on Jesus (Heb 3:1), who is the risen and ascended Son of God. There is no-one greater, no-one more powerful, no love more pervading, and no foundation more secure than the Lord Jesus Christ. “Everyone then who hears these words of mine,” Jesus said, “and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock” (Matthew 7:24-25), this rock is Jesus – Hallelujah!
Such belief puts “on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thessalonians 5:8). Worldly thinking should no longer enslave the minds of believers through human arguments which reduce Christ’s redeemed people (Gal 3:13) to being victims. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
The apostle John reminds us that “we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He [Jesus] is the true God and eternal life. 21Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:18-21). We live in the understanding of things known about Christ, not in the unknown and uncertain speculations of this world. Jesus empowers us to put to death those idols of the heart which speak lies into our emotions and beliefs. Jesus rules all things, and in Him we trust!