Every thing, every action or reaction, every word spoken or message shared with others, is done out of either fear or out of love.
Are we trying to manipulate or control someone or some outcome when our words and actions are motivated by fear? Sure, when our children are little we need to instill the “fear” of some things for their physical safety like crossing the street, but when fear is the root of every word we say or every thing do, we are limiting ourselves and we keep ourselves from truly abiding in Christ.
When we live in fear, we give our peace, our joy, and our power away to others. Fear also has been shown to lower our immune system and cause stress. Some type of stress is always the cause of illness or disease. So not only are we giving away our emotional power to others or even to our own negative thought patterns, we are literally giving away our physical well-being.
In Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., he talks about fear, “Fear is so pandemic in our society it constitutes the predominant ruling emotion of our world, as we know it.” When most people think of fear it isn’t usually a fear for their physical safety. It’s anxiety and worry. Watch the news for 2 minutes or scroll through social media for 30 seconds and fear and anxiety can over take our thoughts and steal our peace of mind.
Any message from any person or entity whether media, a pastor, or even our own thoughts, if it is based in fear, it is not from God or of God. Every single message from outside of ourselves and every thought our mind has should be filtered to see if at its very core is it based in fear. Fear is used to manipulate & control. If something is done or a message perpetuated or if we speak or act or react out of fear, it is not from God. God is love and perfect love drives out fear. We may think that sharing a message that way is the only way to wake people up and help them see, but even a message shared out of wanting to help someone but based in fear is still manipulative. I can be guilty of this myself. I think it is such a default mode in our culture that we may not even know we are doing it.
When we dwell in the past and ruminate on things we think caused us hurt or shame ourselves for things we think we should have done differently, we allow fear to steal our joy. When we worry about the future, we allow fear to steal our peace.
When we use discernment to examine our thoughts or words from others and continually surrender our fear and anxieties over to God, we are “taking every thought captive” and “praying without ceasing.” This is abiding in Christ and when we abide in Christ we are able to be fully present in the moment or as Eckhart Tolle says “in the now.” It is then that we are able to live without fear. That is when we can experience the peace that passes all understanding.
Every person has a core fear. Becoming aware of that core fear and learning and understanding why we have that fear is the first step in learning to surrender it.
