Fruit of Fear…

1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 

There is fear and there is love. And there is the fruit of each. It is the fruit that leads us to our response… fight or flight from fear… or an awestruck wonder from unconditional love. The fruit is the visible expression to our heart’s expectation of what is to come… suffering or security… grief or treasure.

Is our heart always correct in its expectation? NO! For some of us, the damage inside us has occurred because the two, fear & love, have become so intermingled that they “feel” the same and therefore demand the same flight or fight plan. If our expectation is always that of pain, there will be no difference in our response.

I have a little Sheba Inu whom we adopted. He spent his first two years of life in what was labeled a “Puppy Mill”. The label itself doesn’t always mean terrifying days and no safety of love, but in this case his reaction to just about everything is the visible expression of what he learned to expect. Whether it is, noise, people (especially men) toys, treats, whatever… our little Kobi flees. He doesn’t fight, but if we force our presence on him, he does stiffen up in hopes that we will not be able to do whatever we intend. All the love I have for him does not comfort him, nor will it comfort him until he allows me to come close and prove my intent. It is still up to him to be comforted no matter what I wish. The expectations he has are imprinted on his soul, it is anybody’s guess how long or if ever we can change his imprint to expect love.

Kobi is my little mirror (through which I see dimly) of how Our God… Our Almighty God… desires to love us with a love that is without any evil intent. “God is good all the time… and… all the time God is good!”(Remember my favorite line from “God’s Not Dead”?) THIS is truth! But my heart’s expectation, those things imprinted on my soul by 63 years of visible expressions of threatening power meant to control, not love, responds to God’s love with flight &/or fight. To respond with awesome wonder that draws me to Him like a magnetic field, would require that I change (or at least acknowledge) the expectations imprinted on my soul.

Unlike Kobi, I have the opportunity to CHOOSE the direction of my heart’s responses. But it would involve a change of ownership… A willing and willful choice to be God’s child (to give Him my heart)and to be trained up by Him (to give Him my soul) in the way I should go. Like Kobi, it is my “natural” reaction to hide in my kennel (which sometimes may be the church home that imprinted the wrong expectations – just like Kobi’s puppy mill home did) rather than give my heart away and begin again.

And… just like I celebrate when Kobi dares to trust me and snuggles beside me, or sits at my feet while I am working at the table, I know that God and all of heaven celebrates when I dare to trust Him… when I am drawn to Him in awesome wonder.

God does not deserve my flight or my fight, which is based in fear.  He deserves my awesome wonder because He loves me (in spite of knowing me inside out) and will never leave me nor forsake me!

To all the puppy mill churches/preachers out there… check the message you are imprinting on the souls of the poor little ones. You are representing the God of abundant life… when you are done being the powerful, controlling master of your little empire, and you will be done someday, please know that you will be held accountable for the damage that your words and actions have caused.

Matt 18:5-7 And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!

Perfect love casts out fear… there should be no stumbling block to perfect love. There should be no stumbling block to God because He IS perfect love… if your message or mine is filled with fear inducing threats of punishment &/or rejection by our God who came, and died, and rose again, then that message is from the pit of hell NOT from The Word of God (Who became flesh and dwelt among us).

Whether I am ministering to myself or another little child (for that is who we all are – little children) my message needs to draw me/us to, not send me/us fleeing or fighting. There is no message of fear that will induce us to pursue our God… only the awestruck wonder (also translated fear, meaning “awe”) of His love. Let’s stop trying to produce the perfect looking and acting kid and set our sites on encouraging God-loving kids.

Now that is the pack of children I want to be raised in!

**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB  version of the Bible