(by pastor Norman)

Have you ever been faced with a situation and fear has risen up on the inside of you? Will I lose my job? Where will the money come from? How can I deal with these symptoms? Is this the end of my marriage? Why do I have no peace in my life? Fear does not come from God. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim 1:7; NKJV). “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15; NKJV). Now these verses should cheer you up! When you think about it fear is the opposite to faith. We are to walk in faith (2 Cor 5:7) and there is no reason we can’t remove fear from our lives. Faith is a firm trust in God but fear arises when we lack trust in God. How then do we deal with fear? Well, the Bible tells us that faith comes by hearing God’s word (Rom 10:17). In order to build up our faith to resist fear we must meditate on all of the scriptures we can find on fear such as the ones above and other verses like, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isa 41:10; NKJV). We need to change our thinking (Rom 12:2), cast our cares on God (1 Peter 5:7), bring our prayer requests to God with thankful hearts and His peace will overwhelm us (Phil 4:6-7). Most importantly, we must walk in love for, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18a; NKJV).