| | 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.
- 1 Jn 4:18
A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
- Spanish proverb
Fear not that your life will someday end. Fear only that you do nothing with it.
- Unknown
Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled
potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
- Pope John XXIII
A Coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man dies but one.
- Shaekespeare's Julius Ceaser
God continues to reveal the fears that I carry...and encourages me to walk directly into them with only clarity on a single outcome...freedom to face my fear. I've prayed that events unfold in my favor, but I don't have clarity on the specifics of how things may turn out. Even as I write this I sense how distant I am from my own heart...and yet appreciate that I know myself more than ever before. Yet I can be tempted to manage my desires and assess outcomes and make 'reasonable' decisions based on the facts. This last year I've chosen to pursue the desires of my heart and yet I walk in fear desperate for the outcome to go my way...and prove that God is good and that I'm hearing God accurately.
Oddly (at least to me) I've sensed God chuckling when I bring this concern to Him. I sense Him saying that a life fully lived is messy...period. Its just not predictable, but is passionate, joyful and free! I (and I think all of us) are attracted to a person pursuing their heart / passion / destiny! So God has been reminding me of my passions over the last year...and yet, I've moved toward my passions with one hand on the brake. I'm discovering what's slowing me is fear. God is revealing the face of festering fear roiling inside me.
I've clung to Him over the last years as I've faced deep fear after deep fear. Always asking Him what to do...and He has been merciful to advise me and I've been amazed at the positive outcome. Jn 15:15 "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you." I now sense Him telling me that I am His friend. As friend I can seek Him, seek to know myself in pursuit of my desires and lay down my fear as I experience His perfect love.
So I now say thank you, Lord, for who I am...the passionate man you've shown me to be. I say yes, Father, to what is offered each day...as a good gift...and choose to lay down my fear, without foreknowledge, but only faith. I say yes, Jesus, to speak radical truth...I choose to trust you!
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| | Posted 5/9/2009 11:37 PM - 14 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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