Fear vs. Faith
Fear and faith cannot go together. They are two separate things working both powerfully to transform lives. The other one transforms you to become the best person while the other transforms you to become the worse. According to the dictionary, fear means “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat” while faith means “complete trust or confidence in someone or something; also, a strong belief in God…”
If you notice, the two have something in common – it is what you believed in or a mindset.
When you are motivated by fear, you tend to become self-defensive, protective, of someone or something or of yourself because of fear and pain. These could be due to traumatic past or a painful past caused by someone or something. Fear based relationships are often the most hurtful and most painful one could ever enter. Let’s say your partner had a past relationship with someone who cheated on him or her. The tendency of fear in your partner is that it will be passed on to you; he or she will doubt you most of the time even if you are not doing anything wrong. This is because of a traumatic past that hasn’t been broken in his or her life.
Faith on the other hand involves trust and risk that no matter what goes on you continue to love and move on because of your complete trust in God. You are confident that God can do something with your situation, with your relationship, with your dreams, finances, etc. You see, faith is simple while fear complicates.
Faith allows you to soar because when you place your trust in God alone, He will surely not fail you. If you put your faith in man, you might get hurt and disappointed because human beings are broken by nature and in constant need of a Higher Being which only God can accomplish, can complete and satisfy. Everyone needs God and that is why our faith should be in God alone.
Fear on the other hand is not the absence of faith but simply a lack of trust in God due to lack of knowledge and experience on who He is and what He is capable of. Fear can result to us trusting in our own capabilities and abilities which will really fail us.
King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived on earth said in Proverbs 3:5 that you are to “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
Fear motivates us to lean in our own understanding when we can’t understand things because of our traumatic pasts but faith motivates us to trust in GOD because we are confident in His Words and we have experienced the faithfulness of God in all things.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for being faithful to Your Word. Reveal any fear in my heart that makes me lean on my own understanding, remove it and increase my faith in You. Heal me of any traumatic past in my life and increase my sensitivity to see Your faithfulness in all situations of my life. This I ask in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.
