Perfect love casts out fear

My husband and I had a lovely chat last night after bible study. I'm not really sure how our conversation got started, but we were talking about God's love. John (my husband) said he felt that God was in the business of really showing everyone His love recently. I believe this to be true.

Lately, a lot of people have been mentioning in conversation that God has been showing them His love and how great it is. John and I don't know why all of a sudden this seems to be a big theme for God, but we feel that it is. Of course God's love was and continues to be great, it just feels like lately He's really making it a point to be known to a lot of people.

I can say this is true in my own life. I think I posted something a few weeks ago about God telling me how much He loves me. It was the first time God told me that (as least I think it was...I don't remember any other time). I know God has always loved me, but He never told me until recently and it really changed my life. It changed my perspective on who God was and is.

I'm going to try and make sense here, so bare with me. Sometimes I have a hard time expressing myself through words. Growing up, when I learned about God, I painted this picture of a very powerful, scary God. It was as if God was up in heaven just waiting for me to mess up so He could punish me. It didn't help that people in my life used God as a scare tactic. I was told that if I was sinning and the rapture happened, I wouldn't go to heaven. So if I was thinking a bad thought and Jesus came back, I was going to hell.

As you can imagine, this scared me and I became afraid. So, I got saved every night before I went to sleep (because if I didn't I was going to hell) and I raised my hand every Sunday when the pastor asked who wanted to accept Jesus (side note: I've accepted Jesus like 9084082934 times..kinda funny looking back). It's no wonder that I painted a scary image of God.

All this fear became a struggle in my life and once I gave way to a little fear, it took over everything. It started out being fearful of hell. Then, dying. Then, ghosts. Then, the dark. Then, sleeping alone. You see how it just spiraled out of control.

I lived in bondage because of fear. I was too prideful to admit it so I never got prayer for it. I just lived with it.

One day, it got so out of hand, I couldn't live a normal life. I was afraid of everything. I hated waking up because I knew my day would be spent "looking over my shoulder." Finally, I got fed up and asked for prayer. I got prayed for two separate times at our small little bible study. I can tell you, you don't need a church full of people to pray to make things happen. The first time I got prayed for I was healed. I just know I was, but the fear crept in one day and I let it take over again. A few days after that, I refused to spend a life in bondage so I asked for prayer again. Since then, the fear has been gone.

I can honestly say at that point, I was free from fear. However, it felt like the fear was always there, knocking, wanting to be let in. I felt I had to be very conscious of the things I watched, listened to, talked about, and thought about because the fear could have very easily slipped back in....well, until now.

God has been showing me His love. He has told me and shown me how much He loves me. This has changed my life completely. I see a new God, a loving God, for goodness sake, I can see a smiling God. This new God I've found has revealed to me a perfect love. So I can finally say that the fear is completely gone. It's not in the back of my mind...it's gone. Completely gone. I feel so free. It's such an amazing feeling to be free.

I am free "Because perfect love casts out fear" - 1 John 4:18