All at the same time, Christ gives to us complete security and demands of us complete faith. It is His perfect love that casts out all of our fear, and even so, that perfect love requires us to walk by faith and not by sight. Total security and total faith, simultaneously. An unconditional comfort and a perpetual dependence.
Security in the world is found in control. When we start becoming unable to change or regulate something, our security starts to dwindle. We know that the world is not perfect, and that people make mistakes, and that nothing lasts forever, and so we fight to make things as perfect as possible, protect against as many mistakes as we can, and prolong and enhance the little time we are able to keep something (or someone).
Yet in the kingdom of God, it is precisely the opposite. Because while we are imperfect, God is entirely perfect. While we make mistakes, God precedes all things and all things are for His glory and He never falters. And while we are temporal and can know nothing on earth that does not pass away, God is even more certainly everlasting and eternal. And so we do not have to fight for our security when we are covered in the blood of Jesus. He is perfect. He is flawless. He is timeless. And all these things become ours when we profess Him as our Savior and leave our insecure, earthly lives to follow Him. We do not have to fight for them any longer.
But just as we do not have to fight for a security of our own, we also cannot cling to a security of our own. When we follow Jesus we are not allowed to take anything with us. He is enough. He is all that we need. And to try and carry things with us from our former life is to disown that truth. When we refuse to let God have control over a particular area of our lives, we are insulting the Cross because we are saying with our actions that His sacrifice was not enough for us. We cannot accept both the security of Christ and the security of ourselves, because complete faith in Jesus is too great a thing to grasp if anything else is in our hands. And so we must give up our control and accept His. We have to trust God with everything we have if we desire to take part in everything He has. And He has SO MUCH to give…we simply have to drop what we’re holding on to and allow Him to place His perfect, faithful, everlasting gifts of love, hope, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and joy in our empty hands!
The great thing about the fear of God is that when you have it, you don’t fear anything else. And that’s why discovering the fear of God is so important: because it is only when all our other fears are released that we can be joyful about not knowing what’s coming next.
