This year I have decided to go back to basics with my verse for 2006.
I have been meditating on the idea of overcoming fear, the idea of servanthood, and the idea of love.
Going back to basics is personal for me as it is going back to one of my personal foundational verses. Romans 8: 28-39 "In all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us."
This verse talks about fear and about love. It reminds us that love overcomes fear.
One of the greatest hindrances to being "more than a conqueror in" this life is fear.
Fears can come in many forms. What are you afraid of? Sometimes it might be fear that comes from early childhood experiences leaving us with fears which can amount to phobias. Many of these are repressed fears pushed into the unconscious mind. Maybe these aren't paralysing types of fear which stop us from doing our best for God. However, fears which do hinder our Christian growth should be brought into the light of day. This can happen through the love of God. 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 How are we convinced of the reality of that love? Christ's death for us. This shows His great love which we may sometimes take for granted.

So what do we need to do?
1. We need to admit to the things of which we are afraid. Denial does not work. It traps us. It imprisons us. Fears are the gaol-like boundaries which keep us locked in and locked out from growth into the fullness of the Christian life.
2. Next we need to see that all fears are rooted in one thing - inner division. The inwardly united soul is the product of a person whose will, emotions and mind are held in the grip of Christ. One method of managing this inner division is to not expect too much - then you won't be disappointed. Another is standing aloof from love or from others - then you won't get hurt.
3. Thirdly we need to see the answer that comes from God. 1 John 4:7-21. There is no fear in love - dread does not exist; but full grown, complete, perfect love opens the prison gates and releases you from terror" (Amplified Version v18 and my words). We need to expand our personality to embrace God just as He embraced us through His coming to earth as a man then dying on the cross for our sins. The gospel message is positive, affirmative, revolutionary and expansive.
4. We need then to develop a self, made whole by Christ. Adam was whole, unified, in perfect harmony with God before he sinned. When he and Eve sinned in disobedience to God they were then divided in their minds and put up a willful barrier to God. (Genesis 3:10) We must not be divided by sin and other types of imperfect love. We must be single-mindedly devoted to God who showed His great and expansive love for us through his journey to the Cross. Fear cannot live in the presence of this love.

It does not mean that we do not love others, but that our love for others is secondary to our love for Christ. Our consuming passion for Christ subsumes the secondary passions in our life.
Stay with me.

This does not mean that our love for our spouse or our child or our siblings, or the potential love of our life is not important. It actually releases us to love these others in a greater way. We bow to Christ and we love others better. We have the greatest love of all in our lives and this casts out the fear that inhibits our ability to live and love to the full.

Romans 8:9-17 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear... (v15) The more we allow God's love to fill our souls, the more He fuses our inner division into a burning unity. There can be no room for inner fear when there is no room for inner division. Division confuses…love fuses.

One of the greatest fears in a person's life is the fear of feeling unloved. Nothing can expel that fear except a deep-down assurance that we are loved. We know that kind of love in the strong assurance of the Word becoming flesh. Jesus showed his love and service to good and bad alike which culminated in His final act of dying on the Cross.

We know that God loves us. Not because we are deserving and worthy, but because He can do nothing else but love. Nothing within us gives rise to His love, and nothing in us can extinguish that love. He loves, full stop. When we can get hold of that assurance then the fear of not being loved is an impossible fear, for we are loved no matter what we do or become.

Now the sad part of this is that although most Christians have grasped hold of this fact, but it has not grasped hold of them They understand it but do not stand on it. The power to be free from fear comes, as this understanding gets from our heads to our souls.

We are loved. Christ's life and death proves it. Do you believe it? Do you embrace it? Does your life show it? What does it mean to us as teachers and learners ourselves?
Romans 5:1-11 "But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

These verses talk about reconciliation ie bringing together what was broken apart. Remember Adam and Eve. They were one with God. When they sinned there came that great divide which is caused by sin - the separation of man from God. We can only come together through reconciliation. We can only be one with God through the reconciliation brought about by Christ's life, death and resurrection. God and Jesus were in it together and it was conceived in LOVE. Fused together by love. Father and son, sinner and sinless, husband and wife, friend and friend, teacher and student.

I Corinthians 13 talks about love. Faith, hope and love: and the greatest of these is love. Faith in itself is not enough. It was conceived by love. Without the love of God for us there would be no Christ and no need for faith. And as we recognise the goodness that is inherent in God's love, it gives us hope.

The Word does not say there is no fear in faith…it says there is no fear in love. Perfect love-capital L-casts out fear and releases us form gaol. (1 John 4:18)
The moment I begin to love His love, that moment I begin to love with His love. I love God with the love of God. And I love others with the love of God. God has loved me with His loving and thus has loved me into loving others with His love.

Once we grasp the fact that He loves us, regardless, then that love produces love in us in return. "We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19
It is not our love for him that casts away fear, but His love for us. That love awakens love in us, and we begin to love in response, begin to love Him and love others. His love begets love in me. This love is the heart of our faith.
Let me repeat this truth. It is not that you do not love the Lord enough. It is that you don't know how much the Lord loves you.

Galatians 2:11-21 "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." (v20)
Love begins and continues in the Christian heart when we allow His (agape) love to strike ours and create the same degree of love (agape) in us.

Back to the beginning of my talk. 1 John 3:1-20 "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us."
How does this lead us on the concept of service? Because the love of God releases us from being the centre of attention and frees us to give others our attention. Fear of not being loved, or other fears which lock us into self-attention, disappear as we know we are truly God-loved, and can turn ourselves to other-attention.

That is, because of God's love for us we can serve others. You are not afraid of people you love; you are afraid of people you don't love. You want to serve people you love, not those of whom you are afraid. It's like being finally set free from your fear prison because your awareness of the fact that god thinks you're ‘gorgeous' and then thinking now what do I do with this freedom.

We serve God and we serve others.

If we love and therefore trust God's goodness then we are not apprehensive about His will, about what He might ask of us. We love life more because it has real meaning. Loving God and serving others is what gives us purpose.
We do not fear life when we are truly loved, because where there is no love there is a sense of being weak-willed, a sense of being morally inadequate for life.
Where there is no love there will be fear of emotion also; we will be afraid to experience all of our feelings in case some might threaten or intimidate us.
Where there is no love our lives lack wise and unified judgment. We will fear intellectual inadequacy.

Remember, it is perfect love that casts out fear. And that kind of love is the love of Christ. God's good and perfect love. We can be more that conquerors, yes overcomers, through Him who loved us.

Life will have troubles. God is good, he loves you.
People will let you down. God is good, he loves you
Life becomes overwhelming. God is good, he loves you

In all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us.
"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us." (16)

Sue Skuthorpe
January 2006