When God says, ‘Fear not,’ He’s basically telling us, ‘You’re going to have to deal with fear sometimes, but I’m with you and you can conquer it. You don’t need to be frozen by it.’ The Bible says, ‘Perfect love casts out fear.’ Sometimes we mistakenly think that Scripture means if we love God perfectly enough, we won’t be afraid. But the only perfect love is God’s love for us, and it’s unconditional. Knowing that He always loves us, walks with us, defends us, supports us, and has promised never to leave us is what casts out our fear. And it does one more thing too: it strengthens our faith. ‘Without faith it is impossible to please [God]’ (Hebrews 11:6 KJV). When we know that God is pleased to call us His children, we can begin to rise above our fears. When fear knocks on the door and finds us full of faith, it can’t enter. That’s why we need to regularly read and reflect on God’s Word and let our minds be filled with faith. Meditating on the Bible is a discipline that we have to learn.and it doesn’t always come easily if we’re inclined to lose focus. So it might require making a new habit, but we mustn’t get discouraged if we find it difficult at first. The Bible says, ‘We walk by faith’ (2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV), and we learnt to walk by getting up one more time than we fell down, one small step at a time, until we finally mastered it! If we set our minds on speaking fear-defying words of faith, the Holy Spirit will come to help and strengthen us. As one minister put it, ‘Courage is not the absence of fear, it is progress in its presence.’ So just keep progressing, and you’ll get there!
