When you listen to the news, or get a disturbing update from family or friends, do you ever become really afraid?
God’s response is the same every time. Remember what is true: God loves me; the Son of God took human nature to Himself and lived for me, even to the point of crucifixion and abandonment by His Father so that we would never be abandoned. God is our refuge and strength. God bears witness to His love and will that we should live; I can see it in my heartbeat, in the sunshine, the growth of plants and animals and children. Review the history of God’s goodness.
Going through this process will relieve the fear, but that relief sometimes is fleeting. It’s easy to fall back into fear again, isn’t it? When we get weary of working through the cycle of remembering God’s truth again and again, it’s easy to wonder, “Why can’t I just be free and happy all the time, no matter what?”
If we were free and happy all the time no matter what, the human ego would take over and the good feelings would be for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways.
The fact that there is this struggle against fear and the cycle of remembering what is true is a witness to the fact that God has regenerated our souls. It is the soul’s perspective that is alert to fear and ready to engage that fear with this cycle.
When you are in the water, you can always feel the water on you; you feel yourself sinking with each exhalation and rising with each new breath. Living in the kingdom of God while in this body means that we will experience the sinking of our body, which is frightening. But the Word of God is living water and the Spirit of God is the next breath we take, reading or remembering His Word, truth, promises, and faithfulness. And we are not just bobbing up and down in a pond. God’s Word is living water that is moving us along on the path of life infinite.