12-12-14

Good Morning All,

         1 John 4:18; “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

       I remember as a kid I would stay up late on Friday nights and watch the old movies that used to come on after the 10:00 local news.  They were usually from the 1950’s and earlier; a lot of times they were black and white.  Once in a while they would be foreign.  This was my first experience with the mouths moving but not matching the words.  There were a variety of movie types.

    One that I vividly remember starred Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.  It was entitled “Scream and Scream Again.”  I sat there and watched the whole thing and then sat in my bedroom with the light on all night.  That was one of the scariest movies that I have ever watched.  I still think the old movies are scarier than the new ones.  The old ones relied on camera angles, careful editing and solid acting.  Today it relies on computer graphics and effects.  Yet as I watched that old Vincent Price movie; I was very afraid.

     There may be different times that you were very afraid and not have anything to do with a movie.  Sometimes the most fearful events occur in real life; events that can cause us to leave a light on all night and to sit in fear.  It might be a sudden illness or a sudden death.  It might be a prolonged illness.  It might be a loss of a job.  For some it is actually a stretch of time where their life is going fairly smoothly.  These folks are just waiting for life to turn against them.  We live in fear and we live in fear because we fear punishment.  We fear punishment for sins we have committed.  We know these sins and the devil knows these sins and he reminds us of them any chance he gets.  We live in fear.

    Yet Jesus came to remove the fear.  Jesus came as God’s perfect love faced all the challenges that we face, even facing down the devil and death itself with God’s perfect love.  In that perfect love, whole and complete, God displayed that perfect love by giving the victory that Jesus earned over death and the devil to us.  He gives us the victory and along with that he gives us love and peace.

    Yet since we are not yet perfect, we still experience bouts of fear.  We still fear even when we know that we have nothing to fear.  When this fear occurs, we can only look to God, clinging solely and totally to his grace.  When we cling to God, through faith, we trust his perfect love to conquer our fears.  It is we have and it is all we need.  Our imperfect love will fail but thanks be to God that he gives to us the victory.

Father, when my fears arise; lead me to look only unto you.  Guide me by your Spirit to rely on you.  Be with those who are in fear right now.  Calm their fears, give them peace.  Lead them into your wondrous light.  This we ask in the precious name of Jesus our risen Lord, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret