What is the difference between serving from Fear and serving
from Love?
Fear is defined as (taken from Dictionary.com):
1. a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil,
pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of
being afraid. Synonyms: foreboding, apprehension, consternation, dismay, dread,
terror, fright, panic, horror, trepidation, qualm. Antonyms: courage, security,
calm, intrepidity.
2. A specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling:
an abnormal fear of heights. Synonyms: phobia, aversion; bête noire, bogy,
bogey, bugbear. Antonyms: liking, fondness, penchant, predilection.
3. Concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's
safety.
4. Something that causes feelings of dread or apprehension;
something a person is afraid of: Cancer is a common fear.
I don’t know about you but the God I serve is none of these
things. See when you serve God out of fear of hell, fear of lack (I won’t get
blessed if I don’t do this or that for God – ritual praise), or fear of others
then you are unable to experience the freedom and joy that comes from serving
Him because of all the emotions/feelings fear creates. No wonder you can’t
connect to God when you think of Him as this distressing evil dangerous God who
is ready cause you harm, pain, or destruction – this is totally against God as
His word tells us in Jeremiah 29:11 that He has plans to bless us and makes a
point to tell us that He does not wish to harm us, in fact, He desires to give
us a “hope and future”! Does this sound like someone you should fear with dread
and apprehension?
[For those who have accepted Christ], God is our Father!
Jesus taught us to pray to Him as “Abba” which means Father (or O Father) in
Aramaic (Romans 8:15), this means that He is not looking for His children to
fear Him but love Him and honor Him with reverence (1 John 3:1). It can be a
hard thing to understand, especially if your father was harsh and angry (giving
you a reason to fear) or completely absent
- this could make it difficult to understand a Father/Child relationship
– but the initial relationship between children and parents was that of honor,
reverence, devotion and love- children were to trust their fathers as
protectors, providers, leaders, and spiritual heads of the home – sadly, this
is not the case in many homes today giving us an thwarted view of Who God
really is and how we should view Him.
God really does desire you love Him rather than fear Him
because that fear keeps a wall between you and He, it keeps you in
bondage. 1 John 4:16-18 reminds us God
is LOVE and in LOVE there is no FEAR, “God
is love…There is no fear in love…For fear has to do with punishment, and
whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” You can’t serve God from a
place of fear and a place of LOVE at the same time; that creates a division and
conflict in your soul that keeps you frustrated and easily accessible to the
enemy. See if the enemy can keep you in fear of God, he can then ensure you
will stay focused on works of the flesh that you “THINK” will get you to heaven
and keep you from hell...of course we know man is filled with sin, even sins we
don’t realize yet because God (in His grace) works on us little by little so as
not to overwhelm us. Therefore, when we try to attack sin on our own – apart
from grace and mercy of God – we always fail, and when we fail, we have guilt,
and that guilt produces fear, which drives us away from God – until eventually,
we just come to the point where we give up and we become complacent. All of
this equals BONDAGE/SEPERATION FROM GOD which is the enemy’s ultimate goal.
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