Fear Wants To Destroy Your Destiny

Those terrifying ideas and images flitting across your mind—so brief, but so permanent. Although the initial thought lasts only a second before it’s gone, it’s never fully gone. It returns over and over again to haunt you with its images. And worst of all, this is a worldwide issue. A battle. But not everyone knows how to combat this. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Fear.

It is the one thing that can stop you entirely in your tracks. The one thing that can hold you back like nothing else. The one thing that the world has agreed on for being very, very real.

I’m not being overly-dramatic when I say that fear can literally destroy you.

I so believe in the bondage that fear can hold people in that I’m actually writing a novel right now about overcoming fear. The story is called Dauntless Trust, and it’s about a girl who knows what it’s like to live a life full of fear and insecurity, but she learns how to let go of those fears and trust God no matter what.

Because this is what fear can do to you:

Fear holds us back from following God fully—it makes us hesitant, resistant, too nervous to act when He prompts us to do something.

And when we don’t follow God’s promptings and urges completely, we aren’t fulfilling our destinies. We aren’t stepping into who or what God has called us to be. We’re being held back and enslaved in the chains of fear.

Fear wants to destroy your destiny by not allowing you to reach your full potential in Christ.

I can’t speak for anyone else (although I can guess), but I can honestly say that there have been so many moments when I’ve been held back by fear from doing something that I knew God wanted me to do.

There’s a passage in the Bible that outlines for us the perfect strategy to living without fear.

1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one that fears has not been perfected in love.”

There is only one thing that can truly rid you of fear: perfect love. And there is only One who has perfect love: God.

It’s one thing to be in the presence of perfect love, but it’s another thing to understand it.

Fear is in the mind, so it can only be dealt with in the mind.

I think that 1 John 4:18 is telling us that when we truly understand and trust in the love of God, there will be no room for fear in our lives.

Think about it: I believe that if even for a moment, I understood the perfect love of God, I would trust Him so confidently that there would be no reason for me to doubt that He would protect me.

Look at what He did by sending Jesus, to demonstrate His plan of love and redemption for us. He made the ultimate sacrifice, and it was all out of love.

In Jeremiah 29:11 God says, “‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’”

God only has good plans for us. He loves us too much to give us anything less than His very best—Jesus demonstrated that when he carried the sins of the world on Himself. He didn’t have to. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t need to leave heaven in the first place. He had no obligation to do something like that for us. Jesus is God, and we are not!

But for some reason, He still did. He still gave up His very life for us. He even set aside some of His “God attributes” in heaven (Philippians 2:6). That reason was love.

I want to encourage you this week to keep an eye out for all the good things God does for you. Big or small, make a little list (I know it’ll grow!) of the ways you see Him demonstrating His love towards you.

As you meditate and focus on the deep love the Father has for you, you’ll see that fear starts to fade from the picture. Because when you understand the love of God, you’ll start to trust Him in a way like never before.

That’s what’s been happening to me, even lately. You can see in one of my blog posts, Trusting The Only One Who Can Be Trusted, I talked about what it looks like to trust that God is a God who keeps His promises—always.

And just like He’s helping me—as I come to understand and trust His perfect love—to overcome those fears that used to so easily hold me back, He wants to help you too.

I’ve certainly not “made it.” Fear sometimes still slips into my life. But you know what, guys? I’m gaining. I’m taking ground. I’m learning more and more how to trust God in every area of my life, and that’s important. Don’t let fear keep its grip on you: God has created you to be fearless!