Grace in Fear

"Fear is not an indictment on your walk with God"

Today at church Jason talked about when fear dictates the direction of your life and at the end he said: "There's something some of you need to hear," which led to the previous statement. I am not a public cry-er. Ever. Yet... When I heard that sentence, I gave myself permission to be afraid and not feel guilty and my eyes teared up a bit. I will fall a thousand times when I am snowmobiling, hiking, ice-skating, ridding, and will pick myself back up again and yet when I am afraid... I feel guilty and don't know how to admit it to God. I feel like being strong in Faith of our God means that He tells me to do something and I do it with a smile; anything less and I'm weak.

The standards we hold for others are rarely what we hold for ourselves. If I heard someone saying what I just wrote, I would show them all of the verses which say how much God simply loves us. Unconditional love. Our heavenly Father does not have conditions on His love for us. The relationship between God and man is not a demeaning one where He expects us to be perfect.

II Corinthians 12:8-10

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.": Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ;s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

It's snowing outside at the moment. I'm in Starbucks watching it fall and thinking of God's grace and strength in the midst of fear. Whenever it snows, I think of one song by Lincoln Brewster: Amazed. The first verse says:  "You dance over me while I am unaware. You sing all around but I never hear the sound."