Dave Andrews

We can overcome fear with greater faith in God’s love

‘For the Hebrews, faith involved a deep trust in the watchful love of God for all God’s children. According to the Prophet Isaiah, even in the midst of the most terrible circumstances, those whose hearts are centred in God’s faithful care “shall renew their strength, they shall mount up on wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint”.’[1] (Isaiah 40:13)

‘Perfect love is the one thing that has the potential to heal us of our fears.’ [2] John says his experience of perfect love created a place in his inner landscape where he could live without fear; and when he chose to live in the light  of this experience of perfect love, he was able to love without fear. He says: ‘The one who fears is not made perfect in love. Perfect love casts out all fear’’ [3]

But where do we find perfect love in an imperfect world? ‘Adult love inevitably re-connects us to our earliest experience of infantile dependence on our parents. And no parent is perfect, and no one’s earliest experiences of love are absolutely and consistently positive’.[4] ‘Parents are unable to carry the burden of offering perfect love to their children, as are children to their parents’. It is a mistake to expect perfect love from humans.’ This can only be met in God.’ [5]

‘There is no other source of love but God’. ‘While human love can never bear the weight of our need for divine love, it can teach us about divine love. Human love can communicate divine love. Experiences of human love make the idea of God’s love believable. The relative constancy of the love of family and friends makes the abso-lute faithfulness of divine love at least conceivable.’ [6]

‘Only perfect love can completely cast out fear. And since God’s love alone is perfect love, there is no substitute for learning what love really is by coming back to the source. God’s love is the original that shows up the limitations of all copies. Only his love is capable of making us into great lovers.’[7]

For John, perfect love – the love which casts out all fear – can only be found only in the perfect love of God. ‘God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God. We love because (God) loved us. We rely on the love God has for us.’   1 John 4:16,18

‘If God is love, he cannot be known truly apart from love. He cannot therefore, be known objectively.’ He can only be known subjectively. ‘Genuine knowing – personal knowing – involves much more than head knowledge. It involves the heart. One can encounter divine love only up close and personally.’[8]

‘It is possible to know God’s love personally, beyond simply knowing about it.’ ‘On being asked if he believed in God, the great archetypal psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, reportedly answered, “I don’t believe in God – I know God!”’[9]

Gerald May said ‘There is no leap of faith into this knowing. This (personal) knowing involves a leap – some would say a quantum leap –beyond faith.’[10] Will And Spirit (Cincinnati Harper & Row 1983)

John says that it is not faith itself  – but a leap of faith-beyond-faith into love – that helped him overcome his fear. He says: ‘In love there can be no fear.’ [11]

‘When we live our lives by acting out of this deep place of knowing (that we are loved), when we listen to the voice that speaks to us (of love), then we may truly begin to practice faith.’[12]

‘It is not the fact of being loved that is life-changing. It is the experience of allowing (our selves) to be loved’.[13] This experiential knowing of our selves as deeply loved by God deepens our thoughts with new data about our world, and deepens our feelings with new attitudes towards our world.  We know that at the heart of the universe is the heart of God, and the heart of God is a heart of love, we can trust God, take risks, and embrace the world that we live in.

‘Only love (like this) can free us from the tyrannising effects of fear. Only love (like this) can renew trust where it has been shattered. Only love can soften a hard heart.  Only love can inspire acts of genuine self sacrifice.’[14]