There is No Fear in God…

It seems to me, in my casual observance of what people say and promote, that there is a lot of fear involved in their relationship with God. So many folks live how they live from fear of what God will either do to them, or allow to happen to them, if they don’t behave in a certain way. Some load themselves up with obligations in the name of God. Many engage in empty rituals, almost superstitious in nature, to potentially garner God’s favor in their lives. Others spend countless hours in regret and apology towards God for self-acknowledged violations of His will. So, I have to ask the question, is there supposed to be fear in your relationship with God? Is that what the Bible teaches? Does the fear-based approach take away from a believer the joy and happiness he/she is reported to experience with God?

In my opinion, and you can take this to the bank, there is no-one or nothing more understood than God. Sure, He has written a book to prevent this kind of thing, but how many folks actually read it, or worse, understand it? Most people’s knowledge, and you know this is true, is based on a fleeting verse here and there or the generally accepted consensus of who God is supposedly. Most, it seems, have been taught that God is a vengeful God perpetually engaged in examining your thoughts and behaviors like the inspector in an assembly line searching for defects. I vividly remember having some beers with prospective clients at a basketball game, who when I told them I taught the Bible, insisted on not only not having another drink, but recalling out loud what they had said earlier that might have been offensive. Are you kidding me? I bought the beers! But sadly, that’s where people’s heads go when you mention God. And not only because I  want to drink beers with you, but also because I’ve been taught otherwise, I’m going to show you that people have it all wrong about God in epic proportion!!!

The Bible clearly states that God is love. He isn’t just prone to behave in a loving way, He actually is love. The reason that love is the most powerful thing on the planet is because God, the most powerful being anywhere, is love. The Good Book also says that, “There is no fear in love.” Fear and love cannot co-exist together. If you have fear then you have no love and if you live God’s love you cannot possibly have fear. Fear, not hate, is the antithesis of love. And this whole planet is running on a steady diet of fear. Fear takes away the joy of a relationship with God because it takes away the love in the relationship, not on God’s part towards you, but on your part towards Him. God knows everything there is to know about you and still loves you. To think that you can fool God by engaging in obligatory behavior discounts His vast intelligence and reduces Him to the level of a man. The Bible also says that God is light and in Him, is no darkness at all. No darkness means no darkness. It would require God to have darkness in Him to do evil things to you, or for that matter, purposely allow evil things to happen to you. Evil things would include making you ill, killing the people who you love, putting obstacles in your path to teach you lessons, and allowing bad things to happen to you because your behavior didn’t quite measure up. Imagine one of your children not quite measuring up to behavior standards you set up and then not protecting them from danger because of that behavior. Pretty cruel wouldn’t you say?

God is more interested in your happiness, health and prosperity than you are! He wants to answer your prayers infinitely more than you want to pray them. The trouble is that God will not overstep your freedom of will. He requires fully persuaded belief on your part to bring your prayers to pass. When you fail to get your prayers answered it is generally because you don’t fully believe what you prayed for would come to pass. And, the number one believing blocker is fear. When you hold onto a fearful mindset towards God, greatly influenced by so-called preachers and religious people, you are going to have no confidence towards God. You will be full of doubt and unbelief. And, after experiencing that for long enough, you are going to end up doubting God’s existence in its entirety! The problem isn’t with God, His ability or His love. The problem is you and the wrong beliefs you’ve been entertaining in your head. When the phrase “fear of God” is used in the Bible it refers to reverence and respect; the same thing you are supposed to learn with your parents. You learn to respect what they have been telling you if you’ve been hit in the head by life enough times for not listening. You then become a parent and the cycle continues. God tells us to respect Him and believe what He says to believe. When you choose not to believe what He said and instead choose to believe what the world says, you end up getting smacked in the head, not by God, but by the One He is trying to protect you from! All of your difficulties; all of your pain; all of your heartache and loss is orchestrated and carried out by the adversary; your adversary, hell-bent on keeping you from the only One who can really love and protect you! You get it?

God is love in every conceivable form and facet. You never need to have even an ounce of fear with God. No matter how much of a stinker you have been; no matter how jaded your mind towards God has become; no matter how low you may have fallen, you cannot get underneath the everlasting arms of God’s love! Get out of that fear and obligation and enjoy your relationship with God stemming only from love. There’s nothing you have to do to please Him except humbly believe what He says is true. Doing so not only revolutionizes your life and finally gets your prayer answered, but will lead you to a place of indescribable joy, where no fear is allowed to remain…

There is no fear in God…

Just some good thoughts…

 

Hey, It’s Your Internal Chatter!

The thoughts racing through your mind throughout the day, often referred to as your internal chatter, belong to you! And, although it may appear to “just happen,” the reality is that you are the one generating the thoughts. Those thoughts are heavily influenced by circumstances and conditions, but you still own them. You may have thoughts pop into your mind you did not consciously plan, again heavily shaped by internal and external influences, but the decision to entertain or persist with those thoughts belongs only to you! At the end of the day, they are just thoughts and can be easily dismissed. However, those thoughts; the things you are saying to yourself over and over are not just thoughts, but actually form the basis of your beliefs. What you believe in life ends up being the life you are experiencing! Your success or your failure, in any category of life, is found amongst that infernal, internal chatter!

It would be well worth your time to begin paying attention to the things you are saying to yourself! Notice the thoughts going through your mind while you are speaking with someone or when you are interacting in a group. Are you able to engage a person with your full attention and heart or are you simultaneously wading through your own thoughts spewing out negative things about you, from you, to you?  Most people’s internal chatter is horrifically negative to the point of being an enemy or a personal adversary. None of us would knowingly choose the option of being mean and harsh with ourselves on purpose. I mean, if I don’t have my own back, who does? Instead, we are living in a world fueled and directed by fear and negativity. We are engulfed in subtle messages of inadequacy and how we don’t measure up. We are drowning ourselves in the hidden messages of electronic media, carefully crafted to occupy our every waking moment. You thought the TV was a brilliant mass “idea” marketing machine? Well, add in the explosive rise of social media and you end with a nation of captured minds, fully influenced night and day to generate thoughts in a specific, negative direction… It’s pretty incredible to recognize, but devastating in its effect on our minds.

In addition to starting a serious quest to pay attention to what your internal chatter is saying to you in public, also believe to hear and recognize what it (you) are saying to yourself in private. For example, I began to notice a habit I had of saying, “It’s okay” to myself throughout a day. As I started in earnest to pay attention, I realized that I was speaking and entertaining accusatory thoughts towards myself. In other words, through negative self-accusation and internalized messages regarding my own worthiness, I was actually agreeing with and accepting those thoughts to the point where I was telling myself I was okay in response to me telling myself I wasn’t okay! Do you see what I’m getting at here? YOUR INTERNAL CHATTER IS YOUR OWN THOUGHTS! Your thoughts are not the devil and telling a thought to “shut the fuck up” is simply telling yourself to… The devil certainly is the source of evil in the world and the organizer of the “idea marketing” I referred to earlier, but his work is accomplished by influencing your thinking infinitely more than by some kind of imagined direct occupation! It is a slavery of epic proportion! What could work better than physically holding a slave in bondage? Get them to hold themselves in bondage by the wrong thoughts they’re rehearsing to themselves all day long!

How many people do you know that are struggling with their self-image? How much do you wrestle with your own self-image? How easy is it to move you off-center into doubt or concern about who you really are or what you can actually accomplish? Self-image is nothing more than the ideas you entertain about yourself, that you have been telling yourself since you were a small child. None of that stuff; those thoughts, had any basis in some type of truth, but rather messages you chose to believe were true. My mother convinced me I was exceptionally smart and I believed her (and yes, I am – smile). Sure there are genetic factors, tendencies, inborn strengths and weaknesses, but all are overridden by your beliefs, more specifically what you believe to be true about yourself. Although it’s not easy, you can change your self-image. You change it by changing what you are saying to yourself throughout the day. You can start to challenge thoughts instead of accepting them as true! Above all, stop berating yourself and rehearsing bad, negative stuff about yourself! Stop tearing yourself down. Cease searching for evidence that the garbage you’ve been dumping on yourself is somehow true. It is, for you, no more true than the good things you say about yourself. The only difference being that the good stuff we tell ourselves actually benefits our lives! I mean, good Lord, who are you to pass such severe judgment on your own life? That is exactly what you do every time you cooperate with the darkness by persisting in thoughts that only serve to hurt you. You’re not “just being honest” you are being deceived with your own personal detriment and suffering in mind.

All that craziness besieging your brain during all waking hours, belongs to you and comes from you. You can control your thinking. You can decide what you will and will not say to yourself. And, you can damn sure change anything about yourself even if it is who you’ve been all of your life. You have a right to cultivate a mind, your mind, your one and only mind, to be your ally and not your enemy! You deserve a break from the great “idea marketing” machine for a chance at your own ideas about life. You can have success and satisfaction and fulfillment like you’ve only dreamed of once you finally learn to get on your own side, where God is…

Hey, it’s your internal chatter, but it’s also yours to change for the better!

Just some good thoughts…