Thinking about fear

It's been on my mind, why do we experience resistance, either in ourselves or from others when we battle to do something.  On the one hand it may be because we're headed in the wrong direction, and God is putting barriers in the way.  But that's not the thought I wanted to consider here.

Let's not be too quick to read into God's hand the resistance we experience.  Equally the resistance may be due to unacknowledged fear on the part of ourselves, or others.

Someone once said: fear is the opposite of love.

Perfect love casts out all fear, but fear holds us back from trust. 
Lack of trust means we are paralysed by inaction.

And so consider the familiar words of Ps 37:3-4:
        Trust in the Lord and do good;
        dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
        Take delight in the Lord,
        and he will give you the desires of your heart.

• Trust comes first, and in this we find the capacity for doing good.
• In that way we can dwell (inhabit) the place God gives us to work, the land is occupied
• And in this we find the pleasure of the fruits of the land. 
• In trust we relax, and only then can we take delight (without trust we can't delight)
• In our delight, our desires are fulfilled.

But when we fear, we don't trust, and it all comes tumbling down.  God says do not fear, do not worry, only keep in step with his Spirit.

So why do we fear? 

We fear our own agenda being suppressed, we fear what may be asked of us, or we fear suffering, we fear failure, we fear our comforts being lost, we fear familiarity being removed, we fear change, we fear not having the reassurance of our idols and rituals that substitute for a true relationship with Jesus.

Some thoughts on fear:  I fear my human fears, because they stand between me and God.

How can we learn to trust God more? 

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