Love Over Fear

You’ve probably heard the phrase “faith over fear.” For today’s topic, I would like to adapt that expression to love over fear.

When it comes to our relationship with God, we’re constantly having to choose faith over fear, trusting even when we doubt and following even when we don’t see. Just as choosing faith over fear is required to enrich our relationship with God, so choosing love over fear is needed to deepen our relationships with others.

as it begins

If loving people means seeing them in the shadow of the cross, giving them the benefit of the doubt, and loving them like Jesus, it’s easier to claim neutrality. It’s easier to stay locked behind wooden doors and stone walls, living in my own beautiful world rather than pouring into someone else. 

— McKenna Vietti

No relationship would begin if someone didn’t decide to take a step across the chasm between them and another, bridging the divide that separates strangers. The path of friendship is marked by a thousand steps each one takes to grow closer to the other. However far apart you may be at first, it all begins with saying yes to the possibility of something more. 

And that first step, though sometimes it may be the smallest, often is the hardest. It’s easier to stay cozy in our comfortable circle and not face our fear of reaching out and risking rejection. What if we reach out and the other person doesn’t respond? What if we take a step closer and they take a step back?

The courage to take the first step toward friendship comes only once our fear of rejection is overcome by our longing for love.

as it deepens

Vulnerability is not to be mocked or abused, but honored and emulated. The humble are those who discover how vulnerable they are before God and others, and this vulnerability opens them up to faith, hope, and love.

— Kelly Kapic

As you grow deeper in your relationship with someone else, you will find that as you learn to love each other well, you’ll still have to battle fears. If anything, the further your relationship goes, the more reasons you could have to fear. The more someone knows about you—especially your weaknesses, your struggles, your sins, and your failures—the more they could hurt you if they so chose. 

Even in the best of relationships, there will be times when you misunderstand each other, and then comes the difficulty of having to work things out so all is right again. On a deeper level, when you choose to share the weaker parts of yourself with someone else, they may mock you or betray you. They may take what you’ve told them and use it against you, leaving you to wonder if they ever really loved you to begin with. 

Why even try to develop closer relationships with others if they could choose to push you away?

Once again, we must dare to believe that the deepest love is stronger than the greatest fear, and that the reward of meaningful relationships is worth the pain that their pursuit brings.

But how do we keep trying, even after failed attempts at friendships? Why do relationships matter so much anyway? And where do we find that kind of love? 

as it ebbs and flows

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. 

— 1 John 4:16-19 (ESV)

The only way to maintain the kind of love that perseveres in spite of pain and holds on after it’s been hurt is by staying in touch with the source of perfect love. Just as God is light, and in Him is no darkness, so He is love, and in Him is no fear. While we are called to fear Him and treat Him with the reverence He is due, He does not fear us. He loves us perfectly, even though we often fail Him. Our best love for others is still only a shadow of His. 

He is the only one that can take our fears and fully overcome them with His love.