Faith and Fear are opposites or like my 5th Grade teacher said they are antonyms. Whatever one of the words means the other means just the opposite. They can cancel each other out. To which many would say, “OK get to the point!”
Well, here is the point. It is often easier to understand what something is by understanding what it is not. So let’s look at fear for the purpose of a better understanding of faith.
Fear is defined several ways at Dictionary.com. For our discussion this evening lets’ look at this definition: “distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.”
The first material phrase in this definition is “distressing emotion”. I will restrain myself from dong short word studies on each of those two words but I encourage you to do so because it will be quite helpful in your overall understanding of fear & faith. “Distress” can be any of a number of things and it is fair to conclude even without breaking down the word distress or distressing that being distressed or being in a distressing circumstance is not a positive experience or condition. Now the word “emotion”, straight up, is neither good or bad. We are emotional beings, we were made that way by God. The Bible talks at length in the Old and New Testament about both the good emotions: joy, peace, laughter and so forth, as well as the bad emotions: anger, jealousy, hatred and so forth.
So the first take away here is that “fear” has a lot to do with bad or negative emotions. This should be intuitive but sometimes the obvious is just too obvious. If we are full of joy filled emotions we are not going to be distressed about being joy filled, unless we have a significant mental health issue and that is a whole different discussion.
Tomorrow we will look at the next material phrase in this definition of fear.
Have a blessed evening,
David
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