Fear No Fear

“If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13, MEV). Jesus loves us enough to be true to His Word regardless of our performance. This is HUGE. Because we can see our own behaviour and we can remember what we were like and what we’ve done, we have a hard time taking this truth to heart. Sure, we KNOW that we are forgiven by God when we repent. But we never really forget what we did. We see that ungodly behaviour regardless of which side of salvation we’re standing on. Because of that, we tend to think in terms of being ‘worthy’ or not. We hear about a positive promise of God in the Word and think ‘we don’t deserve that’. Or we hear about a blessing of the Lord and think ‘but we’re just sinners’. Those things aren’t true. Yes, we WERE sinners. Yes, we CAN sin. But we are NOT sinners. We are REDEEMED. We are SAVED. We have JESUS’ own nature, not our old one. It’s dead. Gone. Stuck to the cross by bloody nails. We have a hard time letting go of the lie that our performance dictates how God sees us. There are consequences to disobedience, of course. There are promises we do and do not qualify for, naturally. But God interacts with us the same whether we are succeeding in our walk with Him or not. He will still try to correct us. He will still try to get us to do the right thing. He will still love us. Nothing changes. It is hard to grasp, but when we do, we can start to realize the blessing it is that Jesus loves us. That He will NEVER stop. That He is righteous and just ALL the time – not just when we are compliant. That He can ALWAYS accept our repentance. And can ALWAYS walk us through getting right with Him on something – no matter how badly we missed it originally. Jesus isn’t running away if we mess up. Jesus isn’t shocked and appalled that we are human. Jesus loves us. Jesus is there for us. Jesus is CONSISTENT and CONSTANT in His love, correction, guidance, and acceptance. He’s the same now as He always has been and always will be. What a BLESSING that is!