God’s Overwhelming Love

You may have never thought of it this way, but worry and anxiety are forms of fear. They are rooted in the fear that we won’t be taken care of or that something bad will happen to us.

The Bible gives us the remedy for fear, and it’s found in 1 John 4:18. It says, ...Perfect love casts out fear... (NKJV). Perfect love is the love that God has for His children, and that includes you. Just look at this verse in the Amplified Bible, Classic Edition:

There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love’s complete perfection].

This scripture teaches us that if we are still afraid of not being taken care of, we need to grow in the knowledge that God loves us unconditionally, perfectly and everlastingly. This knowledge usually takes time to develop, because we have difficulty believing that God could or would love us, due to our imperfections. Actually, it is because of our imperfections that God sent Jesus to die for us and take the punishment we deserved because of our sin.

I had to spend several years studying God’s love for me in order to get my mind completely renewed in this area. Because of the sexual abuse I experienced from my father and being abandoned by my mother, I was convinced that if I didn’t take care of myself, nobody else would take care of me. My parents certainly would not take care of me, nor would any of the other people I asked for help. However, God is not like people, and we cannot judge how He will treat us according to how others have treated us.

Let me encourage you to pray and ask God to help you grow in the revelation of how much He loves you. He loves all of us perfectly, and therefore we don’t have to worry or be anxious when we have problems.

Adapted from the book The Answer to Anxiety by Joyce Meyer. Copyright 2023 by Joyce Meyer. Published by Hachette Book Group, Inc. All rights reserved.