Love - Love Casts Out Fear (Daily Devotional)

Hello and welcome to Living Supernaturally, this is the daily devotion of All People’s church. We take time to look into God’s word, study it so that we can meditate and apply it in our lives. God’s word is so practical and alleviates our living to live a life that is supernatural even as we live in this natural world. We have been studying the first epistle of John and looking at several verses which talk about the love of God and what it can do for us and what we need to do in response to God’s love. Today, we are looking at 1 John chapter 4, verses 17 to 19, ‘Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us.’ We see this word ‘love’ repeated in all these three verses and different aspects of it. In verse 17, we see that love has been perfected among us in this, love has been brought to maturity in us in this that we may have boldness in the day of judgement because as He is, so are we in this world. Something happened when we responded to the love of God, when we came near to Him and when we received the love of God in our hearts, we were born again. Our very nature changed because of the righteousness that He clothes us with and He justified us and He brought us closer to Himself and He washed us with His precious blood. Scripture says, as He is, so are we in this world. Spiritually speaking, He has changed us, made us the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, so as He is, so are we in this world. This is a wonderful promise, not just something that is about to happen but He has actually changed us. Verse 18 says, there is no fear in love, we don’t have to fear the day of judgement because there is change that has happened to us, we are born again and now we need to live from that place daily in love, purity, holiness and righteousness. It says here that this perfect love casts out fear. As human beings, who are being perfected and transformed daily into His likeness and as people who are being changed from glory to glory into that image of God, it is true that sometimes we might have fear and apprehension but it says here that this perfect love casts out/ shifts out/ discards that fear because fear torments. It says here that we love Him because He first loved us. So, as we pray, let’s thank Him for this love and ask the Lord to continue to perfect us with this love and to cast out all kinds of fear and apprehension far away from our lives. Let’s pray, Father, we thank you for this love and that we are being perfected by this love. Enable us to abide in this love. We ask that even as love is perfected in us, let this love cast out all kinds of fear and apprehensions away from us. We thank you for this is our possession, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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