The ever-present fear that plagues most has its roots deep in the heart of the relationship between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of our spiritual and emotional environment and those who are controlled by it. Most of us have been made to hold on to contradicting beliefs: that we are children of God and that we must be fearful of God.
The controversy arose from the limited translation into English from the original Hebrew text of Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” The Hebrew word yirah (יראה, pronounced yir-ah) means awe, respect, reverence, worship, and holy fear.
As a member of the Jewish community under Roman occupation, Jesus intimately understood this kind of fear and addressed it. In the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew 6:25–34] we find the basis of Jesus’ positive answer to fear and its offspring – anxiety and despair. He assures that it is unreasonable to assume that God, whose creative activity is expressed even in such details as the hairs of a person’s head, would exclude from God’s concern the life, the vital spirit, of the person themselves.
This truth—that God is mindful of the individual—is essentially important in dealing with fear as a disease. The confident and unshakable awareness of being a child of God stabilizes the ego and results in courage, fearlessness, power, and freedom.
1 John 4:18 “Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”
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