It is to God we must look to – it is God that we must fear, not in a scared, frightened way, but in reverence, awe and loving way, understanding his promises to us and recognizing what he has done for us. When we shift our fear to God we can be released from the other fears.

Now, in all we have spoken about we must understand that this process of growing in the fear of the Lord and love for other people is not an overnight process. It does not happen instantly. In fact it is a life long process – but we will be changed as we walk this path.

And one of the ways that we will change is in regards to others. One of the results of properly fearing the Lord, is that we will grow in our desire and ability to love God and to love our neighbors.

The two go together. They cannot be separated. You Love God – You are to love your neighbor. And to love our neighbor properly requires us to know what it is to love God.

The outworking of loving God, of fearing Him, is that we will not fear others, and in fact we will love others – even our enemies.

We see this most clearly in I John 4:7-5:3.

Notice v20 -21 If someone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.

There is no “yes but” – or “you have no idea what they have done”. You see the same could be said from God’s perspective – the enemy could say “yes but, look what Andy has done – look what so and so has done – surely you could never forgive him, or them.” Yet God DID love us, even when we were his enemies.

God’s love is a costly love. He extends a love towards us that meant the death of His son.

Love is costly.

Which is why our love will also be costly and thus must always come from and through the love of God shown in us. Our own love – our human love just does not cut it – it will become tired, it will decrease, it will run out. But a love which draws from the never ending stream of God’s love can keep loving even in the face of pain and disappointment.

Ed Welch says, “God fills us. He pours out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. God actually showers us with himself … there is a precondition to this blessing. It is not available to us when we adopt the shape of a cup of psychological needs. That is, if we want to be filled so that we can feel happy and better about ourselves, then we will never be truly deluged with God’s love. The cup of our own desires is never able to catch the flood of God’s love and blessing … When this cup of ‘I wants’ is broken, it leaves us with a number of shapes or identities that God has given us: priests, ambassadors, children of God, and Christians … We think it safer and more effective to look to other people to relieve our emptiness … the love that we desire, however, can only be found in the living God.”

Because of God’s costly love towards us, we can take big risks in our relationships with other people. Will people hurt us and use us and expose us and reject us? Yes, they will. But as long as our love is rooted IN and THROUGH Jesus we can take it.

Other people were not created to be feared; they were created for us to show love towards. This goes contrary to what you will hear in our culture. You need to look out for yourself first, you need to have your needs met. The definition of success is not how many people you are serving but how many people are serving you. How contrary is this to what it means to be like Christ?

Now, here is another caveat: Loving others is not necessarily the same thing as being nice to others, sacrificing for others, or saying yes to others. In fact, sometimes, niceness/sacrifice/saying yes can be the clothing that our fear of people hides in. Sometimes loving others, means doing things that they will not immediately perceive as nice: loving others will mean saying no. Loving others will certainly involve sacrifice, but, sacrifice alone does not necessarily equal love and is not necessarily fueled by love. So maybe you feel an intense desire to give to others and sacrifice for them, but it is done out of a desire to keep them pleased with you or to keep them from rejecting you. In this case, sacrifice would not be done out of love. Maybe you sacrifice and give to those that should be learning to take on more responsibility; this again may be the complete opposite of what it means to love others.

To love our brothers and sister, to love our neighbor is to care for them, to help them, to be available to them, but also to be truthful and honest with them – and this may cause some tension and even conflict.

Welch says, “Loving others makes life less comfortable. It means that I give up my own agenda for a Saturday morning in order to help a neighbor. It means that I get hurt when someone moves away. It means that people stay at our house when I would prefer to be surrounded with just my immediate family. Isn’t that just like God’s word? Just when we think we have adapted it to a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, it messes everything up. It tells us to love others in the same way that we have been loved by God.”
Maybe this is a good time to define what is love?

In I Corinthians 13, Paul lays out a comprehensive explanation of what love is:
-Love is:
-Patient
-Kind
-Does not envy
-Does not boast
-Is not proud
-Is not rude
-Is not self-seeking
-Is not easily angered
-Keeps no record of wrongs
-Does not delight in evil
-Rejoices with the truth
-Always protects
-Always trusts
-Always hopes
-Always perseveres
-Never fails

If you’re struggling with the fear of other people, sit down with I Corinthians 13 and a piece of paper and start thinking about these descriptions of love, think about how you can begin applying them towards the people you fear.

Here’s the thing about love. It is the only thing that will never cease. Everything else ceases, there will be no need for prophecy, or for tongues, or even for knowledge – but love, 1 Cor 13 says, remains!! Love we will experience. We grasp a little of the truth of love here on earth – we experience the love of parents, or of family, or of spouses and of children and of course, of God – and this experience is perfected in heaven when we will bask in the eternal love of God.

We are called to lives that will be messy. Loving and serving others will mean involving ourselves in the lives of others in ways that may be difficult and inconvenient to us. Jesus did it. And he calls us to do it too.

Welch says, “When the kingdom of God is ruling our hearts, we aspire more to serve than to be served, honor more than be honored, and love more than be loved. This doesn’t mean that we don’t care about being loved; it simply means that we always want to outdo others in love. Do we run the risk of a lopsided relationship? Absolutely. That is the relationship we have with God—he always loves first and most … He always makes the first move. He advertises his extravagant affection for us.”

So, it’s time for our principles. We have seven so far:
Principles:

1. Whatever you think you need or want, and whatever or whoever has that need or want, will control you.

2. When people are big in our lives then God is small.

3. When feelings become more important than faith, people will become more important & God will become less important.

4. A person who truly fears God will fear nothing else.

5. When we fear the Lord we are set free and healed from our hurt and shame because of Jesus’ work on the cross.

6. When we know that our worth is found in Jesus Christ and we know we are fully accepted by Him we will no longer fear rejection of people.

7. Because Jesus has exposed our sin on the Cross and has given us his forgiveness we no longer need to fear exposure

8. When we fear God and love Him we will no longer fear people but love them in a Christ centered way.

As we seek to love and serve, versus need and fear, we are able to pursue and experience the unity that should be manifest in the body of Christ. If I am being controlled by the fear of others, I will not live in unity with them. Unity doesn’t mean just getting along, it means living in such a way that we are all focused first and foremost on Christ.

That’s the goal. That’s the aim. Let it be so.