So What Replaces Fear? (45 seconds)

We have talked about how as believers God will never again punish us for our sins. NEVER! If God does, then Jesus did not absorb all our punishment. We then looked at how if punishment is eliminated in our relationship with God, then fear is gone in our relationship with God. I John 4:18 is foundational here - "...perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment..." We are loved with a perfect love and so fear is gone in our relationship with God.

So now we need to ask - does fear just disappear or does something replace it? Thankfully something replaces it...something that is the polar opposite of fear. Ephesians 2:18 tells us that through the work of Christ we now have access to the Father. But then Ephesians 3:11 amplifies on this and says "we have boldness and access with confidence..." No more hesitation, hedging, intimidation, cautiousness or fear in approaching God. That is all gone...forever! Now we come boldly into God's presence with confidence! I am wonderfully at home with my Father!

Can I trust my heart?

The first verse I memorized once I finished The Navigators' Topical Memory System during my sophomore year of college was Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?" I don't remember why I memorized it and I wish I never did because for the next thirty years I used that verse as a template for understanding my heart! For thirty years I distrusted my heart and would not listen to it...after all it could not be trusted. It was deceitful and misleading.

Now I know better. Jeremiah 17:9 does not describe the heart of a believer. It does not describe my heart. When I trusted Christ I was given a new and transformed heart. Romans 6:17 (ESV) describes it as a heart that can and wants to obey. Ephesians 4:23 describes my new nature as "created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness." This is why being out from under the law and being released from the law does not result in me running wild and sinning more. I have a heart that does not want to do that...can't imagine doing that. I do not have to be afraid of the freedom that Christ set me free for!