Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. 1 John 4:18 (NLT)
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve walked and talked with God. Immediately after disobeying God by eating the forbidden fruit, they hid from Him because they were afraid. Fear was not mentioned until that moment. It wasn’t part of God’s plan. We were never designed to live in fear.
This explains why stress can have such a negative effect on us. When you are stressed out, you are in fear. Fear brings torment because it involves the thought of being punished, which causes anxiety and worry (1 John 4:18, KJV).
The truth is that Jesus took all of our punishment, so we have no reason to fear. As Christians, we should only experience His perfect love and peace. So why do so many Christians live stressed-out lives?
A major part of the problem lies with how we see God. So many Christians believe that God orchestrates everything. When something bad happens, they believe He simply chose not to stop it.
It sounds so spiritual to say that God allows painful events to teach us things, but think about it… what kind of father would I be if I had the power to stop my child from running onto a busy freeway, but I allowed him to go and be hit by a truck? In my opinion, that’s just as bad as throwing him into the oncoming traffic myself.
In reality, God is good—all the time. You need to learn the truth about God’s perfect love for you. This is my prayer for you: “May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is” (Ephesians 3:18, NLT), because growing in His love is one of the best ways to beat stress.