Allowing Fear To Convince You Something Is True When It's Not

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From Crosswalk Ministries - a Daily Devotional that I receive in E-mail [edited slightly for brevity]
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The Shape of His Love
Susan Meissner, She Reads Author

"Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law." Romans 13:8 (NIV)

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Devotion:

Have you ever let fear influence your perspective?

One night, I awoke to the sound of bat wings. I looked up into the darkness and there on the ceiling was the chevron shape; its wings spread like the Caped Crusader. I had a sleeping husband next to me and no [way to catch it].  I jostled Bob awake and rasped out the frightening news.

"Bob! There's a bat above us!"

He jolted upright and I hushed him quickly. "Where?" he whispered.

"Right there!" I pointed to the ceiling. "See?! What are we going to do?"

He looked beside the bed for a shoe, a magazine, anything. "I don't know," he said. "I think I am going to have to turn on the light."

"No! He'll start flying around!" I squeaked.

"I need a racket."

I was practically hyperventilating as Bob reached over to his bedside table and turned on the lamp. We braced ourselves for chaos.

Light replaced darkness, revealing not a bat but our adjustable ceiling lights, shaped like a V because I had put them that way nine years earlier.

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I had let fear convince me something was true when it wasn't. Not only did I rush to judgment, but I used my fear to convince someone else that what I believed was true.

Too often we pass judgment on people and situations we know little about. History has shown us that when we judge in ignorance we can make terrible mistakes. When we allow our view of someone or something to be swayed by suspicions or what the crowd says, we can make a tragic error of assuming something is true when it isn't. Fear tutors us to think that way. It warps our vision.

Jesus said He has only two expectations of us: Love God, and love others--including those whose ways we don't understand, who behave differently than we do, and who "flap their wings" when we'd rather they didn't. When we love God completely, we find the grace, mercy and wisdom to love the rest of the world. Plus, we are told in 1 John 4:18 that there is no fear in love.

When we make love our highest and best pursuit, fear and judgment dissolve as quickly as the shadows in my bedroom when I turn on the light. I am learning to let His light show me the shape of His love.