Journal of Faith: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling Philippians 2:12

I have made so many decisions out of fear:  fear of being wrong, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being hated, fear of being alone, fear of hurting others, fear of being hurt, and so many others.  I have made some bad decisions because of fear, and I have made some good decisions because of fear.  Scripture has a lot to say about fear.  In 2 Timothy 1:7 it says that God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power, love, and sound mind.  This places love, power, and wisdom in opposition of fear.  The power of God, the love of God, and the wisdom of God are the tools given us to eradicate our fears.  It is amazing how subjective our view is.  The closer we get to something the bigger it seems and the further away from something we get, the smaller it seems.  In this same fashion the closer we get to God the bigger we see him, and the further we get from our fears the smaller they seem.  As I experience more of God's love, t...

Have you ever done a paint by numbers craft or coloring book and found that things turned out less desirable than you anticipated?  It was probably because you were missing a color or were using the wrong colors.  Even if every line and every curve are in perfect place, color can make the difference between a masterpiece and a disaster.  God has had a plan for his masterpiece of human kind, but the moment we decided to ignore his design, we went from a masterpiece to an sorry display.  God said love and we chose hate. He said "honor" and we chose disrespect.  Now we are all people stained by sin and in need of the artist to scrape away our shame.  The scraping hurts, but it is for our glory. Thank God that he had a plan to lovingly correct us. God sent Jesus his son to restore us with blood red.  It is his blood that washes away our stains and restores us to God the creator. Romans 5 says it well 1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have p...