Hi all
Why as christian's we still have fear and anxiety?
We have fear and anxiety when we were not christians too... the old flesh be weak.
Now you probably read about Peter walking on walking to meet Jesus on the sea... when Peter's focus shifted to the winds and the waves, Peter had fear/anxiety and he started to sink but the Lord saved him from drowning...Jesus say: You of little why did doubt?
Ever since I was little i have always had some kind of fear and anxiety like different things. Fear that something may happen to me, yet i know God is there so why do i, do this to myself.
You not alone in this, the majority of people fear the unknown...people fear hurricanes and tornadoes, when I was younger I greatly feared them and had much anxiety about them...we lived in a mobile home and in a place where such storms we frequent.
I remember mom praying and asking the Lord to protect us and to calm our fears when we were very young children, as I got older I'd pray similar prayers and read the Bible during such storms.
Years ago...Where I use to live was struck by Hurricane Hugo and I took in 5
people who lost power for a couple of days...mind you, at the time I was living in a mobile home and Hugo cut a wide path across our area and the upper half of the mobile home park was without power but we were on a different grid and didn't lose power at all.
Those 5 people were fearful and stressed about Hugo, it was a violent storm and they be talking about what the storm be doing and the damages...so I started telling them all about the tornadoes and hurricanes I'd been through as a child and how mom prayed and read to us from the Bible and that through all those tornadoes and hurricanes our mobile home never was damaged.
I can even add this, Hugo didn't cause any damage to the mobile home that I was living in then either but others did suffer damage.
At the time I was financially strapped and was making every penny count.
One of the people most affected by Hurricane Hugo became a patient of mine as
I was then a caregiver, Hugo had caused her house to fall in on her and she was
left without much use of her legs and at the time she was elderly and family,friends and neighbors helped build her a new little rancher to live in.
I asked her, Nellie about what she experienced and she told me all about what
happened, I asked if she was afraid that she wouldn't make it out alive and she
said no. I asked what did you do while you waited to be rescued from the rubble
and she said she prayed to God. Rescuers came and got her out and she
was taken to the hospital and doctors worked on her but she'd only regain a little
use of her legs and would have to go about either in a wheelchair or with a caregiver assisting her with a four-legged walker. I asked was she mad about
not being able to walk and be able to go places without help? Nellie said, well
I couldn't ever drive a car so I always had to have people to take me places.
It's not much different now except I get to meet all the nice caregivers that
my family has hired to come do for me.
Nellie, I said, are you a christian? why yes I am and have been one for a long time...at the time she was like 90 years old, when I first met her about two
or three months after Hugo(1989).
Hurricane Fran/or "Paul Bunyan" would pound my state in 1996 but we were
left without damages.
Hurricane Floyd in 1999 would try to drown my state but we were not flooded but others around us were...yeah, I was yet living in a mobile home then too.
I was vacationing in Florida when Hurricane Jeanne hit(2004), I watched it from the balcony of my hotel the day it came in and did a lot of damage around Orlando, Florida...the hotel served as a shelter to many people that were without power
and offered meals to them as well.
For example my friend's house got struck by lightening, so every time it thunderstorm comes i have a great fear within me that it will happen to us.
I used to have terrible OCD, but now not so bad.I have to check many things because i have that fear inside of me that something may happen. And when i do i feel guilty because it like saying to God i don't trust you.
Im also confused with this verse:
1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
Does this verse mean i don't love God, because i do. Then i have that anxiety that God doesn't love me or has left me.
Need advice please.
