Love > Fear

LOVE IS GREATER THAN FEAR

There are few things as precious to me as my time of prayer with my children each day.  My wife Aracelli and I have two beautiful children whom we are striving to raise in the ways of the Lord.

(Graziella and Renato at the zoo in Lima, Perú)

As I tucked them in to bed the other evening we all said our prayers.  They were still a bit antsy, so I told them that they needed to rest and I did not want to hear any noise or see them walking around. 

Renato, our 3 year old son, answered back “OK daddy!”  Of course, I was fairly certain that it was merely lip service and I would hear him yelling and making a fuss within moments.  

Graziella, our 7 year old daugher, took a different approach.  She was a bit more honest and asked a question which has come out of her mouth on various occasions. 
“Well, what will happen to us if we don’t do what you say?”
My typical reply would be something like “You’ll get a spanking” or “Don’t test mommy and daddy!”,  but tonight I spoke to them about true obedience.

I said “GG” (that’s our nickname for Graziella), “If you are obeying mommy and daddy simply because you don’t want to get punished, then you aren’t practicing true obedience.  If you really love mommy and daddy then obedience should be your natural response to us.  

You obey because you love, not because you’re afraid of punishment.”

WOAH!  

Sometimes the insight we gain from a moment of parenting can surpass years of study and laborious research.

I was telling my children that the reason to obey us and to live appropriately was because they love us, not because they fear us.

Isn’t this exactly what so many do within the church?  

Don’t we often choose to obey God out of fear of hell, sickness, pain, exposure, etc? 

-> How often do we desire to do evil, but avoid it out of fear of consequences, rather than desiring to do good out of love for our Creator??
-> How often, as believers, do we avoid sin or temptation simply because we are fearful that we may be exposed or because we may get punished?  
-> How often do we fall into the trap of attempting to earn our salvation by way of human works?  

This is the great divide between Christianity and all other religions!

We do not do good to avoid punishment.  
We do not do good to earn salvation.  

Our salvation has been earned for us.  
Our punishment was given to Jesus when He went to the cross.  

We do good as a response to our good God.  
We avoid bad because He lived sinless for us.  

Anything of good that flows from a believer is because we are loved by God and in turn have been made to love Him.  We obey because we love and we love because He first loved us. 

This is the essence of the gospel, that we are loved by God and in turn we have come to love Him and obey Him.  Let us contemplate this in our daily walk, we obey out of love, not fear.  Love was Christ's motivating factor when He went to the cross and it is our motivating factor to live holy before Him.

LOVE IS TRULY GREATER THAN FEAR!