"For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control."
2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV)"The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else."
-- Oswald Chambers
"We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours."
-- John Calvin, *Institutes of the Christian Religion*
"Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was without, and there I sought you. And, deformed as I was, I ran after those beautiful things which you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. Those things kept me far from you, which, unless they were in you, would not exist. You called, and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath and panted for you. I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for your peace."
-- Augustine, *Confessions*
"The Christian life is not a 'changed' life but an 'exchanged' life. It is not a matter of our old nature being reformed or improved, but of that old nature being crucified and a new nature received. The Lord Jesus does not improve the old creation; He brings in the new. We do not patch up the old life; we receive a new one. The principle of the cross is the principle of death, and the principle of the resurrection is the principle of new life. We cannot have the one without the other."
-- Watchman Nee, *The Normal Christian Life*
If the spirit God gave you is one of power, love, and self-control -- what fear are you still carrying that He already answered?
"Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness -- all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother; therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading."
-- Marcus Aurelius, *Meditations* II.1
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