How are you doing managing your fears? Ignoring them or denying their existence doesn’t count as a management style. They are still there whether you acknowledge them or are aware of them. Saying you don’t struggle with fears because you deny their existence in your life is like saying the sun didn’t come up because you have your hands over your eyes.

Fear is the absence of God.

Fear is the belief that God either isn’t there for you or that you are capable apart from God based upon your inventory of personal resources. Walking after the flesh is synonymous with walking in fear. If walking after the flesh is living independently of God, then it is what you do when you play god instead of letting God be God in your life.

Flesh, like fear, is the absence of God.

Malcolm Smith reminded me that the first thing Adam said to God after he and Eve declared independence and sinned was, “I was afraid.” And the first thing God said when Christ was born was, “Fear not.”

In simple terms, the struggle in our lives is between independence and dependence, fear and love, flesh and Spirit, self-control and reliance upon our Heavenly Father. When we live independently, we are controlled by our fears.

Walking in the Spirit, depending upon our Heavenly Father, is living beyond our fears in perfect love, and the Bible says, “Perfect love casts out all fear.”

Next: All the words above are nice, but how do you manage fear?