fear

the last few days have been focused on pilate's encounter with the jews trying to persuade him to crucify jesus. the study guide indicates that fear of appearing not to be a friend of caesar pushed him into the 'crucify' camp. then it makes a leap and says "show God this week that your fear of unbelief in jesus is greater than your fear of man." and this troubles me.

seems that fear shouldn't be the reason we follow Him. (unless we are truly discussing the reverential fear that is reserved for God alone, but then it cannot become a matter of comparison to the fear of man thereby making that statement pointless anyway.)

the true motivation should be love, according to myself of course! God created us out of love, out of a desire for us to have a relationship with Him. why, then, would we not reciprocate the desire of that relationsip out of love? when you put fear into the mix, you tend to find yourself facing issues of rebellion and confinement. but not with love. love is freedom and optional. which is what makes it so beautiful when we truly exercise it.

when i face the Lord at the beginning of my eternity in His presence, i want Him to say, "you loved me." rather than "you feared me."

[on accident, while typing above i mispelled 'comparison'. and it made me consider how accurate my typo was: comparisin. how fitting to have the word sin in this word! how often to do we fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others? or worse, comparing God to others or our idea of how we think God should be? sometimes i mess up good. :D]