Will You Choose Love or Fear?

Over the past year, we have been confronted by fear on almost every side as we’ve faced health scares, school stressors, political tensions, isolation, loss, relational and financial strain.

We’ve also borne witness to great acts of love: healthcare workers tirelessly caring for the sick, neighbors lending helping hands to those in need, grandparents learning to navigate Zoom to connect with their grandchildren, and modern-day miracles of provision, reconciliation, and healing.

Love and fear are the core motivators behind every action and reaction.

When we choose love over fear, we do not do so with human love, but with God who is love—and is able to supply us with the love we need to carry out the task.

1 John 4:16-19 says:

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 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. We love because he first loved us. (NIV)

Whether we are interacting in person or online, we can choose to be motivated by and respond out of love or fear. When we stop and evaluate our motivations, it stimulates our minds to identify what we love and what we fear instead of just haphazardly plowing forward or constantly being in a state of fight or flight.

There are things we should fear, but we don’t have to let fear dictate every choice we make.

When Betty Jo, your third cousin once removed, expresses her political views, and it rubs you the wrong way, will you respond to her out of love or fear? The choice is yours. You can model to your kids, your friends, and even Betty Jo, what it looks like to act out of love or fear in response to someone else’s behavior.

Choosing love does not mean we accept all behaviors or abandon wisdom—quite the contrary. If my child is going to run into the road, it would be unloving not to teach him about the dangers of oncoming traffic.

As we get ready to celebrate Christmas, I can’t help but think about how scared Mary must have been when the angel visited her and announced what was to come. However, Mary chose to give birth to love incarnate, Jesus, so that we can experience an eternity of love if we choose to believe in Jesus and accept his forgiveness for our sins and receive his lavish grace.

Through Jesus’ great act of love in coming to earth as a baby, saying yes to Christmas and yes to the cross, we are enabled to serve him without fear. Yes, we revere him, but we don’t have to fear what’s to come because God has overcome, once and for all.

I used to be gripped by the fear of death, but the following verses remind us we no longer have to held captive by such fear:

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15 NIV)

Jesus came to set us free from that which holds us captive. We can choose to walk in the victory he died to give us by choosing to believe what he says is true.

In Luke 1, verses 68 and 74-75 say:

Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. (NIV, emphasis added)

Like Mary, may we be women who choose to act out of love instead of fear. It just might change the world.

Katie M. Reid is the author of A Very Bavarian Christmas and Made Like Martha. She is a mom of five and cofounder of SocialWised U, a revolutionary course for parents to prepare, protect, and empower their families online and in life as they choose love over fear. Learn more at SocialWisedU.org.