Is my life fueled by love or by fear?

If I do the dishes or avoid a hard conversation so my spouse won’t be upset with me, it’s fear that drives me. What I do isn’t for their sake but for mine.

If I do spiritual practices to manage God’s emotions and disposition toward me (as if I could), again, fear is at the wheel.

Living from fear — fear of rejection, fear of punishment, fear of lack — is a life of diminishment, one where anxiety and resentment rise, energy and resolve drain, and eventually some interior or relational dam has to give way. 

Living from love is an expansive life, a life anchored in acceptance and buoyed up by joy. Think of Jesus, who began his work soaked to the bone in the blessing of being a beloved son and finished it ​“for the joy set before him” (Matt. 3:17; Heb 12:2).

In a great paradox, living from love begins with the fear of God. 

“Fear God and keep his commandments” and ​“Perfect love casts out fear” (Ecc. 12; 1 Jn 4) are two truths in tension, and Jesus plays that tension like a violin string.

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10, emphasis mine). 

God is pure Power and Presence who answers to no one, Jesus says. Be afraid. 

That same Presence, he assures, loved you and me into being and endowed us with the greatest worth of all his valued creatures. Be not afraid.

This tension rose to full song at the transfiguration. From a bright cloud God boomed out the belovedness of Jesus, and Peter, James, and John rightly fell ​“facedown to the ground, terrified.” 

Yet in the very next moment, ​“Jesus came and touched them. ​‘Get up,’ he said. ​‘Don’t be afraid’” (Matt. 17).

I wish there were an easy way to become a person fueled by love and not unholy fear. But all the good stories of redemption and change include some kind of leveling and reckoning, some breakdown of willpower and breaking of heart. I think of Peter again, whose denial of Jesus was the crack through which the grace of Jesus spilled in and remade him.

If and when all the efforts of trying to manage your own life and happiness come crashing down, take heart. It is then, after all the years of believing in God’s love, that you may finally come to experience it. 

And in that experience of being broken and received, you may find yourself, gradually and by grace, fueled increasingly by love.