Fear anxiety and anger connected

Fear, anxiety and anger are tied together. How?

They all have to do with harm, loss or pain.

• Fear is in anticipation of harm, loss or pain
• Anxiety is in expectation of harm, loss or pain
• Anger is in reaction to harm, loss or pain

1. Fear occurs if and when there is no action or before any action is taken.  

2. Fear turns into anxiety when we are ready to take action or once action is necessary and about to occur.

3. Anxiety turns into anger after we have taken action which results in the harm, loss or pain.

Ever since our rebellious distrust of God in Eden we all live in a constant, though often unconscious, state of fear and anxiety and ¹anger.

What is the solution? Knowing God, who redeems harm, loss and pain, is using it to strengthen and advance us in our relationship with him, if and when we trust him.

For a discussion on why God continues to allows evil click here.

For a further discussion of how God uses evil for our good click here...and here.

The greater the evil the greater the opportunity for healing/grace click here.

For a discussion on the key lesson from the book of Job click here.

For a further discussion on the value of paradox click here.

For a further discussion of how big is God exactly click here

For a discussion of how pain can help us see Christ's love click here

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¹If you question or doubt you have any anger, have you ever questioned or become upset over why there is so much pain and suffering in the world or felt it's unfair? This question usually comes out of a "low grade" anger over harm, loss or pain; either yours or others. (for more on the blame question click here) 

We can express sadness over harm loss and pain but this is different than anger. Sadness recognizes our plight is the result of our own choices. Anger plays the victim and blames God or others for our harm loss or pain.

Conflict ---> clashing values

Our greatest conflicts with others come as a result of *clashing values. 

Values are simply those things that we believe are most important. 

Values are subjective and personal. They may be real and valuable to us personally, but they are not necessarily valuable **objectively. 

These are things or areas we are personally and emotionally invested in. What you and I believe is valuable are ***often not the same. When we are not in agreement, we clash.

Conflict is not necessarily bad, however. It forces us to reassess our values and helps us determine what is most important, e.g. must I really have this (or that) to be happy? Do I love God more than I love this particular person, thing or experience?

To understand and address conflicts we must know ****what we value and why we value it. The "why" is the hard part because it touches on our brokenness; our distrust and unbelief, which is usually hidden out of conscious view,  buried deep within us. The why addresses whether we do things for our honor or God's. 

This is the result of our rebellion. When we ate of the forbidden tree we died. In what ways? In all ways. We not only disconnected from God but others as well as ourselves. We are no longer integrated, but fragmented, spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally. 

This conflict of clashing values - a fruit of brokenness and blindness - is part of the pain and struggle of living in a broken world and why we cannot avoid it, even why conflicts break out between spouses, siblings, on a local or worldwide scale. We are broken, the world is in bondage, therefore we struggle. It is inevitable.

"...I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.' " Joh 16:33

If our hope is only in the pleasures of this present world we will ultimately be disappointed. Our hope must be elsewhere; it must rest in the truly and infinitely valuable, God himself. When it does, when He is a focal point and what we value most, we will find ourselves in harmony with others who also value God above all other things.

For a further discussion on hope click here. 

For a discussion of how values shape culture click here. 

For a further discussion on the basis for what is truly valuable click here. 
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*When our basic needs are not meet such as food, shelter, and water conflict occurs i.e. we will fight for our physical survival. However, for this discussion I assuming these basic needs are met.

**God determines this, we do not. If you are interested in a fuller discussion click here.

***even the most simple everyday things we rarely give thought to (until it bumps up against someone who does it differently) like which end of the toothpaste do we squeeze, or how do we load the dishwasher or what style of clothes do I wear or music do I listen to or hairstyle do I choose, etc.

What makes the church unique is having a common overarching value that binds us together, which is God himself as revealed in Christ. This unifies the church in the midst of great diversity. It was also part of the glue that held our nation together during its earliest days. The value of freedom was a main value we cherished nationally. 

****Much of what we value and are attached to is the fruit of our brokenness. We settle on things from past experience that we come to value over time and become emotionally vested in. If a certain thing, behavior, or person reinforces our sense of significance, we learn to repeat it. We return to whatever delivers what we need most, which is love.

Many of these values are formed unconsciously at the emotional level, not a rational one. Some from the earliest stages of life, even before we could speak. Behavior that made us feel valuable, important, or worthwhile, we repeat to the point it becomes an unconscious and embedded part of our character and how we respond to our world.

For example, as a child in our earliest stages of development, we may have made others laugh by acting a certain way. We liked the affirmation so we repeated it. Some of those went on to become famous comedians. Or we may have experienced rejection for acting another way so we avoided it. Or we may have had certain behavior reinforced such as food given to comfort us when we were crying. This resulted in food becoming a source of comfort later in life when things go wrong and so on.

This is also true of both good and bad behavior e.g. if a child experiences negative consequences for being honest, they will learn to avoid being honest or even outright lie. If they are rewarded they will become more honest. 

Seeing clearly ---> loving fully

There is a dullness in our passion for God due to a dimness of our vision of God.

The natural state of our hearts, left untouched and unaided, is indifference to God at best, if not in outright opposition to him.

The truth is if we fully saw and grasped the greatness of God in all his beauty, love, majesty, power, wisdom as well as his fierce commitment to us, we would be set on fire with unending, uninterrupted passion for Him (and compassion for others). We would have a relentless desire to pursue him every second of every day. In short we would love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbors as ourselves.

Isaiah 6:1-8

But we do not. (See Rom 7:18-24)

What can we do? Is there a solution? 

We can do nothing in terms of actions that will cause God to turn to us. He is already fully committed to us in Christ! We can only call out to God in faith asking him to reveal himself to us more and that we would increasingly have eyes and ears to receive a fuller and clearer revelation of him in all his glory/worth/ love.

Thank God for Christ! (See Rom 7:25-8:1) In and through Christ, God's faithfulness and relentless commitment to us is revealed (even in our failures) and it is never-ending! 

Morning by morning, new mercies we see. The more we see him, the more in love with him we become; the more our passion for him and love for others grows.

"The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." – Jeremiah the prophet – Lam 3:22-33

Giving and receiving glory

To glorify God (display his infinite value/glory/worth to others) is to value Him.

AND 

To value God is to glorify him i.e. when we truly value God we want to honor Him not only by our valuing Him itself (feeling God's value in our heart i.e. cherishing Him) but in any actions that spring forth from our valuing-cherishing Him. 

We are saying to others God is valuable to us by both our disposition and our actions, and therefore He could be valuable to them as well. 

To say this another way, we align our lives with what we value most and any actions that help us gain and take part in what we value most. If we recognize GOD is THE most valuable "object" of all "objects" (the King of kings and the LORD of lords... The most high God), we will align our lives (how we live/act) with how to best honor (glorify) him - best put Him on display - so we might gain and take part in who he is and what he's about. To do so tells others by our actions that God is most valuable to us (and therefore possibly to them). How we live matters. People are watching, especially if we claim to know God.  

To value him is also to love him. 

An invitation by God to glorify Him is an invitation to be loved by him and love him in return. It is an invitation to love and value him above all things and to experience His love and value us. This is the essence of our relationship with God: the receiving and giving of love/worth/value. This is the essence of God himself as Father, Son, and Spirit who are in perfect loving relationship with each other.

To love the most lovely and recognize God is the most lovely, and most valuable is to experience and participate in the greatest love and value possible. Not just His worth or value, but ours also. 

We were created by the all-glorious God to be in a relationship with him. In so doing, we experience our own sense of worth and value. In order for us to fully enter into this relationship and fully enjoy him, we 1st had to be created with the greatest possible capacity of seeing, experiencing, and enjoying him in all his glory i.e. we were made in the image of our Creator, created to give and receive glory-value-love just like God does among the Father, Son, and Spirit. The more completely we are like Him, the more fully we can—and do—enjoy Him and experience who God created us to be.

When we rejected God and broke away from this relationship of receiving and reflecting back to him his glory/value/love, the need for us to give and receive glory-value-love did not go away. We still need to value-love something and be valued-loved in return. It is how we are wired by virtue of being in God's image; the most valuable of all.  

Only now, in our state of rebellion, we seek to fill that need for love and glory with everything but God; everything created, which also happens to be infinitely inferior to the Creator. Therefore, it never works i.e. completely fulfills us. Creation is finite after all. We, however, are designed by the Eternal and created for the Infinite i.e. God almighty himself. 

There is no getting around this fact; we were made for this; for infinite glory-value-love and therefore must have it. It is the very core of our being; of who we are and were created to be.

The main issue is where do we go to best fulfill this innate aspect of who we are designed to be if not to the Designer and Infinitely glorious God himself?

Like Christ but different. How does it matter?  

Christ is the eternal and only-begotten (not created), image-bearer of God. The exact representation of his being. Heb 1:3 Col 1:15. God of very God. 

We are the created image-bearers of God, designed to receive and give the Father glory just as the Son does with the Father and the Father with the Son. Jn 17:20-23

We were created by God and like God so we can enter into and fully participate in the glory received and given between the Father and Son; a glory and love entered into and united by the Spirit of love/value/glory between the Father and Son. Jn 17:1-5, 13

For some related posts, see the following:

·        Worthless rotten sinners?

·        Hard wired for greatness

·        Created for glory
·        Does God value us?

·        Our worth based on what?

·        What is more important          doing or being?

·        Gods love based on who or what?

·        Our worth Gods glory

·        Giving and receiving glory

·        Why in Gods name does he love us?

Our worth… God's glory

God says we alone are in his image (nothing else created in all the universe is LIKE God like we are!). Because of this, we are of tremendous value and worth to God, for only we can reflect God (who is of infinite, eternal, and absolute worth) back to him and out to others in a way no other creature or created thing can. Other than his eternal Son, who is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, we are the most capable of this. 

We were created to recognize and take part in God himself, the most valuable (most High) of all, and made to be infinitely valued/loved by him. Our worth and value are precisely because we have the capacity to show forth, bring attention to, and raise awareness of the greatest and most worthy of all beings, only second to Christ himself, our "big" brother - Hebrews 2:11,17;  Romans 8:29. Only we can also receive God's love; appreciate and enjoy his glory in a manner equivalent to God's (Jesus) receiving and enjoying it. 

Incredible as all this is, we reject this because we prefer to be our own god. We value our independence more than our true joy and highest good i.e. which is being in union with the Highest of all. 

Being like God, in his image, has nothing to do with what we do for God or provide him (doing some good work or performing some task such as covering our shame with fig leaves) but is based solely on who God has made us to be (like God himself!) and what he has given us. Our problem is we want our identity based on what we do, not who we actually are - who He has made us to be. 

Because we are disconnected from God, the ground and source of our being and value, we live with a subtle, buried, and deep sense of guilt, shame,  worthlessness, and inadequacy. As a result, we are always seeking to do things to prove we are not worthless but important and valuable. We are constantly attempting to prove our worth by doing "important" things.

Our having a hard time accepting that we are worth God's love - because of who He created us to be as creatures in his image - is actually a subtle form of rebellious unbelief. God tells us we are designed by him, for life in him. Why? For us to partake of and enjoy him as much as possible, we must be like him as much as possible without actually being him. And since this is so, we can not function properly without a relationship-union with Him - our Creator. We are only a "shadow" or "vapor" of our original design. But we still have the capacity to be fully restored to God and our original design and will be if we are in Christ.

Yet we refuse to recognize this and reject a new status (offered to us by God through Christ, not earned by us). We now attempt to be our own god; to hang on to the lie that we can operate without him and even do something to prove our worth and earn God's love. But this is contrary to who God designed us to be i.e. who we actually are and who he tells us we are. And this is the very attitude (distrust/unbelief) that keeps us from reconnecting with God through the provision he has made for us in Christ.

For a discussion of our worth in relation to sin click here

For a discussion on the tension between being and doing click here

Created for glory

We have this ongoing tension of wanting to be seen yet not seen at the same time. We want to both hide and be noticed.

We want to be seen, noticed, and praised for our accomplishments so we might feel significant, important, valuable, etc. Yet we don't want to be fully seen because we know if people saw us truly, with all of our flaws, they would reject us.

The solution?

Christ sees us as we really are and still wants to be with us even when others reject us. As adopted children in Christ we are now his restored and beloved (valued) castaways, fully embraced in Christ and by Christ.

The underlying dynamic common to both of these is the need to be valued. We were created for glory because we were created to know the all-glorious One.

John 5:44 "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?"

For a fuller discussion on being created for glory click here and here. 

#Valued #Glorious #Seen #Hide #ThoughtsAboutGod #ThotsAboutGod

True abiding = much fruit

Constant emphasis on living out the second part of the greatest commandment without a regular reminder that this must flow out of participation in the first part can deteriorate into a performance-based approach to God.

Constant emphasis on the first part without a regular reminder that the fruit-evidence that we are truly participating in the first part is the second part, loses sight that only Gods love can empower us to carry it out.

" 'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?'

And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. 

And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." - 
Jesus answering the question of a self righteous Pharisee among the crowd. Mat 22:36-39

All legitimate fruit must be the result of abiding. But true abiding always results in much fruit.

"...Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. - Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper. Joh 15:4-5