There really aren’t that many substances that can’t be mixed together. You can put sugar and water together and the sugar dissolves into the water. You can put honey into butter, whip them together and they become honey butter.
But some things just can’t be mixed together. You cannot mix oil and water. Each have a different density so if you drop oil into water it will float. Oil is denser that alcohol but less dense than water. The two just don’t mix. For this reason, if two people don’t get along they can often be described as like oil and water.
Light and darkness don’t mix either. If you turn on a light, the darkness disappears. If you turn off the light the light disappears, and darkness reappears.
Spiritually there are things that do not mix. Faith and fear do not mix. Faith and fear cannot even co-exist. If you have true, lasting, enduring faith, fear will disappear. The two do not mix.
Max Lucado says, “Meet your fears with faith.”
Alexander MacLaren once said, “Faith, which is trust, and fear are opposite poles. If a man has the one, he can scarcely have the other in vigorous operation. He that has his trust set upon God does not need to dread anything except the weakening or the paralyzing of that trust.”
Woodrow Kroll stated, “The only known antidote for fear is faith.”
John Newton’s famous quote goes this way, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds, in a believer’s ear! It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, and drives away his fear.”
And Watchman Nee said, “Faith looks not at what happens to him but at Him Whom he believes.”
And my favorite is from Corrie Ten Boom, a woman who could be much acquainted with fear as she spent time in a German concentration camp. “Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.”
But what does the Bible say about fear?
Psalm 23:4 – Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Joshua 1:9 – Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.
Isaiah 41:10 says – Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
2 Timothy 1:7 – For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
And Proverbs 29:25 – The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.
The Bible is FULL of passages about not fearing. In each one, we are told about God’s control, His love, His comfort, or His sustenance. God is ALWAYS with us, but we must decide as to whether we REALLY believe that.
As you know, I don’t believe we really have much to do with our own salvation. Jesus did that. We cannot do anything to save ourselves. But this fear thing, a lot of that is up to us. We can either believe God when He says He is with us, or we can disbelieve and live in fear.
Either we can believe God when He says – if we trust in Him we are safe, or we can choose to disbelieve.
We can either believe God when He says that He will uphold us with His righteous right hand, or we can live in our fear denying that God sufficient and acknowledging that our problems are bigger than God’s ability to deal with them.
This is our choice. Fear and faith don’t mix. So today, the decision is ours. Are we going to live with fear or faith? I think living in faith is the wiser decision.
They Just Don’t Mix
© 12/24/2017 by Marlys Popma
The Christian Conservative
Used with permission.
