Wed blog: I John 4

When I was a little girl, I was afraid of many, many things. I was afraid of the dark, of certain men (would cry even if some if my own relatives were near me,) La Llorona, wouldn't jump across irrigation ditches cause I could fall in and get hurt. My Grandma lives in a little town/village of Sile, NM and I remember running as fast as I could singing "Jesus Loves Me" so that bad people and bad things wouldn't snatch me into the fields of alfalfa. Today I don't ti when walking that dirt road between the church and cemetery, but I still look over my shoulder. I still have a numbing fear of spiders, but my fears have changed. I'm afraid of failure, of letting others down, of not being who and what others expect of me, and so on and so on.

From childhood to "adulthood" (or whatever era I'm in right now) my fears have shifted from external, physical villains to self, internal, and sinful villains and struggles. I bring this up because it brings me back to when I was a little girl and the first verse I remember memorizing. Those nights that I crawled into my parents bed because of nightmares (dinosaurs, aliens, snakes, and genocide) I would say this verse over and over again. I John 4:4 says "Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world." I knew as a little girl that Jesus was in my heart and in my life. I knew that he would protect me from the evil things and the evil one who was out there. It means that as big and as ugly things get, 🎶 my God is bigger, my God is greater, my God is stronger than any other. 🎶

It means that today I struggle with more internal struggles. I know these fears and anxieties are not from God. I know that this is from the evil one. I know that as a believer and follower of Christ I have experienced new birth and the Holy Spirit dwells within me. Just as the end of Romans 8 comforts us and we can be "Convinced that neither death, not life, nor angles, nor principalities. Nor things present, not things to come, nor powers. Nor heights, nor depths, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."