i'm always scared and i have a hard time putting all of my faith and trust into God. I'm scared that consequences to sins that i've even confessed will come and bite me in the rear. I'm scared that one day people will all hate me. I'm always scared that i'll get in trouble for something and my parents will be mad at me. You might say that i have a guilty conscience, but i've repented and confessed. Fear is consuming me, what do i do?
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GOOD LUCK!! and pray 4 me
Rina ;)
People often preach about a God that you have to fear , fear in terms of always watching your back for punishment, always thinking He's upset with you or waiting for you to fall so that He can rub it in when He saves you - this is truly wrong, and can be perfectly summarized in the classic quote, "Baba Yasoo' hay izza'al minnek" ("Father Jesus will get upset with you."). That is the kind of fear that is wrong.
We love God "because He first loved us", as the Bible says - and we fear Him in that we revere Him, we acknowledge His authority over us - while still loving Him as a Father. We should be so in love with God that our fear isn't even heaven or hell! If we are truly "Intoxicated by God", as St. Macarius says, then we love Him so much that we know that He does not WANT us to end up in hell, that every win for Satan is a loss for Him. In this sense, we have lost our fear for God in that we are not even remotely concerned about His justice,
we are not concerned about His gifts - we trust that all of that is taken care of - and those are nothing compared to Him and our desire to be with Him and live for Him.
This is why in the quote from the Paradise , St. Antony responds to Abba Besarion the way he does. It seems that Abba Besarion was vigilant because He thought God required it of him, that God would be less happy with him if he did not stand up for forty nights without shutting his eyes. Antony 's God is one who just wants love. If you stand up for forty days, let it be because you want to sacrifice every waking hour to your Lord and King, that you don't want a moment of pure bliss with Him to be stolen - not because you think God won't like it if you do not.
Antony's image of God is a loving One, One that knows we are weak:
I heard that the blessed man Antony used to say, 'God doth not permit wars to wax as fierce in this generation as He did in the generation of old, for He knoweth that men are [more] feeble [now] , and that they could not bear [them]."
So the proper fear includes recognizing His authority, but having a such a perfect relationship with Him that you're not concerned with all of the side- stuff - you're not afraid of any of that - all you want is Him; to have what Adam had with God- unity:
"They used to say that one of the old men asked God that he might see the fathers, and he saw them [all], with the exception of Abba Antony; and he said unto him that shewed [them] to him, "Where is Abba Antony?" And he said unto him, 'Wheresoever God is there is Antony .'"
GOD BLESS ALL! :-*