How can we move from fear to faith?

<p>Episode 84 - We are resuming our journeyr through the Book of Proverbs after our amazing guest interview with Jill Briscoe in our previous episode. Today, Stephanie takes us deep into the topics of fear, insecurities and anxiety in order to ponder the Christ-centered alternative: faith and trust.</p> <p>Many proverbs are centered on the concept of fear--both as something to avoid when it is the fear of man, and as something to nurture when it is the fear of God. What do these proverbs mean, and what can they teach us today?</p> <p>As has now become our habit, we start off by meeting a fictional character who embodies the traits we will be pondering today. Her name is Jessica, and she tries hard to please everyone! Stephanie takes us to a profound quote by Thomas Chalmers about the "expulsion power of a new affection" as the underlying secret to replace fear by faith. We examine fear to conclude that it is always a secondary motivation in the transformation process, and that growing in faith makes for a much more powerful vector of transformation.</p> <p>Faith predates the fall in the garden, but fear follows it. Therefore, in Christ we are given the opportunity to return to our deepest roots, restoring the harmony of our intimacy with the Father in the garden, and even more. Because of the transformative power of faith in Christ, we can become salt and light--this is actually the context of Jesus' famous teaching about our identity as salt of the earth and light of the world!</p> <p>We ponder that genuine faith and trust in God are only possible when we rejoice and delight in God first, and foremost, and, actually, all in all.<strong> Faith is grounded in who God is; fear is grounded in who we are in our own eyes, or in the eyes of the world.</strong></p> <p>We examine this powerful thought by Saint Augustine, that challenges us to give up the "fruitless joys we are afraid to lose" in order to "embrace the joy-filled fruit we cannot lose." We do this, by looking at Peter's faith when he dared to step out of th