the mirage of fear.

"i must say a word about fear. it is life's only true opponent. only fear can defeat life. it is a clever, treacherous (often slow but steady) adversary, how well i know. it has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. it goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. it begins in your mind, always. one moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. then fear, disguised in the form of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. but disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. doubt does away with it with little trouble. you become anxious. reason comes to do battle for you, you are re-assured. reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. but, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. you feel yourself weakening, wavering. your anxiety morphs into dread. you make rash decisions (or are just frozen in your tracks). the matter is difficult to put into words. for fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end (or the end or long-delay of a long-standing dream, for that matter), nestles in your memory like a gangrene; it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. so you must fight hard to express it. you must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. because if you don't; if your fear becomes a wordless, formless darkness, an obscure sense of dread that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."
from Life of Pi

we are commanded to not even put up with so much as a vague sense of dread.
we are commanded to fear God alone.
we are commanded to live as though "Perfect love has thrown out ALL fear. forever. and ever."

this is our inheritance. un-earn-able. simply accepted, on the grounds of God's faithfulness alone.
heck yes the sometimes seemingly incessant whispers of "you don't deserve to daily live in such freedom, such UTTER liberty & joy! you don't deserve to awake every morning and get the chance to lean on the Faithful & True One; the One more dependable than the rising sun!" are true.
we DON'T deserve this dear friends. don't deserve any of this unfathomable, infinite inheritance. but OHHH BABYYY this Jesus HAS earned it & deserves it FOR us.

may every day be one big, fat, nonstop "YES GOD!!!" when it comes to believing what He says about us & whispers to us, instead of the stupid whispers & mirages of fear, dread & even so much as one moment of giving in to the deception of hopelessness.
we (you, me, ALL of us) were the "joy set before Him"
and boy oh boy, may He forever be the joy set before us, too, folks.