Fear, Grace, and Gratitude

Word Definitions and Meaning

What is the meaning of:
fear (and its word-field: alarm, dread, qualm, worry, panic, horror, phobia, paranoia, and terror)
grace , gratitude ?

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What Is Fear?

fear [ < Old English færan (to terrify, ambush, surprise)] A strong emotion due to foreseeing or becoming aware of danger; the reason or cause of such strong emotion.

At its best, fear helps you protect yourself, and helps to remind you that you don't have control over everything in your life (and never will). At its worst, fear can turn us into murderous bigots or quivering cowards. A person can create fear in someone else, for vengeance or control. Demagogues tell a story of perilous fear. Great leaders get us to reach beyond fear, even beyond hope, to a future built on a love that is beyond just us and far greater than all fear. Fear can shrink the soul more than anything else except powerlust. There are many kinds of fear:

• sudden fear (alarm),
• strong desire not to do something (dread),
• fear of doing something against one's conscience or better judgment (qualm),
• fear of unfavorable results (worry),
• brief but strong loss of composure (panic),
• fear that causes immediate physical reaction (horror),
• fear of one specific thing beyond reason (phobia),
• irrational fear that people are out to do you harm (paranoia)
• the surrender to extreme fear (terror).

Jesus is several times recorded as saying, "". It's also one of the traditional messages of the angels. Psalm 23 says "I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me". Fears that are turned over to God will be muted or harnessed, or will go away. Instead of fearing the darkness, seek the light. When you stop trying to be in control and let God be in control, there is no cause for fear, for the One in Control loves you and seeks the best for you. Trust in God's love casts out fear. Go against God, and there is no reason not to be in terror, except perhaps for God's unfathomable mercy.

"Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed."
Michael Pritchard

"Courage is fear that has said its prayers."
Dorothy Bernard

No need to dread checking the dictionary for a definition of .

What Is Grace?

grace [ < Old French, < Latin grâtia, < grâtus (pleasing, favorable) ] unmerited favor.

Unfortunately, in today's English, the adjectives for grace, 'gracious' and 'graceful', no longer are well-connected to the idea of giving unmerited favor or being characterized by giving it. "Gracious" has more to do with simple courtesy than favor; "graceful" is about movement or form. Both are, in a way, something good given by God, but God's grace (and the grace we're called to give) is most aimed at the mud, the scoundrels, and the hurts of daily life. It's not genteel. Grace is undeserved -- you get it when you deserve something less good. That means it is also unjust. Thank God that what goes around doesn't have to come around; otherwise we'd all be sunk.

God's grace is given to all, freely. God gives you the faith that sets you straight, and gives you the Spirit that changes you so you have Christ's goodness. Thus, it is grace that lets loose the riches of God's love.

God keeps this grace from no one. However if you don't accept grace, it sits there with no effect, like an unopened and forgotten Christmas present. And we humans don't like the implications of the gift, namely, that we have no way to do this ourselves. So we tend not to take this grace until we have nothing else left and nowhere else to turn, and even then we might spurn it. Yet, if we open the gift, the gift itself shows us how to give it to others. Grace is free, but it does not come cheap. The One who loves us pays for grace, by way of all the grief and sorrow that can only be found in someone who loves. The same is true for us when we, like God, give unmerited favor to those we love, as God calls on us to do. There's more than enough grace to go around to everybody, more than enough to do the job. More than enough for you.

"Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected."
Jonathan Edwards

"Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues."
John R. W. Stott

"Left with an unknowing dependence on grace in the instant of an arising desire, we very often truly do not know what to do. As frustrating and painful as the dilemma may be, there is a real beauty in it. It is precisely at those times of not knowing that we are most alive in realizing our need for grace."
Gerald May, *The Awakened Heart*, p. 122

You can go see if the dictionary offers you any .

What Is Gratitude?

gratitude [ < Latin grâtitûdô < grâtus (pleasing < favorable)] The state of being grateful. Grateful: appreciative of some sort of benefit you receive from someone; especially to the point of doing something in return to please your benefactor. Gratitude is a frame of mind rooted in grace. In the same word-field: thankful, appreciative.

Gratitude is a key motive for Christian morality, and thus any Christian way of living. God did everything to show love for me, so I want to do right by people, I want to live the kind of life that God would be happy about. A growing proportion of us have little idea of what gratitude really means. They want to think of themselves as being in control, as the one who makes their life tick. But tonight your soul may be required of you. And if it isn't, it may well be because God wanted to give you another day to remember all the things God and other people did for you along the way. An attitude of gratitude naturally leads to love, and repayment by acts of love. Being grateful to God leads to acts which, whatever else they may be, are acts of worship. There are many whom each of us have every reason to be grateful for; the challenge is to treat them accordingly.

"Gratitude is a virtue of the highest excellence, as it implies a feeling and generous heart, and a proper sense of responsibility."
Noah Webster

"When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?"
G.K. Chesterton

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."
William Arthur Ward

Go ahead. Show the dictionary some .

A Spirithome Dare: Go throughout tomorrow thanking each person who helps you or serves you. Every single one of them. From wake-up to bedtime. From lovers to strangers to enemies. No matter how small the deed is. At day's end, look back on it. What did it cause? What did you feel? What was their reaction?