The Green Lantern

Over the weekend we had free HBO offered on our satellite TV service.  With that in mind, I went through the listings to see if there was anything that my wife and I might enjoy watching.  Usually I find one or two movies that look interesting and fit into our personal movie viewing standards.  One of the few movies that I ended up recording was the comic book superhero movie from last year entitled “The Green Lantern.”  It was the premise of the movie that captured my attention.  The movie centers on the comic book characters that form the “Green Lantern Intergalactic Corps.”  In the story “the Ring” which is the power behind the Corps, recruits its first human member and he is soon called upon to defend mankind from Parallax, a super-powerful being who feeds on fear.

The whole concept of a force that feeds on fear went hand in hand with my recent blogs on the subject of living in Godly love.  It would seem that fear is the direct opposite of love.  As I look back at the attacks on my personal character over the last few years, I can see that fear was the driving force that I came up against.  I John 4:18 says that “there is no fear in love.”  (KJV)  Vincent’s Word Studies states that this literally translates as “fear is not.”  In other words, it has no existence in love.

Daniel Webster first defined fear as “a painful emotion or passion excited by an expectation of evil.”  Thayer’s explains the original Greek meaning as “dread or terror.”  As I thought on these definitions this morning, I began to realize that fear can be caused by a myriad of reasons including an overwhelming dependency on money as an answer to most problems (see: I Timothy 6:10), the threat of not being in control of a situation, the unknown, impending evil, the thought of having one’s own little world upset by possibly having to be personally involved in another’s difficulties, or the rejection of others by not being liked, trusted or accepted.  Each of these events played a part in the attacks against me and in the way in which I responded to them.

I would have to say that fear is the power and force of the devil that comes against us in this life.  The evil power that threatened the world in “The Green Lantern” was finally defeated through the efforts of those who would not yield to the fear that it manifested and thereby took away its source of power.  The same could be said for Christians in the world today.  It is like my comment about Christians being the “Shock Absorbers” in the world. (see “POWER” 9/11/12) The buck should stop with us!  If we stop reacting to other’s fear with fear, then the power of its negative impact is reduced to zero!  Another thing that I personally and painfully began to take note of today is that our responses of fear can take many different forms.  I’ll discuss these a little more tomorrow, but for today I’ll just ask you to consider becoming an elite member of the “Green Lantern Intergalactic Corps” and walk fearlessly in the midst of the intimidating attacks of fear that come your way, thereby annihilating its power in its tracks, and replacing it with the powerful love of Christ!

Have a great day.  Stay in tune to His Word, and keep asking yourselves… “What FEAR am I expecting to annihilate today?”