Why are we living in fear?

I have thought much about fear lately. I have often wondered if I were the weird one. Am I just too stupid to be fearful? I see it so much, every day. The things people are afraid of, the strange things people live in fear of, and frankly I just have a hard time understanding.

I have a handful of friends on fb that I can depend on to report EVERY terrible news story they come across. Murder, check. Rape, check. Child abuse, check. Animal abuse, check. Some weird new virus, illness, etc., check. I have no need to EVER flip on the news.

So as I scroll through the daily crap on my news feed, I definitely understand how the fires get fanned. Mercy. If you're already a fatalist and you get on fb, by day's end you'll have yourself or your family dead - or well on the way.

We have conspiracy theories about the government. Vaccines of any kind will surely kill us or make us stupid. If you breathe the air you're sure to catch herpegonnastaphaclap. And the list goes on.

The Bible / God's word addresses repeatedly that we are NOT to live in fear. Period. End of story. Fear doesn't come from God. It comes from the author of lies himself, satan.

My house has been robbed and everything taken in the past. I don't live in fear that it will happen again. I've been in car accidents. I don't live in fear that it will happen again. I've lost jobs, been sick, been divorced, been hurt. I don't live in fear that it will happen again. I don't worry about the economy, the president, enterovirus 69, Ebola, or germs in general. Why? Because my God is bigger.

Two scriptures come to mind...

Matthew 6:25-34 

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

2 Timothy 1:7 

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

I love both of these!

So bear in mind that scare tactics should not work on any of us - ever!