It places us always in control and releases us from the prospect of personal fears. As long as we only want to give and resist the thought of becoming receivers, we betray our desire to stay in control at all costs, remaining in the house of fear when we could spend a greater proportion of our daily time in the house of God. Most of us live in this house of fear most of the time. The very existence in such quantity of this fear of revealing the true self to God in love at the deepest levels presupposes that it must be of use to somebody. It is an active tool in the hand of the prince of this world, the only one whose interests would be completely served by a shortage of Jesus vulnerability in the Church.
Fear is the opposite of worship and is the great enemy of intimacy.
It makes us cling to each other, or run away from each other, but does not create deep, true and lasting intimacy. Our search is to be Christ-like in that he alone is free enough from wounds to offer anyone else a fearless space. It is only in, and through, God that we can be faithful to each other, in ministry, friendship, marriage and community. Such an intimate bondage with God, constantly husbanded by prayer, offers us a true home, free from fear of ourselves. This spiritual experience shows us something often quite new in the Christian life, the absolute necessity of learning self-knowledge.