From Word To Word

There is a perfect love, and it casts out fear, not because it is the opposite of fear, driving it out as the light drives out the darkness, but because it is the master of fear, casting it out like a demon is cast from the possessed.

If I fear, it is because I do not know truly that I am loved.  If I knew truly, if I knew perfectly, how perfectly I am loved, I would never fear.  To take courage is only to trust in perfect love, though I can can never know it perfectly.  It is to seek perfect love, to find it out, to dwell in it, and fear will find itself cast away, because it cannot abide where love abides.