I would like to address the spirit of fear that we are all susceptible to experiencing. This emotion can overrun us before we know what hit us. It is like a flood that gains strength coming down a mountain stream. You are sitting by the bank not suspecting or seeing the coming deluge. Then you hear the noise, fear sets in, you see the wall of water approaching, fear rises up, the wall of water hits, sweeps you away, and fear engulfs you.
How can this happen? It can happen in many ways, but the focus I am taking concerning fear is in the realm of relationships. We can all relate when we get an unexpected phone call, an unexpected delay where one you love doesn’t show up, an unexpected abnormality when a spouse doesn’t show up with a paycheck and the T.V. is gone, an unexpected jolt when your children have made choices that endanger their lives, a sickness that devastates a child’s or other loved one’s health, and other unexpected situations that have fallen on some of you reading this article.
You may be like King David who cried out to God, “My heart is severely pained within me….fearfulness and trembling have come upon me…and terrors…have fallen upon me.” Psalm 55:4&5. Did you notice that David cried out to God in prayer? “Give ear to my prayer, O God, and do not hide yourself from my supplication.”
This is the first step in handling fear. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6&7
More than likely you’ll need some warfare prayer to get to the place of peace. In my own experience, I have succumbed to a spirit of fear in a fearsome scenario that would begin to race in my mind, with a resultant fear in my heart and a churning in my stomach. Unknowingly, Satan takes advantage of the fear and “the enemy comes in like a flood….” Isaiah 59:19.
At this point, you must take authority over the spirit of fear that is racing through the mind with all kinds of imaginations. You must pray with authority against the spirit of fear and command it to leave you. You must bind any thought that is flooding through your mind that is authored by the enemy, and only receive communication in your mind that is authored by the Holy Spirit! I have found that this will help subdue the spirit of fear. But even after doing all this, I have still had an awful feeling in my abdomen. As I began to praise the Lord, I have felt a release come through me and felt the peace of God. It was the Scripture manifesting itself in my whole being; “when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.” Isaiah 59:19
After the spirit of fear has been disarmed, you need to take a position on the firm foundation of the Word of God. Speak out loud the Scriptures: “For God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind.” II Timothy 1:7 Now take advantage of that word ‘love’. For you see, it’s God’s love for us that will magnify His protection over us since He is the “Great Shepherd of the sheep…” in Hebrews 13:20. It is this perfect love that He has for us and our knowledge of it that will cast out fear.
So, let’s lay the sword of the spirit into our enemy with this verse; “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” I John 4:17
It is this stand of our trust in God that has been accomplished through prayer, warfare in the mind, and in resting ourselves in the arms of the Great Shepherd that will manifest itself in “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
