The spirit of fear is a tactic of the devil used to bring destruction upon us. If we fear him, we experience defeat; that's why so many times in the Bible when God's people would go out into battle, He would command them not to fear their enemy or tremble. Have you ever had any situation/s where you had fear towards a physical person/s or situations that made you tremble? When I speak of tremble, I mean that your whole body just shakes, and you can't stop it. Now, likewise, have you ever been in a church service or alone at home in the presence of God, and the power of God came on you so strong that you trembled? I have had both of these happen many times, however, I had to recognize that the trembling that was motivated by the enemy had to be dealt with, and I had to begin to take authority over it in my life and walk free of it. Read Deut. 20:1-4. Verse 3b says, "Let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them." He had to warn the Children of Israel before the battle not to get into fear because of what their eyes would see. He told them that their enemy would be larger in number than them and possess horses & chariots. The Law of conquest is found in verse 16-17 of this same scripture. It says, "...thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them...as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee." In order to posses the promised land, they had to obey this command from God. God was telling them not to give life the enemy! In order to walk in the spiritual promised land that the Lord wants us to possess, we have to obey this same command. Notice the command was don't fear, tremble, be terrified, or let your heart faint. It was all fear based! God knew that if they feared the enemy, that they would be destroyed, but if they feared Him, they would walk in the blessing. It is the same today with us as it was then for them. There is no difference. The enemy, the devil, will keep us from possessing our spiritual promise land if we fear him above God. If we look at the situation & say to our self, "This is impossible because the opposition is too great," we are agreeing with the spirit of fear & take on that very feeling of fear, but if we look at the seemingly impossible situation and say, "Nothing is impossible with God," we are honoring the Lord God with fear, the fear of the Lord. This attitude recognizes that God is more than enough...He is able! To walk in the Fear of the Lord we must refuse to allow the spirit of fear to operate over our mind. We must do what God told the Children of Israel to do in the verses above; that is to utterly destroy it...save nothing alive but utterly destroy it. Don't even allow it to exist and have the breath to speak lies to you. He gave them a physical example because He physically dwelt with them, in order to give us the spiritual examples because now He dwells in us.
I fully believe that signs & wonders are not seen to the degree that they should be because this generation is full of fear, and not the fear of God. When the children of Israel feared God, and walked in what He said to do, miracles happened. They same is for us today. I told in the first blog on fear that I truly feel that the Lord revealed to me that fear was the greatest form of worship. Think about it...throughout the Bible when God would prove himself as the One True God through acts of His children, great fear would fall upon the kings and pagan people. Some kings would even dump their gods and make new decrees for the people to worship & serve the God of Israel as God. It would be fear of God that would turn them to worship Him as God. Fear is worship, and satan recognizes it, and is doing all that he can to deceive you into unknowingly worshipping him as god. He wants to be feared, and if he didn't, he wouldn't try to get you to fear him. He understands the power of fear where we have been ignorant to those truths. The Holy Ghost is exposing the ways of the enemy to us so that we will step into our promised land.
Look at the story of Elijah & his servant Elisha found in 2 Kings chapter 6. When Elisha awoke & realized that they were surrounded by a great host of an army, fear quickly set in. Notice what Elijah said first..."Do not fear," and he went on to say "for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Something happen...God moved Elisha from being limited to see only in the realm of natural to seeing in the realm of the spirit. The Word says that as Elijah prayed for God to open Elisha's eyes, Elisha looked and saw that the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around him. God struck the army that had come against them with blindness and delivered them from the hand of their enemy. What do you think would have happened if they had feared the enemy instead of standing their ground & trusting God? Do you think that the outcome would have been different? I do. If you will study the children of Israel and the battles that they fought, you will find it to be so. We are in the last days, and we cannot afford to wonder aimlessly in the wilderness because of fear and disobedience. Fear brings disobedience to God.
The Bible says that the devils also believe in Jesus & they tremble. They back off when Jesus steps into a situation because Jesus has all authority. satan desires to mimic that same authority with us. He wants us to tremble in fear of him. Many years ago, I had to fight very real attacks of the devil in the night, and attacks of a paralyzing fear that had my undivided attention. I had never experienced anything like this ever before, and honestly was terrified. I will not go into detail of the things that happened. I had heard people speak of these sort of things before, and frankly these people scared me. I thought they they were crazy or something until it happened to me. I could not understand why someone as myself who was diligently seeking and living for the Lord, who was a serious Christian about the things of God, and living a life aligned with Him would have to experience these horrible kinds of attacks of the devil. The Lord showed me that he was teaching me of the authority that I possessed through Christ Jesus over the powers of the enemy, and that I did not have to fear him. I was being trained as if I were in a spiritual boot camp. Although I didn't like it, it was producing results. As I continued relying on God & resisting fear, these spiritual manifestations stopped. Actually they stopped when I refused to fear the devil any longer. I had to come to a place of absolute refusal to fear him, and to rely on Jesus as my help. However, Jesus, has continued to reveal to me other areas of fear that I have had to walk free from as well.
There are many aspects of fear, and different degrees of fear. He wants the smallest aspect and degree of fear to be utterly destroyed from our lives. It is the little foxes that spoil the vine. The small ways that you fear, which you do not think is a problem can ultimately keep you from walking in the fullness of His plan for your life. Fear is a spirit, it is our enemy, when we do not resist it, we come into agreement with it, therefore, taking on it's characteristics which affects our emotions. That's why we can mistakenly think that it is simply an emotion. When we surrender to God, we take on His characteristics and mindset; it is the same when we surrender to the enemy. When a spirit shows up and we pay it attention...are in awe of it...revere it (even though this is spoken of in a very negative and fearful way)...we connect emotionally with it, and it produces in us a mental disposition of fear. We emotionally feel whatever we revere. Just like when we are in awe of God, there is an emotional experience that comes with it.
Have you ever set through a praise & worship services & felt so compelled to break out & worship God freely? Maybe you felt strongly compelled to do something unusual like breaking out & running around the church. The first thing to hit your mind will be fear. If you draw back from doing what you know the Holy Ghost is leading you to do, how do you feel in your emotional make up and in your spirit man when you walk away from there knowing that you were disobedient? On the flip side, when you revere God enough to say, "I just don't care what they think of me, I'm gonna worship my God & do what the Holy Ghost leads me to do," and break out in radical praise towards God, how to you feel emotionally and spiritually then?
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