I am excited to kick off this series, because it is about something I still deal with. We are in the midst of the greatest war. It has nothing to do with Iran, although it has something to do with Iran. It has nothing to do with the Middle East, but it has everything to do with the Middle East. It has nothing to do with who is in leadership in our country, and yet it has everything to do with who is in leadership in our country.
Many people have bought the lie that a certain political party will fix all the problems and all the issues of all humanity. Let me say this. There is only one King, and His name is Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God. The war we fight is not with flesh and blood.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. Ephesians 6:10-16 (NKJV)
I am so grateful for the grace of God. There is nothing I can do, no amount of money I can give, and nothing I can work up to get God to love me any more than He does already. But I have to tell you, once you are born again and commit your life to Jesus, you step into an unspoken warfare. I am not trying to be goofy or kooky. We have ignored this thing called the devil for too long, and he has run roughshod over our families, our marriages, our children, our towns, and our cities.
But thanks be to God, who always gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57). You are going to hear me say that over and over.
Notice the word Paul uses at the end of that armor passage: taking. Above all, taking the shield of faith. I don’t like to call it effort on your part, because salvation is all grace. But taking hold of that shield is a conscious act of faith. And with the shield of faith, according to that verse, we can quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
The Spirit of Fear
Paul wrote to his spiritual son Timothy in the sunset years of his life, and he said this:
For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. 2 Timothy 1:6-7 (NIV)
I like the way the King James says verse 7. I am not a King James only guy, but the definite article captures the beginning of this whole series on the war we are in.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV)
I became uniquely acquainted with fear as a young boy living in Gainesville, Florida. When I was a child, my favorite time of the day was 4:00 in the afternoon. That was when Dark Shadows came on TV. It was the story of Barnabas Collins, a vampire who slept all day in a casket and went after people at night. Some of you have never heard of it. Google it. It is hokey as all get out now. I recently saw a clip of it and thought, “Why in the world was I so captivated by that?” It is the silliest show I have ever seen in my life.
But as an eight, nine, ten year old boy, it captured something on the inside of me, and I didn’t realize it then. You are going to think I am an old fogey. I qualified for Medicare a couple of weeks ago, and I am still milking that. I am not old enough for Social Security yet, but I am old enough to have some experience. And I am telling you, being captivated by Dark Shadows, as innocent as that sounds, opened the door for a spirit of fear that I sometimes still battle to this day.
Something so innocent can end up tormenting you for a long time, if not for the rest of your life.
Five Fears I Have Had to Face
Doctors have documented somewhere around 400 to 500 fear triggers that can affect your life. I have narrowed them down to five that I have had to deal with in my own life. The only reason I mention them is because by the victory of Jesus Christ, I have been able to overcome every one of these fears. To God be the glory.
The fear of the unknown
The first fear that affects all of us at one time or another is the fear of the unknown. The what-ifs. “What if I totally surrender my life to Jesus and something bad happens?” We have not done a good job of telling people that once you commit your life to Jesus, there will be a cross you have to pick up and carry for Him. And one of the fears that will attack your life is the fear of the unknown.
You can spend your life saying, “What if, what if, what if,” and never find the victory. You will never know the fullness of the peace of God that passes all understanding, which will keep not only your heart but also your mind through Christ Jesus.
The fear of man
The second fear I have had to deal with is the fear of man. “What are people going to think of me if I totally sell out to Jesus and become a radical?”
I am not talking about the kind of radical who straps on a bomb. God will never tell you to kill yourself or someone else in service to the kingdom of God. That is a cult, not the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am talking about a life that is all in for Jesus, and the fear of what people will say about it.
The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe. Proverbs 29:25 (KJV)
The fear of rejection
The third fear, which most of us face in the early days of walking with the Lord, is the fear of rejection and persecution, especially from your own family.
I remember living in Soddy-Daisy when the Lord got a hold of my life as a young man. He called me to the ministry and called me to preach the gospel. At the time, we had a singing group that traveled all over Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia, and suddenly the call to preach became greater than the call to sing. When I shared that with my parents, they turned on me and rejected me. Even my own grandmother looked at me one day and said, “Son, you know people’s gone crazy reading the Bible. Don’t be one of those crazy people.”
We used to sing an old Imperials song about the Lord getting a hold of your life. I am glad He got a hold of mine. But nobody told me that when He radically transformed my heart, and all I wanted to do was tell people about the love of God, it wouldn’t be the world that came against me. It wasn’t my teachers at school. It was my own parents. They even threatened to have me put in Moccasin Bend. But Jesus said this in the Sermon on the Mount:
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:10 (KJV)
The fear of failure
Then there is the fear of failure. One of the greatest things that freed me from it came from a friend of mine, Rick Hagans, who runs a rehab ministry in Auburn, Alabama. I heard him say one time when he preached in our church, “All failure means is somebody tried to do something.”
Somebody asked Edison if he felt like a failure, since it took him something like 490 tries. He said, “No, I just found 490 ways a light bulb wouldn’t work.”
There are going to be times you fail. Nobody told me this as a young Christian. There will be times you fail to give an adequate representation of Jesus Christ. But the good news is that because everybody fails, everybody gets a do-over. Praise God for the do-overs! All we have to do is come to Him and say, “Lord, I’m battling this fear of failure,” and He will give you a do-over. So many people will never arrive at their destiny because they will never try anything new. They are afraid to fail.
My wife, Pam, loves change. I like change, but I like to be warned when it is coming. One night I got home from preaching a revival about 2:00 in the morning and almost killed myself walking in the door, because the couch had mysteriously moved right in front of it. I failed. I failed badly. But I repented to her and to Jesus, and I didn’t say a bad word, though I really wanted to.
Failure is going to happen to everyone. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from totally selling your life out to Jesus Christ, because His blood and His mercy and His forgiveness wash every sin away.
The fear of abandonment
Then there is the fear of abandonment. I grew up in a religious family, but not in a godly family, and those are two different things. Growing up religious fixes your mind on what you can and can’t do, where you can and can’t go, and what you can and can’t watch or listen to.
The fear of abandonment I battled was the fear of God abandoning me because I would fail Him so miserably. As a young believer I found myself failing almost at every turn.
I know somebody reading this is battling the fear that God has somehow abandoned you because you have not lived up to the righteous requirements of a just God. But can I tell you why Jesus came to this earth? He came to shed His blood so the righteous demands of a just God would be satisfied, and you don’t have to go to hell when you die. Hell was not created for you. It was created for the devil and his followers. I used to battle the fear that something I had done or said or even thought would cause me to miss God and send me to hell. But here is what I know about fear and how it torments you.
Fear Is a Spirit
I am not trying to be goofy. I am just telling you the truth. Scripture is clear that fear is a spirit. Paul called it “the spirit of fear.” And what that tells me is that you were not born with it. If saying it is a spirit makes you gag a little bit, then call it a learned behavior. But whatever it is, those innocent movies you think aren’t doing anything to you are doing something.
Fear is something you were not born with. It is foreign to you. When you are a little baby and can’t say a word of English, all you know to do when you get scared is cry. And there is something in a mama that will bring her out of the deepest sleep she has ever been in, to get to that baby right away and bring comfort and calm to that child’s life.
As a spirit, fear can be driven away from you by the power of God’s Word. Jesus made a fantastic statement in the book of John.
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. John 6:63 (NKJV)
It is easy for us to get so captivated by what the devil does that we forget what Jesus did. Can I say it in Alabama English? He whooped the devil all over the place.
And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Colossians 2:15 (KJV)
When the Romans took over a city, they would capture the king and parade him through the town, stripped and in chains, saying, “This is what happens to anybody who resists the power of Rome.” I am here to declare to you that no fear and no curse anybody can put on you can stand, because Jesus has already taken Satan, chained him up, and paraded him through heaven saying, “This is what happens when you mess with My children.”
That is why I am excited. Fear is a spirit, and I refuse to allow anything foreign into my life to control my worship, control my praise, or destroy my faith.
Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. 1 John 4:4 (KJV)
Fear Is Not from God
The second thing I see here is that fear is not from God. I know I have already said it. God has not given us the spirit of fear. Why? Because John said it best.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18 (KJV)
We have to be careful with that word “perfect,” especially reading the King James or New King James. In our thinking it can sound like sinless, or completely without any flaw. And while the love of God is without flaw, the context John is speaking in is the word complete. You can read it this way without damaging the Scripture: complete love casts out fear, because fear has torment. He that fears is not made complete in love.
The Shield of Faith
The third takeaway is the main point I have been working toward. The blood of Jesus, the power of Jesus’ words, and the shield of faith will empower you to drive fear out of your life.
Years ago, when Pam and I had just started traveling and preaching, she told me she wasn’t going to go with me one night. She was working a full-time job at the time, and we weren’t even fussing about it. But it hit me the wrong way and pierced my heart.
I got in the car and drove down I-85 toward Auburn, and I said, “God, why is this irritating me? I know she loves me. I know she approves of what we’re doing. What is going on?”
In a flash, I saw myself as a child, and I heard my daddy screaming at the top of his lungs, walking out the door, and slamming it behind him. And I started to weep. Sometimes we don’t realize the trauma caused by unkind words and slammed doors.
Even though I was the oldest of five kids, I was told from the time I could remember that I would never amount to anything. When I committed my life to preach the gospel, my own father looked at me and said, “Boy, ain’t nobody going to listen to you. You talk too funny. You got too bad of an accent.”
But over the last sixteen years, more than 1,800 pastors and leaders have graduated from our school of ministry in East Africa, and they are reaching more than 80,000 people with the gospel, listening to this funny Alabama accent. I don’t say that to brag. I say it to thank the people of Rise who pray for us and support us. And by the way, in East Africa they think I’m from Australia.
Driving down that interstate, I realized Satan was trying to slip a fear of abandonment into my heart. So I screamed out at the top of my lungs, “Devil, in the name of Jesus, I am not going to allow you to drive a wedge between me and my wife.” I went and preached my guts out. People got saved. People got delivered. And when I came home, my wife told me she loved me.
You are directly affected by the things you watch, the things you listen to, and the words of the songs you sing. Satan is real, and he will send fiery darts into your life. But again, greater is He who lives in us than he that is in the world.
Power, Love, and a Sound Mind
God did not give you the spirit of fear, but of power. That word comes from the Greek word dunamis. It is the same word we get dynamite from. Paul was telling Timothy, “God didn’t give you the fear you’re battling right now. He gave you dynamite power.” Some of you who are battling fear need to say it out loud: “Dynamite!” That is what God has given you, dynamic power to drive fear out of your life.
The second thing He has given us is love. This is not just the love between brothers and sisters in Christ, or even between a husband and wife. This is agape, the purest love of God working through a human life. There is no fear in love, but complete love casts out fear.
And finally, He has given us a sound mind. One definition I have seen says it literally means a mechanism for right thinking. Mental illness is a real thing. I am not one of these guys who believes there is a devil under every rock and behind every tree. Some things are chemical in nature, and some things you inherit from your forefathers. But they can be overcome.
I know what it is like to battle depression and great discouragement. That stuff runs in our family, and I am not making light of it. But I am telling you from personal experience, from using this Word, calling on Jesus, and letting others pray for me, that when I am at my lowest, the body of Christ can come and minister to me, and I can walk out in victory in Jesus’ name.
We have to wake up and realize that this war is not with each other. You are not in a fight with your boss or your spouse or your children. The message is very simple. God is not the one who sends a fiery dart to make you afraid of failing, afraid of selling out to God, or afraid of leading your family into His presence. God didn’t give you that. Satan did. And if Satan gave it, it can be overcome.
Pray This with Me
Maybe God has been tapping you on the shoulder, but a fear that you can’t do it right has been holding you back. Or maybe a fear has paralyzed you and run your life. Today you can overcome it, because greater is He who lives in you than he that is in the world. Pray this with me:
“Lord Jesus, I come before You today. I commit my life totally and completely to You. I am tired of allowing fear to control my life. Satan, leave my life. Go in the name of Jesus. God did not give me fear, but I have dynamite power. I have the agape love of God, and I have a mechanism for right thinking. Thank You, Father, for hearing my prayer. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
If you prayed that prayer for the first time, we would love to know. Let us know at rise.church so we can celebrate with you and help you take your next step.
