Think of fear as a lying spirit with a big mouth. The spirit itself is small, like a tennis ball, but the mouth is un-proportionally huge. The more we listen to the fear, and the more we entertain fear’s suggestions, the bigger that mouth becomes.
If we’re trying to fight off fear, we have to stop paying attention to its mouth. In other words, we have to stop listening to it and entertaining what it’s saying. This is described in Psalm 55:22 (NKJV):
Cast your burden on the Lord,
And He shall sustain you;
He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.
This takes practice and discipline, but we can learn to cast our burdens (in this case, our fears) on the Lord when we first become aware of them, before that mouth starts to grow. As we learn to do this immediately, the fear will not be able to take firm hold on us.
Psalm 55:22 is real. When we cast our burdens on the Lord, He will sustain us, and He won’t permit us to be moved or shaken.
Stop Fear at the Beginning
Understanding how to reject fear is so important right now! The world is filled with scary things, and some of them are pretty serious. The enemy is trying very hard to get as many people as possible to be afraid.
Anytime we try to carry these burdens by ourselves, they will start to eat us alive. But when we cast them on the Lord, He will carry them, and we will be able to let go of the fear.
When fear throws questions at us, trying to get us to worry and shake, we answer those questions by casting them on the Lord. We do this when we first become aware of them and don’t give them any time to start convincing us of their “truth.”
Ask God for Help
For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. (Prov. 23:7 NKJV)
The mind is like a steering wheel that controls where the rest of the car goes. Our thoughts have the power to steer us in certain directions and “drive” us to those locations. That is what the spirit of fear is after—the ability to steer or control us. It is better to tell fear no at the beginning, before it is able to get its hand on the steering wheel.
The problem is, a lot of the time when fear shows up, we don’t recognize it as fear, which is why some fears are able to grow so big and strong in our thinking. When fear first presents itself, it can seem like just a regular thought.
If this happens to you on a regular basis, don’t beat yourself up for not realizing what’s going on. Instead, take a moment to ask the Lord, “Help me recognize the spirit of fear in my life.”
And He will. As you grow in your ability to recognize fear’s voice, rejecting the fear will become easier. It won’t always be as difficult as it feels right now.
Resist the Enemy
In the Sandfords’ book Deliverance and Inner Healing, they write about an intense war being fought every day for mankind. Where is that war fought? In the mind. The very first sin involved the mind. The devil tempted Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Jesus was crucified on Golgotha or “The Place of the Skull.” The enemy tries to influence and control the mind more than any other area in a person’s life.
That can sound alarming—but remember, fear is a small spirit with a big mouth! If we just resist the enemy, he will flee (Jas. 4:7).
Here is what we can do whenever fear presents itself:
- We recognize that we are being tempted to be afraid.
- We cast the fearful thought on the Lord.
- We choose to believe He really is carrying the fearful thought for us.
- We remember who we are in Him. We are His holy offspring, and He treasures us.
- We let the fearful thought go, understanding we are not responsible to take care of the thing we’re afraid of—God will take care of it.
If you are fighting fear today, take heart! Fear is a liar, and you were made for truth. Practice casting your fears on the Lord right at the beginning, when they first occur to you, and gradually your heart will begin to have more peace.
Much of this article was adapted from Healing for a Woman’s Emotions by Paula Sandford. To learn more, click here.
If you are READY to get rid of fear in your life, check out the Elijah House School of Heart Healing. Fear often has roots in childhood wounds, and God knows how to heal those wounds. Course 201: Heart Healing Essentials could be life changing for you! Click here for more information.