He's Got This

Fear is the most deadly emotion a person can struggle with in their spiritual life. Fear has the power to incapacitate to the point of rendering total disability.

Fear has a voice and it speaks.  But the voice of fear is not the voice of God. 

God has nothing to do with fear that assails the place where we are standing, making it impossible to move forward.  The enemy tries to paralyze us under the guise of “caution” while Jesus beckons us to change our position, our thinking, our ways of doing things. 

Fear robs us of the blessings that await those who respond to the sweet voice that gently bids us "this is the way, walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21) 

Fear has eyes. Fear sees what may happen if we choose to step outside our comfort zone. Fear of the unknown is terrifying because we might lose control.  And after all, it is the loss of controlling of our own lives of which we are the most fearful, is it not?

Fear… think about it.

How does this insidious invasion of our mind take place? When I am afraid, I desperately look for solutions to the problem.  I feel as if I must do something to counteract what might turn out to be hurtful or painful. Of course in attempting control of the situation my desire is to relieve the fear. 

What if I looked at God as a child looks at their mother or father?   What difference would that make? As a child, when afraid at night, I would run to my parent’s room seeking comfort and assurance. If I were too afraid to move, I would call out for my mamma to come to where I was.  I knew I could depend on her to come.

If, as a small child, I had stayed in my room, crippled by fear, I could have tried to control the situation by forcing myself to stay awake to insure that nothing would snatch me in the dark.  But that would be a foolish way for a child to deal with fear.
  

And yet, when gripped by fear, in our adult lives, our instinct is to take the control rather than take it to the Father. 

But the problem with that is that fear escalates when we depend on ourselves for the solution.  Our control does not dissipate the situation.  It does not make everything okay.  It just perpetuates the fears, growing them into irrational levels.

It is Satan’s gateway into our mind.  After all, spiritual warfare is the battle for the mind. 

So if we open the door to fear and choose to hang on to it, we allow the enemy to distort our ability to make good choices. He suggests all sorts of irrational “what ifs" in order to gain control.  Because, like it or not, whoever has control of the mind has control of us. But the choice of who we relinquish control to is ours to make.

But with God there are no irrational "what ifs," no “coincidences.”  Just the promise to guide our understanding and our decisions with His faithful hand. With God there are assurances and absolutes to hang on to.  He absolutely loves.  He absolutely works all things in our favor.  He absolutely forgives.  He absolutely frees. He absolutely directs us onto the right path and He absolutely never leaves us or forsakes us.  

So… Shut the door!…
  

Start choosing to open the door to Jesus and closing the door to fear. That decision is ours; the one thing we actually control. When that decision is solidified in our mind, God is then able to seal us with a seal of protection that is not penetrable by the enemy of fear. Jesus is emphatic in His statement in John 10:27, 28 "My sheep listen to my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand." 

copyright 7/17/2015