When I was young, I had a fear problem. Mostly, I was afraid of people, what they thought about me, whether I was smart enough, pretty enough, and I never felt that I measured up or was accepted by others. I’m sure you probably have your own list of doubts and insecurities.

Fear comes to everyone in a lesser or greater degree; giving us opportunity to worry and be anxious. It can come in different areas of our lives: concerning our family, our finances, our health – and the list goes on and on. Fear is a really big problem for some people, and with all the chaos in the world today with inflation, terrorism and diseases, if not careful a person could succumb to all its negativism and become afraid of everything. If we hide within the walls of our house because we are fearful of all the evil in this world, then that spirit of fear will overtake us and continue to reign in our lives. Fear’s purpose is to suppress people to keep them from being who God intends for them to be.

I think I should make a note here, for example: that there is no condemnation in feeling fearful at first if we receive a bad test result on our health, the key is to not stay in that fear-opportunity mindset but to take authority over that situation in the Name of Jesus and the Word of God. The solution to the fear problem is in the Bible. God is always telling us to “not fear”.

When I did a search on Biblegate.com on the words “fear not” in the King James Version, it came up with 170 scriptures. Here are a few instances where God told his people to “fear not”: Abram (Genesis 15:1), Moses and the Israelites (Exodus 14:13), Joshua (Joshua 1:8), and Danial (Daniel 10:12). Zachariah (Luke 1:13), Mary (Luke 1:30), Shepherds (Luke 2:10). Of course there are many more but you get the point.

We must learn to face fear with the Word of God to walk in victory over it, or it will escalate from one area of our lives to all the others. We must face fear with the authority that Jesus gave us and in the power of God. The only way we can do this is to know what God’s Word says and we must know who we are in Christ Jesus. It’s been my experience that we don’t need to control fear or tolerate fear – as in putting up with its control over our lives – we need the victory over fear. The only way to be delivered from the spirit of fear is with the power of God.

I think the first scripture I learned about dealing with fear is 2 timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (KJV) This alone tells us that fear is not of God. This verse clearly states that God is the one who has power to give to us, and therefore, fear only has power that we allow it to have, and that’s done by the way we think and the words we say. It’s all about what we are focusing our thoughts on – the negative or the positive, the lie or the truth. Fear gains its power by the way we think, which in turn affect our words. So, the solution then is to monitor our thoughts! Easy. Right? Well, maybe not at first because we have to quit thinking how the world thinks and renew our mind to the Word of God to think like God thinks. (Romans 12:2) But it does get easier as we learn more of the Word of God. We must be thinking about what we are thinking about!

I have always used Philippians 4:8 as a good measuring stick to get my thoughts back, and keep my thoughts, in alignment with God’s Word. We are to think on things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, of good virtue, and praiseworthy.

When the Word tells us in Philippians 4:4 to rejoice in the Lord always, and we realize we have not been in a joyful mood because of how we’ve been thinking, then we need to repent of our anger, jealousy, envy, ungratefulness (or whatever), and begin to thank God for His many blessings.

When the Word tells us in Philippians 4:6 to be anxious for nothing and we realize we have been worrying, then we must rebuke those thoughts, cast them down, and replace them with God’s Word that gives hope in the situation. Worrying is not praying.

When the Word tells us in Ephesians 4:32 to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave us, and we realize that we have been short-tempered, unkind, and reluctant to forgive, then we need to repent, show kindness and mercy to others, and forgive them.

Fearful thoughts are referred to as imaginations in 2 Corinthians 10:5 and we are instructed to cast them down because they exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. We are to bring them into captivity to the obedience of Christ. To me the casting down of wrong thoughts is taking authority over them, and bringing them into captivity is keeping our authority over them. It has to be a lifestyle of monitoring our thoughts.

It’s when we obey these instructions that we gain our victory over fear. This is not to say that all imaginations are fearful or evil, just those that go against God’s Word. Think about it, if it weren’t for good imaginations, we probably wouldn’t have televisions or cell phones! Hah!

To complete the process of our fight of faith against fear, we must continually renew our mind to the Word of God to keep our faith strong so we can face any fear attacks that might come against us. Have a wonderful fear-less week.

NOTE: for more study check out The Contrast Between Faith and Fear (an update) and Fear And Faith Are Choices