Doubt and Fear- Fear is a spirit

Welcome to episode 83, John 1:1.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ.

Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 83. If this is your first time here, I want to welcome you to the podcast. If you have been here before and have listened to multiple episodes, I'm going to have to call you a fanatic, and you will find that definition, I think it's on episode 72, if you kind of put your eyebrow up and go, "What is that guy talking about?" Well, I want to continue our conversation on doubt and fear, and we're going to turn it to, I think it's in 2 Timothy 1:7. Paul said, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." And when we talk about fear, there's a difference between doubt and fear, and I wanna touch on fear first. And I've talked in a previous episode, and I'll try to go back and attach it to this episode so maybe you can go back and listen to it. But fear, there is a spirit of fear. Some fear is good fear, and it's instructional. Like the touching of a hot stove, you know, it instructs you to, hey, don't do that again. And some of it is the fight or flight fear, you know, when you know you're in danger and it's quick and it's immediate. That kind of fear is needed, something that God has put in us to protect us. The survival instinct is real. But the spirit of fear, the stuff that's just being seeped on us right now in every angle, if everything you listen to, and again, I'm gonna go back to carnal and spiritual, you need to kinda start taking everything in. And again, I'm gonna jump up on my soapbox. You need to be reading the word of God. If you're not in the Bible, then you're gonna be susceptible to the spirit of fear by 1,000 times because there's always constantly something going on. If you haven't noticed, you can't even go into a store or you can't even go into a restaurant or anything without there just being all kinds of noise and all kinds of stuff going on that's just filling your mind and your ears with things. And if you can't see that, that's kind of just putting something on you. And the fast pace— when people talk about, oh, it's just going so fast, this world is going so fast— I believe part of it is the spirit of fear, that you're just constantly being distracted. And if you ever just go for a walk where there's nothing going on in your head and there's nothing, you know, maybe even in the woods or maybe sitting at a park bench and just looking at. And I know, I know, I'm 58, or almost 58, and it's probably— I'm starting to sound like an old man, but there's something to be said about slowing down since we're so fast. The only way to really prove it to yourself is to try it. Every morning when I wake up, I just get still, or I get quiet in the morning, and I wake up early enough to where I'm not bothering anybody, but I am just still. And that's when I pray, that's when I do all my gratitude. But it— there's something about just not having anything going on and having a quiet house that kind of centers you. It kind of gets you focused, and there's absolutely no fear going on. And I just want to encourage you, the 5 daily prayers— I, I know that that's in episode 5. I did that on purpose way back. The 5 daily prayers that I do, I do it every day. I get quiet. I thank God, praise God, and I destroy fear for the day. Now, if I do it every day and I present myself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is my reasonable service, fear has no real grip on me because fear is a spirit and I just don't give him any place to take hold. And that's not from somebody that's just overly spiritual. If you know me, you know that I'm just a regular guy. Listen to this podcast, you know that I— there's something probably seriously wrong with me, but I just, I just jump into something. And this one thing that I do that is slow and it's deliberate and it's an appointed time every morning that I sit with God and I just thank him. And I, it's— I'm just telling you, that will destroy fear first thing in the morning. And then as it comes on to you the rest of the day, then you're just going to have to get into a routine or something that'll trigger you to go, oh no. And I know that I'm a little bit goofy, but it says that no weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that rises against you, you shall condemn. And what I'll see myself sometimes going, if someone will say something to me and it comes into my ears, I don't let it just sit there. You know, just take hold. I will bind it up in Jesus' name. And I know people, "Ah, I couldn't do that." Well, you know, I mean, I know I'm a little bit strange and I don't do it and make some big scene, but I just, man, people will tell you if they've ever done it, I said, "Ah, bind that up in Jesus' name." "Now what are you talking about?" Well, I'm just not gonna accept that until I study it out, or I just don't want that happening in any area of my life. So I just kind of bind it up. And I, you know, I just try to use the Bible. And I don't do this 100%, But another thing that I do is I take every thought, and with that, no weapon formed against you shall prosper. And it's in 2 Corinthians 10, and I think it's verse 3 or 4 or 5, some of it says, so for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations and everything, every thought that rises against you. I'm butchering this. But I want to get to the, the part where we bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. That's the thing that I do when I hate— when I get a thought that comes into my head that's not— that I'm pretty confident is not me and it's not from God, then I just bring it captive. I grab a hold of it and I hold it to the word. You kind of say, wait a minute, you get this thought in your head, you go, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, where did that come from? And so you grab a hold of it and you got the sword of the Spirit and you walk it down. I've got to picture everything, so I walk this I write this thought down into my heart, into the place where I'm keeping Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and I take this thought and I say, "God, was this thought from you?" And almost every time I kind of hear God laugh in my head, of course, but I know, "Greg, that's not from me." And I want to tell you that that one act, this one thing of bringing these thoughts and mentally picturing when you get a thought inside your head, and I know we all have them. I don't care who you are. You have a negative condemning voice inside your head, and it's a liar, it's a punk. And if we don't take control of that, that's, that's gonna— er, that's gonna rise itself up in that spirit of fear, and it will just grow, and it will fester, and it will, it will start taking over. We need to start taking control of that. And I know I talked about this in a previous episode, and I guess I'm going to have to talk about doubt. In the next episode. But I just want to stay on this fear because we have so much fear, and it's a spirit. And so in order to take control of this spirit, we got to kind of look at how Jesus took control, and he just talked to it. That God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind. We've got to assume, and I've got a picture, this— there's a demon of fear And if there's a demon, and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's attached to you or that you're, you know, being led by this demon, but if you're letting it talk to you, it's influencing you. And so what you need to do is you need to take and do what Jesus said. You just need to tell it to shut up. And one of the things I want to remind you is he's— Satan is very stealthy. He's not going to show himself, and you're going to think— I mean, mostly what you want to do is kind of cue the eye roll when I start talking about these demons and stuff because half of the church doesn't even believe Satan is real. So I'm— I got a 50-50 shot of you not even believing what I'm saying. But Jesus talked. Let's go to Mark 1, and we're going to pick it up in 1:22. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Now there was a man in the synagogue with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, saying, Let us alone. What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. But Jesus rebuked him, saying, be quiet and come out of him. And when the unclean spirit had convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice, he came out of him. And I'm not talking about throwing demons out and all that. I'm talking about quit listening. The demons, the lying, all of the stuff that— and you got something playing on in your head And remember I said there's 3 different levels of thoughts. It's your thoughts, it's thoughts that Satan has put in your head, and then there's God thoughts. And the only way to defend your mind is by putting in God thoughts. And the only way that I have ever found to do it is to put in the Word of God on top of a thought. And it can be your thought or a demonic thought or whatever somebody, I mean, it's every thought you have is not demonic. And I don't want to— I mean, I want to go chase that rabbit. But if there's something that's condemning and something that's just beating you up, it is not from God because you are God's favorite. If God had a refrigerator in heaven, your picture would be all over it. You are God's favorite. So God would never talk to you like that. And if you're talking to yourself like that, it's either you condemning yourself or it's a thought, a demon, a spirit of fear that's coming against you. And we got to bind it up because our weapons are are not carnal.

We—

our weapons, the sword of the Spirit, are spiritual. And Jesus said, the words I speak to you are spirit and they are life. So we are going to take his words and we're going to pour life into you. And so that's— I looked at the clock and I'm sorry, I, I hope this didn't sound like rambling, but we have got to get this fear. We got to see where it's coming from. And this unhealthy fear, the stuff that makes us get overwhelmed and anxious and nervous. We're gonna, we're gonna get— take care of this, and we're gonna, we're gonna figure out how to do it. But I just want to go ahead, first of all, I want to go ahead and just label it, and I want to expose it that it is not from God. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. So with that said, I want to pray for you. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this podcast, this episode, I want to bind up any fear that's trying to come against them. If there's a spirit of fear that's on them, an anxiousness, of nervousness, uh, not knowing— the fear of the unknown is real, but I bind it up in Jesus' name. And you have given us truths, Lord, that we can find in your Bible that will comfort us and that will help us through any kind of anxiety. Lord, you told us not to give us— not not to be anxious for anything but in all prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. So Lord, we thank you that you have given us your word. We thank you that you've given us your Son and your Holy Spirit, and we bind up fear in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for listening! I'll look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

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