Encouragement

---

"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

As I begin to write this blog, I am reminded of a joke that I heard listening to one of Joel Olsteen”s messages. I want to share it with you, I may not remember it verbatim, but I know the gist of it, so here goes. “There was once a couple who lived in a beautiful house. Every night the wife would force the husband to get out of the bed, in fear that a robber may be in their house. However, every time he went downstairs, no one was in their house. She did this for over twenty years. One night the wife had her same scare and forced her husband downstairs in fear that a robber was down there. When he got downstairs, there was a robber, and the robber yelled “put your hands up!” The husband followed the instructions of the robber, and watched him bag their personal belongings. When the robber turns to walk out the door, the husband yells after him, “wait, don’t go!” The robber turns and looks at him in confusion. The husband then says, “I want you to meet my wife, she’s been waiting for you for the last twenty years!””(Joel Olsteen) (HaHaHa) This joke gave me a small chuckle when I first heard it, yet it also made me think. Wow, she was in so much fear that eventually her fear, became her reality. It was then I knew that fear had no place in my life, and it was absolutely essential that God deliver me from something that was not of Him.

You know, for so long I had heard the scriptures, “God does not give you the spirit of fear” or “Fear brings torment”, and for so long it seems as if I was letting these scriptures go through one ear and out the other. As I look at my life from a child on to my age now, I think about how long I actually lived in fear, and didn’t even recognize it. Have you ever had this overwhelming emotion of worry, or hesitation because of the unknown. Have you ever felt yourself panicking or getting yourself worked up over something that wasn’t happening? Well I have. I can actually remember how it started. At a young age I experienced some things that I don’t wish upon any child. At an early age, the things that I saw caused me to be fearful of the unknown. It caused me to be fearful of loosing my mother. I was attached to my mom’s hip, there was nothing that no one could do to keep me away from her. I had to be with her at all times, I had to see her at all times. When I went to school I had an overwhelming fear that I wouldn’t see her when I got home from school. I didn’t like getting called down to the office, because I thought that would mean bad news. I hated going away anywhere for too long, because for some reason I felt I had to be with her. I always had this annoying nag that she wouldn’t be here for my eighteenth birthday, that I would be motherless. It was almost as if I couldn’t live peacefully. And it wasn’t that she was abused or anything, I would just think of anything that could happen, car accident, sickness, anything that you could think of that could happen to a parent, that’s how I thought. I didn’t feel like a normal child because I thought like this. It became frustrating and began to take over my life. I would even have nightmares, or cry myself to sleep in fear of what could happen to her. I noticed that fear begin to spread beyond her, but in everything I did in life. Stressing about this or that, just living a life of anxiety. It wasn’t until my latter years of knowing God that things began to change for me in this aspect. When God started dealing with me about fear, he showed me two things, 1. Fear brings torment. (I John 4:18 KJV), 2. I can’t add a single hour to my life by worrying about the unknown. (Matthew 6:27 NIV) and 3. If I remain in fear, I will call the very thing I am fearful of to me.

The first point God showed me is true on so many levels. I didn’t realize that all those years, I would panic, be in constant worry, and have bad sleeps was a sense of being tormented. I was literally tortured by my own thoughts to the points that it controlled my actions. In my innocence I believe the enemy stole a sense of normal childhood from me, and as I got older I allowed it to continue to steal certain parts of my mind and cause me to behave in certain ways. I realize now that certain decisions I have made concerning my life was made out of fear. Not realizing it, but fear had infiltrated itself, and it became a normal way of living to me. However God showed me that it wasn’t normal, and that I was being controlled by something that wasn’t of him. Once he showed me that I was actually being tormented, then He showed me how if I allowed fear to stay, it was not going to add a single hour to my life. In my adult years, the verse in Matthew never stood out until recently. “Who can add a single hour to his life be worrying” (Matt 6:27 NIV) I realized that, no matter how much I worried I couldn’t change what is already predestined. I have no control of the unknown, and if I continued to live as if I did, then I would have driven myself insane. God has already orchestrated my life, and the lives of my loved ones. No matter how much I worry, no matter how much I fret, and remain fearful, there is nothing that I can do to change what he has already orchestrated. Whether it is about the affairs of this life, bills, work, school, family, or even about death. God has already planned out the lives of everyone I know, so I was literally wasting my time in worrying about things I have no control of, and I was showing Him that I do not trust his plan. How can I trust God and worry at the same time. It doesn’t work that way. If I trust Him then I have to trust that He knows what He’s doing and rely on the plan he has orchestrated for my life. The last thing he showed me was that if I remain in fear I will bring to me the very things I am fearful of. I think of how powerful the mind is. If you think big, big things will happen, if you believe in the impossible then the impossible things will become a reality. If you believe small then small things will happen. It’s all about what you believe because the way a man “thinks in his heart so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7 KJV) That’s the way you think, the way you act, the way you talk. It becomes who you are as a person. So if I am always thinking fearful, or if I always believe the worse, then I am led to believe that the worse will happen.

How did I overcome this fear thing? Overcoming fear is not an easy thing, especially if it has become a life style, as it was for me. When I realized that I had so much fear in me, I first began to pray, and after I began to do things in spite of my fear. A huge example is my Trip to Israel. This decision was so nerve wrecking, every reason to be fearful came knocking at my door. It wasn’t a safe place according to the media, I’ve never left home before or been out of the country, something could happen on the plane ride, I wouldn’t meet people, I wouldn’t enjoying myself, is my family going to be okay with me being gone? Anything you can think of came to mind, however, I said from the beginning that I was not going to allow fear to stop me from going some place I believed God was sending me. I realized that though fear will arrive at my door, it was my job to not allow it to take root and manifest itself, because if I allowed it to sit, it would stifle me. It would paralyze me, and I wanted to be free. I didn’t want to be controlled and tormented by something that was not of God. God doesn’t bring torment, but peace and love. And in 1John 4:18 it says that there is no love in fear. And so with that being said if there is no love, then God is not around because God is Love (1 John 4:16 KJV). And so I moved in the midst of fear, and with that, I was able to cast it down and put all my trust in the fact that God is the only control, and it was through that, God gave me a peace and a liberty that I never want to let go.

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE AS A MEMBER OR VISITOR