Dissolving Fear.

aiki

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In my early twenties (I'm over fifty now), I struggled severely with anxiety and obsessive thoughts. These two things often go together, as anyone badly afflicted with anxiety can tell you. In my case, my anxiety led to cluster panic attacks, insomnia, even swallowing problems. It was awful. I also began to go 'round and 'round in my mind, obsessing over becoming some terrible sort of person: a serial killer, or insane, or sexually perverse, etc. The worse the thing, the more I'd obsess about it, fearful that I would become such a person. For hours on end, I'd argue within myself over the horrible potential for evil that lay within me. This would lead inevitably to panic attacks and worse insomnia, the anxiety and obsessiveness feeding off of each other in a vicious, unending cycle.

I arrived at the place where I couldn't bear what was going on inside of me alone anymore. I'd worried that if anyone knew how "crazy" I was, what anxiety and turmoil was within me, they'd be horrified and repulsed. So, I'd kept my struggle with fear to myself, hiding it as best I could. Finally, though, I let it all out to a person I could trust, a Christian person, who gave me spiritual rather than merely psychological advice. I am forever grateful that this was the tack the person took with me, not advising drugs and the therapist's couch, but the eternal wisdom of the Great Physician. Their advice moved me into God's word, into the remedy God has for anxiety and obsessive thinking, and into the freedom and fellowship with Him that taking His remedy produced. I'd like to share this remedy with you in the hope that it will aid others of you struggling under the dark, crushing bondage to fear to win free of it.

God's chief aim in making us is His glorification. (1 Corinthians 10:31; 1 Corinthians 6:20; Romans 15:6-7; 1 Peter 2:9, etc.) All of Creation is made ultimately for this purpose (Psalms 19:1; Psalms 86:8-10; John 12:28, etc.). But in our case, God fulfills this aim in and through us by causing us to know Him (John 17:3; Philippians 3:7-11), and in knowing Him, to love Him (Matthew 22:36-38; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3; 1 John 4:16-19), and in loving Him to delight in Him (Psalms 16:11; John 15:11; Romans 5:11; Romans 14:17, etc.). From this delight, this joy, we take in loving fellowship with God, we offer the highest and most sincere worship and praise of our Maker and Father.

God, then, acts in our lives to move us into a deep, rich, gratifying knowledge and experience of Himself. (1 Corinthians 1:9; 2 Corinthians 13:14; 1 John 1:3) His commands to avoid evil and seek the good are given, among other reasons, so that our fellowship with Him is unhindered by sin. He insists we live His way so that we might fully enjoy communion with Him.

When God, then, shows us the way to inner peace and rest, to a sound and stable thought-life, to freedom from selfishness, fear, and lust, He does so always with a view to drawing us into a deeper knowledge of, and into richer fellowship with, Himself. We can make all sorts of changes to our thinking and behaviour without God, but only God's way to freedom takes us deeper into Him. Modern psychology and psychotherapeutic drugs, self-help strategies, New Age "deeper spirituality" gurus - none of these will produce both freedom from fear and a closer walk with one's Maker. Certainly, these avenues of self-change will not result in greater glory to God, which is the fundamental reason for our existence.

I make note of this because God's help to us all is found ultimately in Himself, in bringing us to a place of complete submission to, and dependence upon, Him. Modern psychology, however, directs the hurting person to fixate upon themselves, to understand themselves and their hurts, to shrink from personal responsibility for their thoughts and feelings. But in gazing inward at oneself, a clear and full view of God is necessarily sacrificed. One cannot look in two directions at once, after all. The freedom and joy of seeing, knowing, and communing with God cannot happen so long as one is occupied with oneself.

And so, in God's word, we are never urged to navel gaze, to introspect carefully upon ourselves. Instead, we are told to fix our attention upon God.

2 Corinthians 3:18
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.


Hebrews 12:2-3
2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.


Colossians 3:1-3
1 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.


Here, then, is the first principle of freedom: Conformity to Focus.

We will be shaped, to one degree or another, by that upon which we focus our attention. Modern advertising rests squarely upon this fact, companies spending billions every year to attract our attention so that they might influence and shape our buying choices. If we want God's peace and rest, found in Him, we must fix our eyes upon Him and His truth. But in looking to God we must look away from ourselves, from the World, from the lies of the devil, forsaking them for God and His truth consistently and persistently. If we look back-and-forth between God and these things, we will be the "double-minded" person of whom the apostle James wrote, "unstable in all their ways." (James 1:8) As Christ pointed out, we can't plow a field while looking behind us. (Luke 9:62)

In the matter of fear, of anxiety and obsessiveness, this principle of Conformity to Focus means that, when anxiety rises within, look away from it to God and His truth. Fix your mind upon Him and what He says, not upon your fear and the worries and obsessions it engenders. If you've made a habit of staring at your fears, of dwelling on them obsessively, it will take time and effort to form a new habit of looking at God and standing unmoved upon His truth about you and Him. But if you follow God's direction in this, you will take a big step forward into freedom from fear - and into a much deeper, better relationship with your Heavenly Father.

I will share the other steps/principles to freedom from fear in later posts.
 
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aiki

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1 John 4:16-19 (NASB)
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.


In this quotation from the apostle John's first letter, the antidote to fear is given: deep belief, deep trust, in God's love. John clarifies in verse 16 that he isn't talking about a mere knowledge of the love of God for the world, but a belief in it, a firm conviction that God does, really, powerfully love us. Many who struggle with fear give mental assent to the idea that God loves them - it is, after all, what the Bible says - but they don't really believe it, they don't trust themselves to the fact of God's love for them, resting in it every day, because they aren't actually convinced God does love them. What stands out in their thinking about God is that He's the God of judgment and punishment, the God who lays down the Moral Law, demanding their conformity to it, and who casts the unrepentant wicked into hell; He's the God who threatens the wicked, who teaches through suffering, who will not flex in the slightest for sin; He sees all, knows all, and controls all. For many, such a God is pretty frightening, alien, and severe. And the devil massages this sort of view of God, subtly working to inflame it to terrifying proportions in their thinking, crowding out any thought of God's love by doing so.

Especially in the minds of those who come to God already laboring under the habit of fear, the God of love described in the Bible is hard to embrace. Trained to see the fearful aspects of everything, they light upon God's power and judgement, His holy inflexibility, and cannot, then, bring themselves to accept the love of God held out to them in Christ and become thoroughly convinced of its reality. But as John points out in verse 16, to abide in God is to abide in His love, the two things being inseparable from each other (God IS love); one cannot abide in God - that is, be saved - and not abide in His love. It is, after all, the First and Great Commandment of God to love Him with the entirety of our being (Matthew 22:36-38). All of the Christian's obedience begins with love (or it ought to); it is love for God that is the essential ground out of which all other obedience to God grows. Paul the apostle makes this point very powerfully:

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NASB)
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.


No matter what we say, or know, or do, if love for God (and then others) isn't our motivation, it is all useless. It's a very serious problem, then, to allow fear to intrude upon one's walk with God, to motivate one's obedience to Him, for such fear defies the First and Great Commandment of God, as both John and Paul have pointed out, and makes one's obedience into disobedience.

Why doesn't fear work as a motivation for Christian living? Why is God so keen to make love for Him the foundation of our relationship with Him? Because our fear is always, at bottom, a sort of self-love. We fear the dangerous, painful thing, because we love ourselves and so want to protect ourselves from what would cause us hurt. And the more we seek to love ourselves, to act to serve our own interests before and above all others, the less of God we experience. The Great Battle between the sinner and their Holy Maker is the battle over who will rule, who will sit upon the throne of one's heart: Self or God. There isn't room for both on the throne; God and Self cannot share ruling power, for they are diametrically-opposed to each other. (Romans 8:5-8; Galatians 5:17) To love God is to make Him Ruler and King of our lives, to sit upon the throne of our hearts and cast out Self.

Self's focus is inward, absorbed as much as possible with serving itself - even when doing so becomes destructive and isolating. God's rule in us requires our looking outward, first to Himself, and then to others, sacrificing for the good, not of Self, but of those around us (Matthew 22:36-39; Philippians 2:3-8; John 15:12-13). If given it's head, Self inevitably becomes pathologically self-centered, leading us into various ruinous beliefs, attitudes and practices. Consider the alcoholic, or the drug addict, or the person caught in inappropriate content, or the glutton, or gaming-obsessed; consider the prideful, angry, controlling person. The fearful person, too, is simply acting under the power of Self, which seeks its own comfort and security, even to the point of driving a person into isolation and obsessive-compulsiveness and constant, crushing anxiety in pursuit of a life insulated from every possible embarrassment, or offense, discomfort or physical hurt.

God confronts Self, not by demanding we do something about Self, but by offering to us an exchange: Self for Himself, our "old man," sin-bent and corrupt, for a "new man" in Christ, clothed in his righteousness and made a joint-heir with him. (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:30) God will put to death our "old man" (Romans 6:6), our Self, and bring us into new spiritual life, free from sin's power, slave to God rather than to Self. (Romans 6:22) And God does all this for us, not because He is cruel and threatening, but because He loves us with a love that "surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:18-19)

When a person comes to know and believe - be firmly convinced of - God's love for them, fear cannot thrive. Trusting God's awesome, unchanging love for us leads to rest, and peace, and joy, never fear. We see in God's love freedom from the punishment we deserve, which gives us "boldness in the day of judgment". (verse 17) This boldness, this confidence in our redemption and security in Christ, born of God's love for us, destroys fear. This is what the apostle John explained:

18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.


Belief in the love of God for you, then, is the key to freedom from fear. Do you know about God's love for you? Have you given space and time for careful consideration of God's love for you? Have you believed that God really does love you as much as Scripture reveals that He does? Entering by faith into the truth of God's love for you brings an end to fear - maybe not all at once, but progressively, as you settle more and more thoroughly into a confident assurance of His love. As this occurs, the dark mists of fear will evaporate and the bright shining love of God will fill your life.
 
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aiki

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There is one other factor in coming free of fear: submission to God. One may walk with God in only one way and that is as inferior to Superior, lesser to Greater, servant to Master. Especially these days, the idea of being directly under the power and authority of anyone rankles many people. "Follow your heart," "be true to yourself," "express yourself," "be a leader," and so on are the slogans of modern western culture. But God says to us in His word:

Micah 6:8
8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?


Romans 6:22
22 But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.

Romans 8:14
14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

Romans 12:1
1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

James 4:6-10
6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE."
7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

1 Peter 5:5-6
5 ...clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,


God only deals with us as God. This means He is the Boss, the King, Lord and Ruler of our lives. Too often, though, modern believers want God to be...smaller, weaker, less demanding, less God and more just a Friend, a positive support to pursuing their own will and way. But when we diminish God in our thinking, when we make Him mere spiritual "Customer Service" in our lives, we open up ourselves to fear. Why? Because the love that "casts out fear," the love of God, comes from Him:

Romans 5:5
5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Galatians 5:22
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love...


The love of God is the only love capable of casting out fear. Our own finite, flawed, failing love, selfish and contingent as it is, fleshly and tied to vacillating emotion, is not able to cast out fear - especially the deep, binding anxiety common to many today. We need God's love to fill us, to complete us, in order that we might come free of fear.

God is a gentleman, however. He will not force Himself upon any of us, compelling us to accept His love, coercing us to love Him in return. Compulsion is antithetical to love; one cannot be forced to love. By definition, love is extended by choice; it is freely given. And so, the Holy Spirit waits upon my conscious, uncoerced choice to humbly yield to him before he moves to fill me with his love. Only as I move along with him in submission, led by him at every turn, do I experience the fullness of all that he is in my heart and mind. But when I am walking humbly with God, yielded to the Spirit's will and way all throughout each day, His love flows unhindered in and through me; among other things, flushing out the fear that living under the rule of Self inevitably produces.

Submission to God is often conflated with obedience and trust. But submission, while directly related to these things, is not necessarily reflected in either of them (except in a temporary and/or partial way). I must be careful not to think that when I am obeying God's commands, I am therefore submitted to Him. This wasn't the case for the Pharisees, was it? They were professionally obedient to God but their hearts were far from Him, Jesus said. (Matthew 15:7-9) They made their careful observance of God's rules a distinguishing feature of their living, but Jesus called them hypocrites, "white-washed tombs full of dead men's bones," "sons of hell," and the "brood of vipers"!

Doing what God has commanded, then, is not always or necessarily an act of submission to Him. Submission is, first of all, an act of the will, a conscious, explicit choice to place myself under God's control, to be conformed by Him to His will and way in every part of who I am. This choice must be repeated again and again throughout every day; it is not a once-a-day sort of thing, like a multi-vitamin, or morning calisthenics.

Trust, too, is not necessarily submission to God. I trust all sorts of people to whom I am not submitted in the wholesale sort of way God requires of His children. I trust my barber to cut my hair; I trust my dentist to fix my teeth; I trust my doctor to provide effective medical remedies to me; I trust other drivers to adhere to the rules of the road, and so on. In none of these instance of trust, however, am I submitted fully in the manner God requires of me. I can deal with God in the same way, trusting Him in bits and pieces, depending upon Him in circumstances clearly beyond my control, but acting quite autonomously from Him in other areas of my life. It is a mistake to think that these moments of trust are tantamount to submission to Him of the sort He commands of me in His word. They are merely partial, temporary moments of dependence, not the constant, entire yielding that is to characterize a bond-servant of God.

Entrenched fear, a long established habit of anxiety and frightened obsessiveness, can't be dissolved by the Spirit, by the love that he is, when I fool myself into thinking that, when I obey and trust him, I am submitted to God. I ought to obey and trust - absolutely - but I must ALSO, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, consciously and explicitly submit myself to God, to the Holy Spirit's will and way all throughout every day. When I do, the Spirit, invited by my surrender to him, fills and transforms me, liberating me from the bondage of fear.

Romans 8:15
15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"


2 Timothy 1:7
7 For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.


1 John 4:18
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.


These, then, are the "keys" to freedom from fear: A Christ-centered focus, a settled confidence in God's love, and a life constantly submitted to Him.
 
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Carl Emerson

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There is one other factor in coming free of fear: submission to God. One may walk with God in only one way and that is as inferior to Superior, lesser to Greater, servant to Master. Especially these days, the idea of being directly under the power and authority of anyone rankles many people. "Follow your heart," "be true to yourself," "express yourself," "be a leader," and so on are the slogans of modern western culture. But God says to us in His word:

Micah 6:8
8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?


Romans 6:22
22 But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.

Romans 8:14
14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

Romans 12:1
1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

James 4:6-10
6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE."
7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

1 Peter 5:5-6
5 ...clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,


God only deals with us as God. This means He is the Boss, the King, Lord and Ruler of our lives. Too often, though, modern believers want God to be...smaller, weaker, less demanding, less God and more just a Friend, a positive support to pursuing their own will and way. But when we diminish God in our thinking, when we make Him mere spiritual "Customer Service" in our lives, we open up ourselves to fear. Why? Because the love that "casts out fear," the love of God, comes from Him:

Romans 5:5
5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Galatians 5:22
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love...


The love of God is the only love capable of casting out fear. Our own finite, flawed, failing love, selfish and contingent as it is, fleshly and tied to vacillating emotion, is not able to cast out fear - especially the deep, binding anxiety common to many today. We need God's love to fill us, to complete us, in order that we might come free of fear.

God is a gentleman, however. He will not force Himself upon any of us, compelling us to accept His love, coercing us to love Him in return. Compulsion is antithetical to love; one cannot be forced to love. By definition, love is extended by choice; it is freely given. And so, the Holy Spirit waits upon my conscious, uncoerced choice to humbly yield to him before he moves to fill me with his love. Only as I move along with him in submission, led by him at every turn, do I experience the fullness of all that he is in my heart and mind. But when I am walking humbly with God, yielded to the Spirit's will and way all throughout each day, His love flows unhindered in and through me, among other things, flushing out the fear that living under the rule of Self inevitably produces.

Submission to God is often conflated with obedience and trust. But submission, while directly related to these things, is not necessarily reflected in either of them (except in a temporary and/or partial way). I must be careful not to think that when I am obeying God's commands, I am therefore submitted to Him. This wasn't the case for the Pharisees, was it? They were professionally obedient to God but their hearts were far from Him, Jesus said. (Matthew 15:7-9) They made their careful observance of God's rules a distinguishing feature of their living, but Jesus called them hypocrites, "white-washed tombs full of dead men's bones," "sons of hell," and the "brood of vipers"!

Doing what God has commanded, then, is not always or necessarily an act of submission to Him. Submission is, first of all, an act of the will, a conscious, explicit choice to place myself under God's control, to be conformed by Him to His will and way in every part of who I am. This choice must be repeated again and again throughout every day; it is not a once-a-day sort of thing, like a multi-vitamin, or morning calisthenics.

Trust, too, is not necessarily submission to God. I trust all sorts of people to whom I am not submitted in the wholesale sort of way God requires of His children. I trust my barber to cut my hair; I trust my dentist to fix my teeth; I trust my doctor to provide effective medical remedies to me; I trust other drivers to adhere to the rules of the road, and so on. In none of these instance of trust, however, am I submitted fully in the manner God requires of me. I can deal with God in the same way, trusting Him in bits and pieces, depending upon Him in circumstances clearly beyond my control, but acting quite autonomously from Him in other areas of my life. It is a mistake to think that these moments of trust are tantamount to submission to Him of the sort He requires of me. They are merely partial, temporary moments of dependence, not the constant, entire yielding of a bond-servant of God.

Entrenched fear, a long established habit of anxiety and frightened obsessiveness, can't be dissolved by the Spirit, by the love that he is, when I fool myself into thinking that, when I obey and trust Him, I am submitted to God. I ought to obey and trust - absolutely - but I must ALSO, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, consciously and explicitly submit myself to God, to the Holy Spirit's will and way all throughout every day. When I do, the Spirit, freed by my surrender to him, fills and transforms me, liberating me from the bondage of fear.

Romans 8:15
15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"


2 Timothy 1:7
7 For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.


1 John 4:18
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.


These, then, are the "keys" to freedom from fear: A Christ-centered focus, a settled confidence in God's love, and a life constantly submitted to Him.

Just to say, I appreciate you post - well thought and expressed.

One comment is that His Spirit 'draws us' and 'constrains us'....

As you say - no force, but the power of His Love is formidable.

You recall how the presence of God in the temple was so intense that the priests could no longer stand up to serve.

I have had such an encounter - turned my life around.
 
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Bobber

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So, I'd kept my struggle with fear to myself, hiding it as best I could. Finally, though, I let it all out to a person I could trust, a Christian person, who gave me spiritual rather than merely psychological advice. I am forever grateful that this was the tack the person took with me, not advising drugs and the therapist's couch, but the eternal wisdom of the Great Physician. Their advice moved me into God's word, into the remedy God has for anxiety and obsessive thinking, and into the freedom and fellowship with Him that taking His remedy produced.

I'm in my 60's now but back in my middle teenage years I had what then I think we called nervous breakdowns. Today they're called anxiety attacks. I had to quit my job lay on my couch and just take nerve pills. God got my attention through a TV soap opera.....that was where I was in front of a TV around the clock so he used something in a fiction show to reach me.

The story was of a middle ages woman who was an alcoholic and had to be home similar to myself, but her son kept bring her a Bible every day saying all the answers are in the Bible, over and over he'd say this day after day. Well I got a Bible and begin to read. I read of a life where one could talk to God and expect him to hear me....ask and you shall receive, seek and find, knock and things would be open.

I mean to actually have a relationship with God where you would talk to him and he with you....maybe not with an audible voice but through many other means too like circumstances they you know that you know is God. So the more I fed my spirit with the Word of God (I like to say it that way....feed my spirit with the word of God as compared to read the Bible. Reading the Bible sounds like a chore. Feeding ones' spirit sounds more like you're having something imparted which you are) But the more I fed my spirit with the word of God.....the anxiety, despair, confusion began to leave me. Then one night a few weeks into this I prayed the sinner's prayer and I became born again.

Many other things I could say but I will say this. The word of God isn't just a dead word on a page. They're living and God in breathed. The words I speak to you Jesus said they are Spirit and LIFE. If one gets' LIFE in them in abundance they'll be amazed at how darkness, confusion and yes demon oppression will go by the wayside. As I say much more could be said.
 
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aiki

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Just to say, I appreciate you post - well thought and expressed.

One comment is that His Spirit 'draws us' and 'constrains us'....

As you say - no force, but the power of His Love is formidable.

You recall how the presence of God in the temple was so intense that the priests could no longer stand up to serve.

I have had such an encounter - turned my life around.

Thanks for your comments.

I agree with you: God's power to persuade us to His will and way is quite incredible. It has to be because our wickedness is so naturally profound and incorrigible. It's something of a miracle, then, when He saves a lost person from themselves.
 
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biblelesson

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1 John 4:16-19 (NASB)
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.


In this quotation from the apostle John's first letter, the antidote to fear is given: deep belief, deep trust, in God's love. John clarifies in verse 16 that he isn't talking about a mere knowledge of the love of God for the world, but a belief in it, a firm conviction that God does, really, powerfully love us. Many who struggle with fear give mental assent to the idea that God loves them - it is, after all, what the Bible says - but they don't really believe it, they don't trust themselves to the fact of God's love for them, resting in it every day, because they aren't actually convinced God does love them. What stands out in their thinking about God is that He's the God of judgment and punishment, the God who lays down the Moral Law, demanding their conformity to it, and who casts the unrepentant wicked into hell; He's the God who threatens the wicked, who teaches through suffering, who will not flex in the slightest for sin; He sees all, knows all, and controls all. For many, such a God is pretty frightening, alien, and severe. And the devil massages this sort of view of God, subtly working to inflame it to terrifying proportions in their thinking, crowding out any thought of God's love by doing so.

Especially in the minds of those who come to God already laboring under the habit of fear, the God of love described in the Bible is hard to embrace. Trained to see the fearful aspects of everything, they light upon God's power and judgement, His holy inflexibility, and cannot, then, bring themselves to accept the love of God held out to them in Christ and become thoroughly convinced of its reality. But as John points out in verse 16, to abide in God is to abide in His love, the two things being inseparable from each other (God IS love); one cannot abide in God - that is, be saved - and not abide in His love. It is, after all, the First and Great Commandment of God to love Him with the entirety of our being (Matthew 22:36-38). All of the Christian's obedience begins with love (or it ought to); it is love for God that is the essential ground out of which all other obedience to God grows. Paul the apostle makes this point very powerfully:

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (NASB)
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.


No matter what we say, or know, or do, if love for God (and then others) isn't our motivation, it is all useless. It's a very serious problem, then, to allow fear to intrude upon one's walk with God, to motivate one's obedience to Him, for such fear defies the First and Great Commandment of God, as both John and Paul have pointed out, and makes one's obedience into disobedience.

Why doesn't fear work as a motivation for Christian living? Why is God so keen to make love for Him the foundation of our relationship with Him? Because our fear is always, at bottom, a sort of self-love. We fear the dangerous, painful thing, because we love ourselves and so want to protect ourselves from what would cause us hurt. And the more we seek to love ourselves, to act to serve our own interests before and above all others, the less of God we experience. The Great Battle between the sinner and their Holy Maker is the battle over who will rule, who will sit upon the throne of one's heart: Self or God. There isn't room for both on the throne; God and Self cannot share ruling power, for they are diametrically-opposed to each other. (Romans 8:5-8; Galatians 5:17) To love God is to make Him Ruler and King of our lives, to sit upon the throne of our hearts and cast out Self.

Self's focus is inward, absorbed as much as possible with serving itself - even when doing so becomes destructive and isolating. God's rule in us requires our looking outward, first to Himself, and then to others, sacrificing for the good, not of Self, but of those around us (Matthew 22:36-39; Philippians 2:3-8; John 15:12-13). If given it's head, Self inevitably becomes pathologically self-centered, leading us into various ruinous beliefs, attitudes and practices. Consider the alcoholic, or the drug addict, or the person caught in inappropriate content, or the glutton, or gaming-obsessed; consider the prideful, angry, controlling person. The fearful person, too, is simply acting under the power of Self, which seeks its own comfort and security, even to the point of driving a person into isolation and obsessive-compulsiveness and constant, crushing anxiety in pursuit of a life insulated from every possible embarrassment, or offense, discomfort or physical hurt.

God confronts Self, not by demanding we do something about Self, but by offering to us an exchange: Self for Himself, our "old man," sin-bent and corrupt, for a "new man" in Christ, clothed in his righteousness and made a joint-heir with him. (2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 2:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:30) God will put to death our "old man" (Romans 6:6), our Self, and bring us into new spiritual life, free from sin's power, slave to God rather than to Self. (Romans 6:22) And God does all this for us, not because He is cruel and threatening, but because He loves us with a love that "surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:18-19)

When a person comes to know and believe - be firmly convinced of - God's love for them, fear cannot thrive. Trusting God's awesome, unchanging love for us leads to rest, and peace, and joy, never fear. We see in God's love freedom from the punishment we deserve, which gives us "boldness in the day of judgment". (verse 17) This boldness, this confidence in our redemption and security in Christ, born of God's love for us, destroys fear. This is what the apostle John explained:

18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.


Belief in the love of God for you, then, is the key to freedom from fear. Do you know about God's love for you? Have you given space and time for careful consideration of God's love for you? Have you believed that God really does love you as much as Scripture reveals that He does? Entering by faith into the truth of God's love for you brings an end to fear - maybe not all at once, but progressively, as you settle more and more thoroughly into a confident assurance of His love. As this occurs, the dark mists of fear will evaporate and the bright shining love of God will fill your life.

Thank you for all of your lessons as they are very helpful. I do want to comment on the lest paragraph here! I realize as I was reading that I was getting somewhat frustrated within myself because I am not fully there to where I believe God loves me. Being a child of abuse, I learned that I was bad, and that God was angry at me, specifically for what others did to me wrongly.

As I read to the end here, I realized that I don't have it in me fully to believe God loves me. I will never have full confidence about this. Meaning, not of myself. There will need to be a God given revelation based on God's grace, to give me the full revelation and realization of His love. It will have to be HIs work, which is what the bible teaches us. Also considering we are crucified with Christ, then that part of me, the mind that came out of the abuse no longer lives; it belongs to the carnal mind which is enmity against God. That won't change because on the cross Christ said "it is finished." So I have been crucified with Christ. So, to love God, which I believe I do, but I struggle to feel safe in His care, I need God's grace to live it out experientially, and that's God giving me the grace to live it out experientially by His Holy Spirit in His Power. Not me!
 
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Apr 19, 2020
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Remember too, as a Christian you are still carrying that old man/woman with you. All those habits, many of those having been hardened around a specific sin perhaps. Do not despair when you fail to overcome quickly, because some sins take a long time to overcome. Through much prayer and fasting. Peace of Jesus to y'all.
 
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