How Fear Shapes Us

Fundamentally, we are controlled through fear. Without fear, we will achieve anything we set a definite purpose to.

And where do all these fears come from?

Our minds - all of it, is in our minds! The question is - how does it get there?
In a Spiritual context, if we look to Ephesians 6:12 "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms"

The heavenly realms? OK, so our biggest enemy is within! So which one do we listen to? The convincing, soft cooing tones of that little voice that speaks lies over us or do we listen to the Holy Spirit?

How can we tell which is which? Well, we could simply ask "Jesus, is this from You?" or we could use discernment and pay attention to how we feel.

Firstly, the most important thing that hardly anyone speaks about is that not all of our thoughts are our own.  This revelation was mind-blowing to me.

So imagine one of your biggest fears is 'ill health' and you wake up early one morning, being gently roused from a deep sleep and the first thought that hits you is a vision of you sat in an ambulance on your way to hospital.  These types of thoughts are not a good way to start the day. Thankfully, the Lord gave us free will and a sound mind, therefore, we can choose whether to embrace that thought and allow it to feed into our fear of 'ill health' or we can choose to immediately disconnect from it.  It takes practice, but it is so worth it!

So if that "unwelcome thought" CAME to us, how did it ever belong to us?  It didn't! The type of thoughts that belong to us is memory recall, problem solving, critical, analytical and creative thinking.  Pretty much all of those other 'floating thoughts' are not ours.

Ever heard someone say "I've just had an idea COME to me" or "a thought just CROSSED my mind" - yes, consider these as our 'spirit realm' thoughts! How you manage these 'floating thoughts' is how you shape your life!

If something has occurred in your life where a fear was implanted, such as a fear of criticism, then any negatively framed concepts around 'criticism' will come from the spirit realm, where those principalities the Bible speaks of reside. Making a conscious choice to reject certain thoughts is basically 'standing guard' of your thinking.  This may sound exhausting, however, the human brain can learn to do this on autopilot if you train yourself to pick up on 'bad feelings'

And this is how we discern the Holy from the Unholy.  If your first waking thought is an image of you sat in an ambulance and that vision induces a sense of depression, foreboding or fear then let's refer to 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". So nothing that ever makes you feel hopeless is from God.  Truly know that! If a thought makes you feel bad or warmly invites you to "worry" about it - you can immediately reject it, hand it up to the Lord, and trust that He will go before you and keep you covered.

So I invite you to stand guard of your thinking, recognize immediately what does not make you feel good, hand it up to God and have blind faith that He will manage things for you! Following this simple process is exactly what personally dissolved away my depression, my fear and my anxiety.

Here are the 6 root causes of fear our spiritual enemies use against us! Get yourself armored up!