Fear Destroys, God Restores

In May of 2020, I was on Facebook when I saw an awful video. It scared me so bad that it paralyzed me with fear. After that, I couldn’t talk about politics, or anything regarding COVID. Whenever someone started a conversation about those things I would immediately shut down and have a mini panic attack. It was then that I decided I was done with Facebook and Instagram.

My recent experience with depression made it even more traumatic than it should have been. It wasn’t until later in the year, after starting the school of ministries, that one of my teachers identified a spirit of terror that had attached itself to me. She cast it out in the name of Jesus, and I was finally freed from the paralyzing fear I had been experiencing.

But that did not completely remove all the fear. Earlier this year, when a loved one’s life was threatened by COVID, I realized that fear still had a strong grasp on my life. There were still so many things that I needed to let go if I were going to be completely free. During this time God gave me a prophetic picture of a cup that was filled with fear. Those fears had been controlling me my whole life. They dictated what actions I would take based on safety and how I believed it would affect me. In the same picture that cup was knocked over and all of that fear spilled out. Then it was filled again. But this time it was filled with all of things that God is to me.

He is continuing to show me that He wants to remove all the fear from my life. This is so that I can be free to serve Him wherever, doing whatever He wants me to do. Recently, one of my friends told me that God had shown her that I was like a tree holding onto dead leaves, and those leaves represented my fears. Letting go of them would make room for all the new life that God wants to bring to me.

I am not completely free of all my fear, but God has been teaching me how to deal with each fear as it comes up. In the past I would allow my mind to run away with all the “what ifs” and instead of helping, it would just drag me down until I was paralyzed. I would be unable to function until I chose to stop focusing on the fear. But now, God has shown me that instead of entertaining those thoughts at all, He wants me to just release them to Him.

Also, learning to view God as my friend has completely changed the way that I receive negative information. Instead of allowing the enemy to run over me with fear when bad news comes my way, I choose to believe that God, as my friend, is telling me something. But He’s not telling me so that I freak out about it, but instead He is telling me so I can do something about it. It reminds me of Abraham when God came to him and told Him about Sodom and Gomorrah. God knew that Abraham couldn’t do anything about the situation, but because He considered Abraham His friend, He talked to him about it.

Most of the time He tells me things, so that I can pray. But there are other times, after I pray, that He will give me something to do. So, I don’t have to worry about anything, but I can bring everything to Him in prayer, and He will give me peace that surpasses all understanding. I am realizing that anything that I try to do to make things better, might make things worse, but if I pray about it and do whatever the Lord tells me to do, it will do so much more than what I could do on my own. Even just praying about it and choosing not to dwell on it, does so much more for me and the situation than any of my worrying or impulsive actions ever did. So, don’t allow fear to control you, instead pray and let God remove your fear and replace it with His peace. He will show you what to do and He will equip you and give you the strength to do it.

There are so many people looking for someone who is not shaken by the unsettling things that are happening all around us. We can be those people they look to, if we remember that we are held by the God of the Universe and that there is nothing He cannot handle. We need to be a people who walk in peace so we can point others to the Prince of Peace.