Too many people ask for prayers to get rid of fear in their lives, not realising that fear has influenced many of their decisions, behaviour, etc. My brother, my sister, the problem with fear is that it amplifies your imagination in a bad way: you cannot trust people or even the Lord, you see evil everywhere, and not even that, fear will prevent you from moving forward in obed…ience to what you sense God is calling you to do.
Unfortunately, many believers do the same thing: the pray asking God to remove fear in them… But years after years, they diligently pray against fear, that God would take it away. Sometimes, they take actions as they pray: they start to live in a bubble, limiting their interactions with people.
My friend, let’s look into the Word of God to see that until Christ’s return, fear will always exist on this earth. We live in a scary world where bad things happen for the enemy “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). One of the main ways he does this is through fear. The enemy’s intent is to keep our eyes set on our fears and stop us from trusting God. Stop us from making wise decisions. Stop us from believing things can change. Stop us from pursuing the dreams in our hearts.
Today, understand that praying against fear will never be enough, because fear can come to us in different forms. Now, the Bible tells us that God has not given us a spirit of fear… so as this verse says, to see a change on the inside we need to see things from Heaven, not from the earth. How? Instead of just praying against fear, we should actually use God’s Word and rather ask for specific things like courage, confidence and peace… those things that are contrary to fear!
In other words, instead of praying that fear will be far from you, you can ask God to give you a strong, bold and courageous heart (Joshua 1:9) when fear comes near. Instead of asking God to take away all fear, you can ask for His grace to run towards the big, scary things with great courage (1 Samuel 17:48). Instead of praying that fear will leave you alone, you can pray that when you are afraid you will trust and have confidence in God (Psalm 56:3). Instead of asking God to make all fear in your life vanish, you can pray that His peace which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus and supersede all fear (Philippians 4:6-7).
My friend, praying this way will change you and enable you to move forward in obedience to the things God has called you to do. You see, God does not promise to always take away all our fears. Yet, He gives us the power, love and self-discipline necessary to embrace His life-changing truth. When we pray His living and active Word, something amazing always happens: God strengthens our hearts. Stay blessed in Jesus’ name.