It's Time to Quit FEARING THE FEAR!

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Use prayer and the Holy Spirit as your weapons to “demolish strongholds”. The time to begin is now. There is no better time than today to put fear in its place!

I had decided to take a walk yesterday morning instead of getting on the treadmill. I will admit it is the first time I walked outside this year. The anticipation of the walk was exciting to me as the Holy Spirit almost always speaks into my life on my way back from the creek. There is one specific area while treading up the broken county road, that beautiful signs and wonders fill my mind. However, yesterday was different.

Beautiful signs and wonders filled my eyesight instead.

There has been something in my life I have been struggling with lately, but I will speak of that later. It is a stronghold of sorts which is holding me back from being the best person I can be as a child of the God. So on my walk, I asked God to SHOW ME how I can combat the addiction.  My outloud prayer went something like this “Heavenly Father, Thank You for being my God! Thank you for your unconditional love….please show me how I can be the best person I can be! I fear only you Lord as you are my Lord and Savior and I give You reverence. I do not desire to give reverence to anything else but you Lord as nothing comes before you. Thank you for your unfailing love “and I proceeded to put it all in Jesus name.

Well, just a few steps further towards home, I came across an empty cigarette package that someone had thrown from their car. But what I walked by next was placed there for me to see! It too was another cigarette package. It was a different brand and had looked like it had been run over a couple times. But what was different about the second package is that it still had numerous cigarettes inside.

I stopped immediately! You would have thought I was a crazy woman on a county road because I leaned over to get a closer look. And how silly it was for me to look around to find the vehicle; rather the person who threw these out of their car window.  What a beautiful person, I thought to myself! Then my internal dialog spoke: Theresa, they are trying to break the stronghold. They threw the cigarettes out of the car for a reason. They had no fear of the withdrawal. They had no fear of the next time they craved nicotine. All they knew at that moment was that it was not important to have cigarettes in their life anymore! They are an angel to you today. 

Wow. I must have stood there for what seemed like an eternity. And after snapping a quick photo of the cigarette package as a reminder, I proceeded to walk home.

So for the past 24 hours I have been meditating on that walk. Of course I now realize that it was the Holy Spirit speaking through that beautiful FEARLESS angel in the car who is giving up the addiction.  For a moment, that angel has taken fear and placed it on a shelf.  I prayed for my angel yesterday. I prayed that the stronghold of my angel’s nicotine addiction is gone forever! 

The angel who made a decision to roll down their window that day doesn’t even know that their action has touched the life of someone else who has a stronghold. Although my stronghold is not nicotine, rather an addiction to the taste of food, it is still a stronghold that is holding me back from being the best person I can be for Christ.

As with any addiction, there must be a fear behind it. For alcoholics it may be the fear of sobriety or no party life. For workaholics, it may be a fear of no money or idle living. A nicotine addiction may have the fear of withdrawal on not knowing where the next cigarette is coming from, but what is the fear for people addicted to food? I asked God to reveal that to me in my life specifically…and He did. I am fearful of hunger pangs and not being able to enjoy the taste of food. I am done FEARING THE FEAR!

Ask God today to SHOW YOU your fear inside of your stronghold. It is only then when you can quit fearing the fear.