Can God Really Help You?

      Fear is the single biggest problem that most of us face. It pretty much underpins every other problem we face in our life. It is insidious. It creeps upon us without us even realising, slowly taking over our lives, until eventually it steals them. It steals our confidence, makes us feel insecure, affects our relationships and stops us doing things. It becomes so deeply embedded within us that most of the time we don’t even realise that it is there, it becomes part of who we are. I was the type of person that was always annoyed or agitated about something. As I look back on my life I realise that I did so many stupid things out of fear. I thought it was just the way I was, until God began to show me how every incident had a root of fear. I was always afraid of something; afraid of being late, afraid of not finding a parking space, afraid of not having enough money, afraid of missing the plane, afraid of upsetting people etc. The list goes on and on, I won’t bore you with it all, but I’m sure you get the drift.

      Fear and worry go hand in hand. We worry about things that we are afraid of happening and become more afraid in the process. For many people fear and worry have become a way of life. Let me also emphasise the root of stress is fear and worry, stress is becoming crippled by fear and worry. Once I was always stressed, but that changed completely after I learned to deal with these two problems in my life.
      I knew for many years that fear and worry played a big part in my life and knew that I was always stressed, but in some ways I thought that it was a good thing. The logic being that as long as I was worrying, I was covering my bases. This would mean that the things that I was afraid of were less likely to happen because I was thinking ahead. I was miserable most of the time, but thought this was the price I had to pay. How wrong I was. It took God three years to teach me to stop worrying and trust him. During the first year I totally resisted him and refused to stop worrying and then gradually I began to cooperate and as I did so I found that things began to improve. Not only did I start to feel so much happier, but I actually found he did a better job of taking care of things than I ever did.
      Fear and worry arise in our lives through a lack of trust in everyone, including ourselves, those around us and the bigger players such as the Government and the Health Service. We live in an environment that encourages us to continually focus on the downside, therefore instead of being grateful for all the good things around us we worry about all the bad things. For example, the Health Service treats many thousands of patients successfully every day, but the newspapers make sure we find out about the one that went wrong. We then worry about misdiagnosis or incorrect treatment when we are ill. Smith Wrigglesworth, a famous preacher in the last century, had an amazing ministry including many miraculous healings in his services. He refused to read a newspaper or even have one in his house because he refused to focus on bad news; he wanted to concentrate on what he believed God could do.
       One of the worst things about fear is that it is contagious. We infect each other. We are so blessed in this country. We have fresh running water, power, food available in shops and supermarkets, a good police force, a fair justice system, freedom of speech and worship, transport, employment, help if we are unable to work, good schools and a very good health service. These are things that millions, if not billions of people around the world do not have, yet instead of focusing on how lucky we are, we complain. We sit around in groups telling each other all the things that are going wrong, continually encouraged by the media. I had to learn and am still learning to control this. I had to learn to appreciate what I had before it was taken away from me. Once I started focusing on the good and not the bad, I found that my worrying started to ease because instead of worrying about the bad I was being grateful for the good. I had to re-align my focus on the good things in my life. I admit that I do read a newspaper, it tells me what the world is doing, and then I read the Bible to see what it should be doing!
      Jesus taught about worry in his Sermon on the Mount, Matt 6 v25 to 34. 

          Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink: or about your body, or what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the ungodly run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.    

      Worry changes absolutely nothing. Start giving your problems to God. I had trained myself to worry over many years and I had to reverse the process by training myself not to worry. How did I do this? In 1 Peter 5:7, we are told to cast our anxieties on God. I started casting my anxieties on God. When I was worried about something I learnt to pray about it and hand it over to him. Once I had done this I endeavoured to stop thinking about it, learnt to stop continually thinking about bad things and began instead to think about good things. I had spent so many years worrying that it had become part of my makeup and I had to really persevere to see change. It was so weird at first, because if I wasn’t worrying about something I didn’t know what else to do. However, with God’s help I began to change. I became more thankful for the good things, far less focused on bad things and much happier and far less stressed in the process. I also discovered that there was life after worry, and it was a far better life than the one before.
      So much for worry; fear was a little bit different. Many of the things that we or other people do wrong arise out of fear. Fear also stops us doing things, how many people do not go on the holiday abroad because of a fear of flying? (I was one of these.) Many people do not fulfil their potential in life because they are afraid of failure or ridicule. Fear is a spiritual force and the good news is that it can be defeated. Fear can be resisted and overcome. Fear does not come from God. God knows that fear is a problem and ‘fear not’ is a constant command throughout the Bible. God does not want us to be afraid because he knows how damaging it can be. He sent his son to die for us and set us free, free from bondage, free from fear. Fear only has the power that we give it. We defeat fear by standing against it. F D Roosevelt said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. If you learn to stand against fear, you will have nothing to fear! There were two main ways in which I stood against fear.
      Firstly I spoke to it. Our words have power; believe me when I say “what comes out of your mouth matters”. I found some text in the Bible that dealt with fear and I kept repeating it. The main one that I repeated time after time, often many times a day is from 2 Timothy 1:7: “The lord my God did not give me a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and a sound mind”. Every time fear came upon me I hit it with this, out loud if I could, but in my head otherwise. Fear often came upon me when I was in bed, either just as I was trying to go to sleep or if I woke up in the night. I would lie there with completely irrational thoughts going around in my head, becoming more and more terrified. Once I understood that this was not from God and that it was not his will for me I started to deal with it by thinking back to this essential truth. Over a period of time irrational fear began to ease and I became less and less afraid.
      Secondly I faced it. Courage is not an absence of fear; it is doing something in spite of being afraid. In our society we rely on courageous people such as soldiers, policemen and firemen to protect us. These people are courageous because they face and overcome fear. They do not allow it to control them. There are many people like this who have to do things in spite of fear. They have to ‘do it afraid’. I started ‘doing it afraid’. One of my main problems was fear of what people would think of me. God gave me another scripture, Proverbs 29 v25, ‘Fear of man will prove to be a snare’.  I changed my thinking to stop being afraid of what man might think and became more concerned with what God would think. I started to do things God’s way, it became my aim to do what was right in his eyes, regardless of what people thought.  When you face fear it shrinks, if you don’t face it, eventually it consumes you. Fear is the opposite of faith, they compete within you. They are opposing forces. Fear pushes out faith, but likewise, faith pushes out fear. You can make a decision to let faith rise up in you and push out fear. Here are some simple steps that you can take:

1. When you find yourself worried or afraid, stop for a moment and try to indentify the specific thing that you are afraid of.
2. Pray immediately about the specific problem. Don’t think ‘Oh I must pray about that later’, pray there and then. The moment you pray, the tide of the battle turns.
3. When you have prayed, think to yourself ‘I’ve cast that upon God now, it’s his problem’.
4. Declare that you are a victor, not a victim. He that is in you is greater than he that is in the world.
5. Praise God and thank him that he is working in your life and taking care of the problem.
6. Believe that God is dealing with the problem, despite how things appear.
7. Resist the spirit of fear in the name of Jesus.
8. Try to keep away from other people who worry or display fear. Remember, one drowning person cannot help another. You will only make each other worse.
9. Monitor what you are putting into your mind through books, magazines, newspapers, television and the internet.
10. Focus on all the good things in your life. Think about what you do have, not what you don’t have. There is always some good to be found.
11. Count your blessings and be thankful. Develop an attitude of gratitude.
12. Do not allow fear to immobilise you, it will shrink if you face it.
13. Say out loud “I will not fear”.
14. Read the scriptures in the Bible that promise protection and help. Meditate on them and speak them out loud.
15. Declare ‘No devil, you shall not kill, steal and destroy my life, Jesus came to give me an adundant life and I believe and receive it’.

Scriptures; Psalm 91, 2 Timothy 1:7, Proverbs 3:25-26, Psalm 31:19-20, Psalm 32:8, Hebrews 13:5-6, 1 John 4:4, John10:10, I John 4:18