Do you suffer from the spirit of fear?

Most of us would say "no" -- until we delved a bit deeper into our own psyches.

For fear entails more than we commonly acknowledge.

It is nervousness. It is anxiety. It sometimes crosses over into impatience. It involves phobias.

None of the above are of God.

"Dwelling in fear" can attract what we are fearing.

Spirits (the wrong kind) sense it.

As the brilliant expert on deliverance Derek Prince recalled how he once met a woman who had gone to a fortuneteller and was told she was going to be a "young widow." She accepted the prediction and was. She had accepted Satan's destiny for her husband and herself (he died tragically). It also happened to Prince, who recalled about his own struggles with fear that there was a time when a spiritist he was trying to deliver suddenly blurted out that she saw him in a car wrecked against a tree. It was a demon speaking. "I said aloud, 'Satan, I refuse your destiny for my life. I shall not be in any car that's wrecked against a tree.'" He never was.

"After [my conversion], these attacks of fear diminished but did not altogether cease. Once I came into deliverance, I knew what to do. I would call on the Lord and He would set me free.

"At first I could not understand why I should have this continuing struggle, but then I saw from the Scriptures that many of God's strongest servants experienced an ongoing battle with fear. I thought of David, the mighty man of valor, captain of the armies of Israel. In Psalm 34:4 he says, 'I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.

"I pondered on that phrase all my fears. Then I began to consider many different kinds of fear: fear of the dark, fear of heights, fear of man, fear of failure, fear of sickness, fear of death, fear of confined places (claustrophobia), fear of open or public places, fear of the unknown...

"A complete list would be very long.

"Every one of these fears is agonizingly real to the one suffering from it."

List yours.

How to deal with them?

Cast out anything in you that might cause others to fear or be intimidated. Remember that God is in peace and does not reside in fearfulness. Fear is the fruit of shortcomings. Our spirits know when there is a "weak link." Go to God. Look at today's reading (12/5/13): "“A strong city have we; he sets up walls and ramparts to protect us. Open up the gates to let in a nation that is just, one that keeps faith... Trust in the Lord forever" (Isaiah 26).

Above and beyond all, we recall what the Bible says: perfect love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18).

It's where we need to start.

We can also apply 2 Timothy 1:7: "God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind [self-discipline]."

Take a stand against it.

Pray always (from the heart).

A prayer from the heart cleanses the heart -- and it is the heart that fear often attacks (see: heart attack).

Of course, there is also the stomach. There is the mind. Fear attacks the entire self. When we lack peace, it's often due to a fear.

When it comes, in the Name of Jesus "cast out" the "spirit of fear." Place angels between you and what you fear.

When you do, you will be victorious. Persist. It will become second nature to be fearless -- to realize this as part of the spiritual conflict -- and it will do you well in all fears to remember that "greater is He Who is in me than is he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4).

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