The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. – John 10:10 (NKJV)

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. –James 4:7 (NKJV)

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. –2 Timothy 1:7

Sacrificed Your Life for Me

When I believe you’ve given up on me, Lord,
That’s when I give in to all of my fears.
When I feel you have rejected me
That’s when the Devil whispers in my ear.
Each time I let down my guard
He pulls the wool over my eyes.
And when I entertain his whispers
I begin to believe his lies.
I’m not sure just how it starts.
Nor, do I know what makes it brew.
But it doesn’t matter how it starts
Because it ends by praising you.
I sing my praise to you, Lord,
By your blood I have been saved.
You sacrificed your life for me
While I was still depraved.
You are mightier than the enemy;
You have no equal foe.
The Devil cannot defeat you.
He cannot even land a blow.
I bend my knee to worship you
The one who gives me breath
You redeemed my sins on the cross
And you delivered me from death.
Lord, to you I make this promise 
I will block the enemy.
I will close my ears to what he says
I will not hear his blasphemy.
I will never let him fool me again.
But, Lord, just in case I do,
I know how to make him flee
It begins by praising you.
So, I sing my praise to you, Lord,
By your blood I have been saved
You sacrificed your life for me
While I was still depraved
You are mightier than the enemy;
You have no equal foe.
The Devil cannot defeat you.
He cannot even land a blow.
©Linda Troxell 5/23/2019

How many times have you had a bad day, week, or month when your fear or anxiety was greater than your faith? Times when the voice of God faded or completely disappeared from your head, if not your heart? I’m going to bet that everyone reading this page and everyone they know has had at least one experience like that.

When that happens, it thrills the enemy. In fact, he probably has facilitated many of these events, (more on that later). Because, when we can’t hear God’s voice over our fear, it’s hard to keep our faith as strong as it needs to be. That makes room for the enemy to whisper his lies in our ears. Of course, in those times what we need to do is go to God’s Word and read what He says and what He promises.

But again, I’m willing to bet that you, like me, have had times when the fear and anxiety were so strong that either it never occurred to you to read the Word, or with the enemy’s help, you were paralyzed by the fear and just couldn’t manage to break through to read the Word.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there are those of you out there who have never experienced this, even when you were new Christians. I am happy for you if that’s true. But as for me, this has happened multiple times. More as a new Christian and progressively less as I grow stronger in Christ; Thank God. But still, it happens.

So, what do we do in the midst of this paralyzing fear and anxiety that won’t allow us to pull out our Bible and read the Word? In all likelihood, the scriptures we’ve memorized for just such an occasion have disappeared into our anxiety as well. The enemy wants us to think there is no way to break this cycle. But remember, the enemy is the father of lies who comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy; John10:10.

And he is lying again when he tells us that… well he is lying no matter what he says, because he is incapable of the truth. But related to our topic, he is lying when he tells us that God has walked away from us and isn’t listening and there is nothing we can do about it. He is lying when he helps us to increase our anxiety so we will be unable to reach for our Bible.

So, when that happens, we have to break free of the fear and the anxiety enough to pray and read God’s Word. The best way to make that happen is to praise God. You don’t have to be eloquent. You don’t even have to believe it at first. You can start by simply repeating “God is good” over and over again.

You don’t even need to feel that it’s true at the moment.  Just say it anyway. That will be enough to start the process of banishing the enemy and opening up your connection to God. Then He can banish your fear. Soon, you will begin to remember a few words of one of your favorite worship songs, then a few a lines, and finally a whole song. Sing it as loud as you can.

Praising God and stating the truth about His sovereignty and His goodness is something the enemy cannot abide. It hurts his ears and breaks his hard, black heart. So, he will flee as soon as he can.  James says it this way, Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. –James 4:7 (NKJV)

Submit to God is praising louder than your fear, in this case. Resisting the devil is standing against his lies as he tells you God is lost to you. And he flees from you when he leaves your head, taking his lies and sabotaging with him.

So just shout out your thanks to God for His love!
Thank Him for being stronger than the enemy!
Thank Him for being stronger than your fear!
Confess who He is and what He’s done for you!
Turn on your favorite worship music and turn the volume up until it is the only thing you can hear!
Pick up your Bible or your phone’s Bible app and read your favorite Psalms out loud!
And do, literally, anything else you can think of to praise and worship God!

As the singing and the praising continue the fear and anxiety will retreat and all of the tools you normally have will come back to you. And those tools that don’t come back immediately, will come back when you start to read God’s Word. For we know there is healing in the word of God.

When we are overwhelmed with fear we have tunnel vision about our world, especially our immediate, personal world. We can identify only negative choices for solving our problem. This is because we are focused on our problem, which keeps us focused on our fear, which means we are focusing on ourselves. We all know focusing on ourselves is dangerous. When we begin to praise God, we refocus.

 More importantly, when we change our focus from ourselves to God, we are changing our focus from someone who is weak and afraid, that is ourselves, to someone who is never weak and afraid, that is God. He can fight the battle for us. We have to understand that fear, at least the kind of fear that cuts us off from God is more than just an emotion.

I wrote above, that the enemy has probably facilitated those kinds of episodes. I’m not saying that there is no simple human emotion called fear. There is. But it isn’t the same thing as the kind of terror and anxiety that seems to separates us from God. That has the enemy’s fingerprints all over it.

For, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7. When we use that power to take our focus away from fear and put it on God, we can remember that God has equipped us for this battle. It begins by using the power God has given us to look to Him as our source for overcoming spiritual battles.

Praise is the way to access all of God’s gifts. Because when we are praising God, we are forging a deeper relationship with Him. This deeper relationship doesn’t give us anything more from God, we already have everything God has to give. But it certainly teaches us to access the gifts we already have. The deeper the relationship the quicker we can rest in His loving arms when fear comes our way.

Praising God also does something magical. It changes our perspective; and perspective is everything. It is our perspective that determines what we see in our world and how we see it. Therefore, it shapes our thoughts and feelings about what we see. Ultimately, it is our perspective that determines how we interact with our environment.

Perspective is magical because any time we don’t like what we see or what we feel, we can change it by changing our perspective. Praise is so important and so effective for that very reason because praising God changes our perspective, of God, of ourselves, and of the world.

I’m sure we all remember the parable about a group of blind men who encountered an elephant for the first time. They each tried to conceptualize and understand the elephant by touching the animal. Each man touched a different part of the elephant’s body, such as the trunk or the ears, but only that part.   

Finally, each of the men described the elephant based on his limited perspective. Of course, each man’s description of the elephant was wildly different from the others. So much so, that they begin arguing because each of them thought the others must be lying.

These men “saw” the same animal. Yet, there was no agreement about the animal’s characteristics. Because each of them explored the animal from only one perspective. And their perspectives were very different.

When we focus on our problems only from the perspective of our fear, we are in the same situation as these blind men. We have limited ourselves to only the options that can be seen from that one perspective.

When we are afraid we telescope in on our perceived problem, and fear is our only perspective. We are unable to see the many other ways in which our problem can be viewed. We are unable to remember who God is and what He can do. Our perspective tells us we are alone in this problem, creating even more fear.

Fear always opens a door in our minds for the enemy to enter. Once he has a foothold in our minds, he will use our fear to build a wall that reinforces that fear and convinces us our connection to God has been severed.

Now, our perspective tells us we are caught in a catch-22. We need God to penetrate the enemy’s wall, but the enemy has severed our connection to God. We desperately need God and we can’t access Him.

When caught in a situation like this, we need to reconnect to God and affirm His truth. The enemy is a liar and we are never alone. We need to reconnect to God so we can be reassured He never left us. But where is He? He is only as far away as our first word of praise.

And that is why we need to begin to praise God when our faith is weak or we are afraid.  Praising God changes our perspective, and that change makes the enemy flee. When the enemy flees the wall comes down. When the wall comes down and as we continue to praise, our perspective about God continues to change and our perspective of our problem changes too.

We begin to remember who He is (The One Sovereign God, creator of the universe). Then we can remember who we are, (sons and daughters of the One True King) and whose we are (We are the children of the author of life, that same Sovereign God.).

From there, we are back on track. And as they say, God is in His heaven and all is right with the world.

Let’s Pray
Lord, sometimes fear overwhelms us and the enemy convinces us that your love for us hasn’t survived our most recent sin. That brings the fear and anxiety that comes from feeling separated from you. I know that sounds as if we don’t trust you, Lord. After all, your Word tells us that nothing can separate us from your love. But in reality, God, it just means we don’t trust ourselves. We don’t trust that we aren’t that one exception to the rule that no one knows about yet. The one exception who is so bad that even the most loving and merciful God can’t love us. And you know, Lord, the enemy jumps right on that. Lord, we ask you to remind us not to believe anything we think when we are gripped by fear and anxiety. Because chances are it is the enemy in our head creating the fear. Help us Lord to remember that you gave us a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. It’s easy, even for us, to tell that when fear and anxiety strike, we are not living in the spirit of a sound mind. Help us to remember that this is a spiritual attack and can only be won by a spiritual battle. Help us most of all to remember that when we praise you it changes our perspective. It changes how we see our fear, then ourselves, and then finally it changes how we see you. It brings us back to a place where we know we are loved and that you will never forsake us. Thank you, Lord, for all of the amazing patience you have for us your children.
We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen

Points for Pondering and for Payer
Or
Perhaps for Putting Pen to Paper

Have you ever had a time when you were tightly gripped by fear and/or anxiety and you had a hard time getting free?

If yes, what did you do to break out of it?         Or did you just wait it out?       Have you ever tried praising God to break the fear?

Have you ever had a time of paralyzing fear that you knew was a spiritual attack?  

What did you do to break free?  Was it something different than breaking free of simply fear and/or anxiety?                    Did it work well?

Have you ever had a time of paralyzing fear and/or anxiety that now, looking back, you think might have been a spiritual attack?  

Did you do anything to break free or did you just wait it out?  If it happens again will you try praising God to break free?

Did you know that when you can’t find the motivation to spend time with God that praising him can give you motivation?

If you do, have you tried it?     If you’ve tried it, did it work for you?      If you haven’t tried it, would you be willing to?

Make a list for yourself of ways to praise God: favorite Psalms or Bible verses of praise, a worship song list on your phone that you can play, write some prayers of praise, or any other way you like to praise God, and keep it somewhere handy so you can use it when you need to. It doesn’t work if you don’t use it. You can’t use it if you don’t know where it is.