“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6,7).
Do you know what’s the opposite of fear?
It’s having faith in God.
The Mark Driscoll Ministries said that in Philippians 4, we learn five ways to feed faith and starve fear:
* Focus one eye on each track. Mark Driscoll Ministries quoted Pastor Rick Warren, when he said that most people think of life as being a series of good and bad seasons, but he felt that every season of life was more like train tracks with good and bad happening constantly and congruent. When troubles, temptations and trials come, we tend to see only the bad track.
* Make your will your rudder. Our emotions are like a sail: they are big, powerful and drive our respective lives. When filled with fear, our emotions are like a sail in a hurricane. Imagine a sailboat in a hurricane with no rudder. When filled with fear, many people are like that, Pastor Mark Driscoll said. Instead, Driscoll said when anxious and fearful, “Let our reasonableness be known to everyone.”
* Replace panic with prayer. When a spirit of fear comes over us, our first response is often panic. Some people even experience panic attacks. Our mind races with all of the possible danger. Sometimes these fears are legitimate, but often they are lies from Satan. Rather than panic, Mark Driscoll Ministries said we should pray. Remember that freaking out is not a spiritual gift; faith is. In reality, panic helps nothing, but prayer helps everything. Because praying allows us to privately process what we are feeling in relationship with God. Thus, before we talk to anyone, we should talk to God alone.
* Tell the father what you want. When God is silent, it may be because He wants to hear from you. God is a Father, and we are His kids. Sometimes, we ask God, “What do you want?” and God replies, “I was going to ask you the same question.”
* Enjoy God’s presence and peace. When we sense a spirit of fear coming over us, it can cause us to feel overwhelmed. Fear is such a common experience that the most frequent command in the Bible is “fear not”, which appears roughly a few hundred times. God has to remind us continually to “fear not” in some form or fashion, because we tend to forget.
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Like a soldier, God will guard the emotional life of our hearts and the thought life of our minds, if we stand with Him against the spirit of fear, which is an act of spiritual warfare.
It is not the absence of trouble that brings peace, but the presence of God.
Ana Williams is a columnist for The Graham Star.