Origin of Fear

Origin of Fear

6/25/18

Fear is one of the most devastating conditions that anyone can experience or live within for it dominates and controls our simplest movements if allowed to roam free.  Fear is a weapon that many people use in order to gain access to our thoughts and to our hearts, enough that we change our patterns and habits in order to avoid the present crisis around us.  Do we understand that fear is an ugly sign and a “gift” from Satan and his kingdom?  Do we understand that God did not create a spirit of fear in our lives?  Most of us do not know that fear is of this magnitude and I suggest that many more do not understand the origin of fear and why it is so effective against us.  More importantly, when we do understand this fact that the verses in God’s Word that direct us to not be afraid or to have fear will make so much more sense in our battle with our enemy, but in order for us to realize such freedom we must first turn our hearts to God so that we may be taught by Him accordingly.

Most of us had at least one run in with fear and the process that it brings to our lives at some point in our past or maybe a current situation plagues us at this moment, whatever the case may be it is never a pleasant experience to deal with.  I learned this a long time ago when I was just starting my career in school, more specifically it was my kindergarten year to be exact.  I would usually walk home during the warmer times of the year and since my house was just up the road, it would not take me long to get home either.  Many kids who lived on our street or in the general vicinity would do the same so it was not like we were walking alone at any time.  With all of us being kids we would become easily distracted on our way home, stop to grab one or two honeysuckle flowers or to play with one of the dogs that were in someone’s yard things that kids just do when they are not concerned with any obstacles around them.

As the school year progressed, I noticed that some of the kids that usually walked home at the end of every school day were no longer around but at the moment of noticing I really did not think too much about it.  Until one day a kid who I had never known before approached me and began to lightly punch me on the shoulder.  I asked him and then told him to stop and when he didn’t I took off running and got home without any further incident that day.  He followed me home a few days later, not doing anything but just hanging back at a distance and while keeping his distance still pursued me until he knew where I lived.  This pattern continued for a while but with no real dangerous encounters, I guess he was busy with the others and was more interested in them, or so I thought.  His appearance again was made known and when it did he had escalated the bullying by pushing me harder with my rear end hitting the ground a couple of times in the process.  I was tired of this process and began to look for a way around the issue, you know, running away from the issue instead of facing it and dealing with it correctly.

One of my friends and I were walking home together one day and almost as soon as we started up the hill towards home our little buddy showed up again but this time he was on a bike.  I do not know where he got it and I never did ask him either but this was a new tactic that gave him more of an advantage because there was no way that we could outrun a bike.  So, the friend said to me: follow me we will take another route, so we took a right at one of the houses and went behind the yards and onto a small alley which continued towards our houses but behind the street where we lived.  We could still easily reach our houses on this path and as soon as I figured out where we were it was no longer a threat, or so I thought.  As it turns out, I recognized some of the physical features of this path since my brother had participated in a boxing club which conducted their fights and training sessions in an old building that I would pass each day.  It was not too long until my bully friend had somehow found out this passage and showed up along the way, coming from the opposite direction and facing us as we came closer and closer to each other.  My alternate route had been found out and I was no longer able to hide from the problem and from where things stood it looked like there would be no getting around him this time.  I could no longer run from the issue and I knew that it was going to be the time to deal with it correctly. 

As he approached he was mouthing and laughing at us and was proud of himself that he had found out where our hidden route was, a point that he made sure we all knew because he was so much smarter than we were.  I asked him what he wanted from us and his “brightness” and “smarter than us” attitude came through when he wanted all of our lunch money.  We gave him nothing because it was after school and for those of us who brought their lunches did not have any along with those who had already used it for their lunch.  This “bully” ended up being the one laughed at and from that point onwards he never bothered us again.  So much so that we no longer had to take the alternate route and the main road to our houses was back open once again. 

The entire setting taught me a small lesson in that when one tries to avoid their fears nothing really changes, only a delayed tactic that only prolongs terror and potentially frightening conditions.  When one has a bully in their lives or if anything or any other setting brings you to a place where fear drives you to change your own life the only effective approach is to fight it accordingly.  I understand that not all settings of fear can be described in a few words such as these nor will all of the settings be as simple as this, but when one decides to stand up to fear and confront it head on, that is the only way that people are ever going to defeat such an enemy.

The actions that I and my friends took that day were not glorious and by all means not complex by any measure, it was a simple strategy that we had and when we figured out what was going on the troubles went away at the same time our fear did.  It is this type of reflection of mine that we need to have all the time when it comes to our enemy.  Our enemy loves to use fear against us and for the most part, we succumb to this tactic of his without a fight.  Not only do we not know how to fight him and his tactics we do not know where the origins of this tactic begin and it is this bit of truth that God wants us to understand for there is an origin to fear and when we understand where fear originates and why it does work it shall be easy for us to stand up and take control of the situation, no matter what the fearful setting may be.  In order for us to understand the origin of fear, we must return to Genesis Chapter 1 and reread the creation of mankind.

In Genesis Chapter 1 we find that the earth is void and filled with darkness, a state and condition that is easily thought about when nothing is there yet were allowed to be positioned in such a manner as for someone to try and prove themselves for another.  We also know that it was the desire of Lucifer to be like God in all ways, in fact, to be higher than God so that he could control the Heavens instead of God.  So, it would be natural for God to allow Lucifer to “prove” his creative “skills” to God.  Yet, nothing occurred and since we know that Spirit does not know time, that waiting period that God allowed Lucifer to try and create something could have been an immeasurable amount of time.  Therefore, God has to show His loser challenger a thing or two so we open up our existence in Genesis Chapter 1 when God decides to create everything that we know to be alive and present today.

Eventually, Genesis Chapter 2 arrives and we find that God tops off His perfect creation status so far with the creation of humans, His most prized creation and proof that only He can create life in all stages and forms.  What other explanation could there be for an enemy to target than jealous rage at being proven wrong once again?  We must never forget that our enemy is a spirit and when God created Lucifer He did so in such a manner that he will never die, just as God placed His Spirit into our lives as well when He created us.  Therefore, our enemy will have the same goals of destruction as he had with God that he has with us and since he did not trick God in any manner his next step would be to do his best in our lives.  Which brings us to the origin of fear because God placed in us the exact same abilities of creation that He has and if we understand this position and ability we will be able to continually show our enemy that we are children of God and that we will advance God’s Kingdom and not what Satan wants from us.

Fear originated on the day that God began creating life in the world and Satan’s fear accumulated and peaked when God smiled upon our lives and finished our existence by placing the breath of His Spirit within us.  See, Satan hates any movement of God’s Kingdom and he utterly despises the fact that God placed us on this earth as an example of advancement to His Kingdom.  Satan fears us and what we can do and prove that God exists, that He is perfect in every way, and that if we choose Him that we shall live with Him for eternity.  God created in each one of us a specific purpose that glorifies His Kingdom which means that every single person that has walked this earth, that is walking this earth now and every person that will walk this life has a specific purpose for God’s Kingdom and it is this purpose that God has given us that Satan fears and in turn uses such fear against us.

Fear is allowed into our lives when our dominion is not dressed and kept up to the standards that God intended for it to be.  This is proven in Genesis Chapter 2 where God gives Adam directions of what he can and cannot do and how to accomplish these directions on a continual basic level.  As long as Adam and Eve did what they were told (obedience) and kept their dominion intact there would be no issues.  When disobedience (sin) was allowed into their thoughts and then into their lives it was this process that allowed Satan to use fear as the dominant force in their lives.  How do we know this?  Because when they knew about their nakedness they did what they could to cover themselves for they knew at some appointed time that God would want to speak with them.  They were afraid at this point and up until this time they had no shame or reason to be afraid.  Fear was now a figure in their lives, one that God had no intentions of us ever finding out about.

Fear is a nasty condition and process for when it attacks or is allowed to rule a person’s life their effectiveness is delayed or halted entirely.  God cannot sit still and His Kingdom cannot stall or stop in any way and when we do not fulfill our purpose that means that God’s Kingdom has stopped or is being delayed in some manner and a good portion of the time that when this condition occurs it is because God’s children have been fooled enough by fear that they have stopped in what their purpose is for or that they do not fully understand that the drive that they have within them comes from God and for His glory.  It is the perfect setting for Satan to have successful people not knowing why they desire to have or to live in purposeful conditions and to then go around completely lost in total confusion about why they were even born.  One of the more common approaches to fear is to run away from it and have the concept that if we ignore it long enough that it will not return but as we read about my example above it will always return bigger than ever and looking for a fight.

Can you believe it?  Our fear originates from someone that actually and truly fears us!  It all boils down to the fact that Satan fears us so much that it brings into being hate and that hate is, in turn, generating fear from him and then conveys his feelings outwardly enough that we sense it and then react in the same manner towards our personal situations.  This is NOT the order in which God created us, He did not mean for us to have any reason to back down or to run away from any issues or problems we might face, when the truth is told God did not even want us to encounter such stoppage time which is why He did not place us in such an environment when He created us, we chose this condition for our lives.  Adam and Eve believed the fear (lie) from Satan on that day and all of us have suffered for that choice of theirs.  Remember Satan is the father of lies and since this is his master description we must be careful not to fall for his traps and snares and fear is one of the biggest lies that he has for us.  Satan is not smarter than us unless we allow him to be as such, we have the perfect defense against his evilness but we will fall for these lies every time unless we know how to recognize them and know how to defeat them.

Humans are designed to be superior to fear in all cases which is why there are so many verses and group passages concerning fear in the Bible.  Fear is one of the most commonly used tactics against us and many times we ourselves use such actions to gain an advantage over others, which is totally wrong on all levels for when we do such an act we are using learned tactics from our enemy to create another enemy.  This is not what we are supposed to be doing, we are supposed to be bringing people to God and to show the dying world that there are a true Hope and Savior with all the answers to every question that is imaginable.  If and when a person is afraid of you, then there can be no equal agreement between the involved parties, not to mention that the trust factor of such setting will never be secure.  Is this what we want to protract towards others, have we digressed so much that we use fear tactics against others to obtain a higher status?  It sure seems like it especially in today’s societies for we all know that money and status buys the best toys and gives us the best lawyers.  How wrong is this picture?  God says it is eternally wrong and that we need to change our ways in order to bring people to Him instead of pushing them away from Him.

Currently, there is a song that is going around entitled “Fear Is A Liar” by Zach Williams.  It is an absolutely fantastic truth song that presents fear on its original level, Satan.  This song addresses the fact that Satan is a liar and through this lie, fear comes to you.  A part of the words go as follows: “Fear, he is a liar” and that is all of the words that we need to know.  The remaining portions of the song are just as important and pertinent but the truth in the song lies in these 5 simple words.  Fear is a he and that he is Satan for it is he who fears you and uses his fear against you in order to establish his fear in our lives.  Fear was not meant for our lives in any way, shape, or manner yet we allow this lie to rule our lives on a minute by minute experience.  As long as we do not care to know about why fear rules our lives we shall never understand true freedom, freedom that God created us to live within and until we get it through to our hearts that fear originates from Satan we will never have a chance to truly live in this condition either.

We were created to be kings and queens not servants to a defeated enemy, and as long as we allow our enemy to run roughshod over our hearts without any substantial resistance and holy fight this pattern shall continue without any easement.  Church, it is our responsibility to teach this truth about our enemy and to explain to those who are living in such conditions that there is an answer for them.  But why are we not teaching this?  Why have we allowed our enemy to run without any hesitation over God’s precious, precious creations?  It is because we ourselves refuse to dig into the true and eternal meaning of God’s Word and take this truth to the people who need it.  We have become afraid of ourselves and are holed up in our buildings and doing nothing, while countless amounts of people die in their sins and are eternally separated from God.  We have within our eyes the resource to defeat all fear, we know who causes fear and we now understand why he uses such tactics.  It is time we stand up and take our rightful places in the eternal Kingdom, we should never be defeated on any level and we definitely should never be led by fear and if we do not take this stand for God and to spread the true gospel of Christ to the world then we have automatically been defeated by fear and thus subject to being thrown out of the Garden of Eden once again.

DLB