Fears that Do Not Come from God

In my introductory talk yesterday, I established three important points.

First, God’s Spirit is searching the whole earth for a person with a certain attitude of heart. This attitude is described as a heart that is perfect toward God, or a heart that is fully committed to God.

Second, wherever God finds such a person, it is His purpose to strengthen that person, or to strongly support him, or to show Himself strong on his behalf.

Third, one essential mark of a person with this kind of attitude toward God is the fear of the Lord. However, this phrase, “the fear of the Lord,” tends to produce some kind of negative reaction in us. We almost shrink away from it as something stern and unattractive.

One reason for this kind of negative reaction is that we unconsciously confuse the fear of the Lord with other kinds of fear that are unpleasant and often also harmful.

Therefore, in my talk today, I’m going to deal with these other forms of fear; fears that are unpleasant and harmful. I’m going to identify them and show how they differ from the kind of fear which is beneficial and pleasing to God, that is, the fear of the Lord.

I believe there are four main kinds of fear that we experience that are unpleasant and harmful, that are not the fear of the Lord. So I’m going to speak now briefly about each of these four kinds of fear.

The first kind I would call natural fear. It’s something that we all experience. It’s part of human nature. There are times when we get afraid. I get afraid, you get afraid.

The second kind of fear I would call demonic or tormenting fear. Let me give you a couple of scriptures. In

“Romans 8:15,” Paul says, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”

Paul is here contrasting the Spirit of God that assures us that we are God’s children with another kind of spirit. He calls it a spirit that makes you a slave, or a spirit of slavery to fear. That’s not just something purely natural, that is something in the spiritual realm. And its result is slavery. One thing we know is that God never produces slavery in His children. He doesn’t want slaves, He wants sons. So that kind of fear that produces slavery is not the fear of the Lord, and it’s not good.

In

“2 Timothy 1:7,” Paul also speaks about a kind of spirit that’s not from the Lord. He says, “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”

The mark of the Holy Spirit is power, love, and self-discipline or self-control. Any spirit that doesn’t have those marks is not the Holy Spirit. And Paul is contrasting with it a spirit of timidity. The King James Version calls it a spirit of fear.

This is one of the commonest spiritual problems of Christians. In my ministry, I’ve seen hundreds of Christians who needed to be delivered from this spirit of fear. Now these are wrong spirits. They’re not the Spirit of God. They’re not what we’re talking about under the heading of the fear of the Lord. How would we identify them? One of the key words, I believe, is torment.

In

“1 John 4:18,” John says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear because fear has torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

See, there’s a kind of fear which is tormenting, and that’s not from God. That’s evil. If I were to choose other words to identify this evil spirit of fear or timidity, I think the words would be something like these: unnatural, unreasonable, obsessive, binding, enslaving. Those are the marks of that kind of spirit of fear.

There are many, many manifestations. For instance, two things, to use long medical terms, claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Claustrophobia means fear of being shut up in a confined space. Many people experience that. My first wife suffered with it for years. Then one day, we identified it as an evil spirit. She claimed deliverance from the Lord, and after that, she was a different person. Before that, I always had a problem getting her into an elevator. She’d rather walk up four flights of stairs. After she was delivered from that spirit of fear, she was perfectly content to go up in the elevator. That’s an example.

Another example that’s often demonic is fear of the dark. We find people who are unable to sleep without a light. In most cases, that’s the result of occult involvement. And then another kind of demonic fear is fear of specific creatures: cats, birds, or bees. I’ve seen some remarkable cases. I knew one young woman who was just desperately afraid of bees. Her whole life was controlled by determination never to be near bees. She was a highly educated, very talented young woman. Gradually, this thing came to the light. She was delivered from it. Next day, she was eating lunch in front of an open window. A bee flew into the dining room, flew right around her head, and flew out again, and she didn’t budge. She realized she’d been delivered. Well, all those are kinds of fear that are not the fear of the Lord. They are demonic, and we have to distinguish them.