Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 168
TRANSCRIPT
Do you wake up in the morning and worry about what is going to happen that day? Or do you find it hard to sleep at night due to a nagging sense of dread about something you did or did not do? Does an unhealthy sense of fear and anxiety have control over you? In this podcast I want to talk about how to dismantle a stronghold of fear and anxiety.
I’m Lee Whitman and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. To be completely vulnerable, the motivation for this podcast comes from something that is happening in my own life. I was unable to sleep the other night, and it made me mad enough to confront this stronghold in my life. And I am using that anger at the enemy for causing me this turmoil as motivation to help you not struggle with fear and anxiety.
Fear comes in many shapes and sizes. A very common fear is the fear of the future. It is one of the main ways the enemy attacks people to keep them from living in the peace that Jesus came to give us. The Apostle Paul addresses this fear in today’s verse found in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 when he says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;” What does it mean to cast down imaginations? I think the imaginations are those “what ifs” of life. What if I lose my job? What if this lump is cancer? What if my child gets in a car accident? And many other what ifs. This is a form of spiritual warfare. The enemy uses fear and anxiety to cause us to imagine what might happen, and it is almost always the worst things that might happen. The truth is that the “what ifs” that we stress over rarely come to pass. But they certainly cause us to lose our peace, and along the way lose our sleep.
I asked my friend Larry if I could share his story. Larry received a letter the other day from his brother that made some very unfair and untrue accusations about him. The letter also was unjustly threatening part of his inheritance from his parents’ estate. His brother is the executor of his parents’ estate, and he was threatening Larry that he was going to withhold part of his inheritance. The only way Larry could get his brother to fulfill his role as the executor was to take him to court, which would cost Larry a lot of money for a lawyer. Larry was being eaten up by fear, so he came to RTF for ministry. It was not that Larry did not have a legitimate concern for the future of his inheritance, but his legitimate concern had been overtaken by the generational iniquity of fear, causing Larry to lose his peace. As the saying goes, Larry’s brother was living rent free in Larry’s head.
Chester and Betsy have a wonderful teaching on how Shame leads to Fear, and Fear leads to Control. We have previously recorded two podcasts on how Shame operates in our lives. If you have not listened to them, I would encourage you to go to our website at restoringthefoundations.org and click on the Resources tab at the top of the page. That will show a dropdown for Podcast. There you will find a library of all of our Hope Healing and Freedom Podcasts, including the two podcasts on Shame. I do not want to focus on the Shame since we have covered that in the two previous podcasts. I want to focus on how Fear can affect us and how we can dismantle this stronghold in our lives.
Previous Podcasts on Shame
If you do not struggle with fear and anxiety, I consider you to be very blessed because many Christians do struggle with a battle of fear and anxiety. That is why God had Paul write the verses in 2 Corinthians 10 that we just looked at. In good RTF fashion, we start dismantling this stronghold by dealing with the family baggage we inherit from our ancestors. The generational iniquity of fear is a very common inheritance. Let me stop and talk about what I mean by generational iniquity. The word iniquity comes from the Hebrew word “avon” (עָוֹן) which means to be bent toward something. It is a moral twisting of the character from God’s straight and righteous path. It refers to the inner disposition or character of the sinful act, the heart tendency, rather than just the external act itself. It is the propensity to sin that is in your bloodline. This iniquity puts pressure on the following generations to walk in the same sins as their ancestors.
The Apostle Paul describes this propensity to sin that he encountered in his own life in Romans 7:14-19. “For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold into bondage to sin.For I do not understand what I am doing; for I am not practicing what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate. However, if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, that the Law is good. But now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me.” Paul says that there is something working in him that is not the real Paul, who is the Child of God. It is “sin” that dwells in him. That is what this propensity to sin looks like. It pushes the child of God towards sin, yet it is not the real child of God.
I have told my story about being addicted to pornography many times on this podcast. I was a sincere believer in Jesus; in fact I was a pastor during this time leading others into a deeper relationship with Christ. Yet I was constantly being pushed back into this horrible sin. I hated it. I repented of it more times than I can count, but I continued to return to it. Why? I think it was this generational iniquity that we are talking about. I inherited sexual sin in my blood line from my ancestors that no amount of repentance for my behavior will eliminate. I didn’t know about applying the blood of Jesus to my generational iniquity in order for it to be removed.
The same thing is true of the generational iniquity of fear. Larry had inherited a generational iniquity of fear from his ancestors that became entangled with this very real concern over his inheritance and sent Larry into full blown fear. To set him free from this struggle we began by applying the blood of Jesus to the iniquity of fear. The fear manifested itself in several different ways, such as fear of the future, fear of being out of control, fear of financial insufficiency, so we applied the blood of Jesus to each one of those as well. The iniquity operates as a family. Fear is the big dog, but there are smaller dogs that are attached to the big dog. After breaking each of these iniquities, we had Larry ask Father God what blessings He wanted to give Larry in exchange for the iniquity. God told Larry that He was first of all restoring his peace. Then He said that He, Father God, had Larry’s future in His hands.
The next thing that must be dealt with to have complete freedom are the lies that are connected to this fear. The lies are used by the enemy to hold the fear in place. The big lie that Larry believed was that his brother had control over his future. One of the most important steps in breaking lies is to come out of agreement with the lie. When we are believing a lie, we are making a contract with the enemy that basically says, “Satan, I believe you. God, I don’t believe You.” We would never make that contract on purpose, but when we believe a lie, that is exactly what we are doing. So, it is vital that we come out of agreement with the enemy, that we break our contract with the kingdom of darkness, and that we command any demons using that lie to oppress us to leave, before we go to God and ask Him for His truth. Too often we try to ask God for His truth while we are still holding onto the lie. It is difficult, if not impossible, to hold onto a lie and accept the truth at the same time.
We walked Larry through the steps to come out of agreement with the lie, and then we had him ask God for His truth. Father God told Larry, “I alone hold your future. You can trust Me with your inheritance and with your brother. Your brother only has the amount of control that you give him.” Larry almost changed right before our eyes. He began to return to experiencing the peace of God almost instantly.
Then we had Larry ask The Holy Spirit to take him to a memory that He wanted to bring healing to. As Larry was waiting on the Lord to show him a memory, he looked up at us and said, “This can’t be the right memory because it is so insignificant.” But he was willing to go to that memory. This memory happened just five years ago. In it he and his father were talking, and his dad made almost an offhand comment that, “You can always trust your brother.” When Larry asked God what He wanted him to see in this memory, he realized that he was angry with his father for telling him he could always trust his brother when in fact his brother was not trustworthy. When Larry gave that anger and the associated hurt to Jesus, Jesus took the negative feelings and crushed them in His hand. Larry instantly began to realize that his dad desired his brother to be trustworthy, but he actually was untrustworthy. As Larry’s heart was healed, he found he was able to be at peace with his father, and he realized why he had been holding his brother to a standard he was not capable of fulfilling.
The last part of RTF ministry is to kick out the demon of fear along with all of the other demons that were associated with fear, like fear of the future and all of the other smaller dogs, as I call them. Larry left the ministry time a new man. No longer did his legitimate concern over his inheritance cause him to be overwhelmed with fear. No longer is the lie he believed controlling his life. And no longer is Larry struggling with the words his father spoke to him about his brother.
People that struggle with fear are not always able to identify the lies they believe about fear. The best way to find the lie is to ask yourself when the fear gets stirred up, what is the fear saying? For example, the person who is struggling with fear about a health diagnosis, the fear will usually tell you the worst. “You are going to be diagnosed with cancer, and you will die a slow painful death.” Or when you are concerned about your finances, fear will say that you are not going to have enough money, and you will end up living on the street eating out of trash cans. Whatever the fear is, try doing this. When you are up in the middle of the night worrying about something, ask yourself what the fear is saying to you. Then take what the fear is saying to God and ask Him if that is true. Then ask Him what He wants you to know about that situation.
Fear is not our friend. It is a tool used by the enemy to steal from you. Remember 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” When fear comes knocking at your mind’s door, do not open the door. And if you open the door, get with an RTF minister and kick it out of your life.
PRAYER
Father God thank You that fear is not our inheritance, but rather You give us peace and joy. Would you help us see what fear is saying to each one of us. In these days of turmoil and uncertainty, we can count on You to give us everything we need to live this life. Thank You Father God. I declare that you are a good, good, Father.