the power of positive thinking pt.3 - the mind

If you fear it you’ll will create or give it power by overreacting to it~ causing a more emotional or forcible response than is justified, thus reacting with unnecessary or inappropriate force, emotional display, or violence.

10 Overwhelming factors of fear:

#1 - Fear causes us to reduce the size of God and elevate the size and opinion of man.

#2 - Fear causes us to lead people in the wrong direction. (Remember when the Israelites wanted to GO BACK TO EGYPT and being slaves because they feared going into the land that God had promised them?)

#3 - Fear causes us to stay quiet when we should clearly speak up. (Mostly because many times we are OBSESSED with what others think about us, see Galatians 1:10)

#4 - Fear causes us to be passive about an issue that the Lord has clearly brought to our attention. (As Edmund Burke once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.”)

#5 - Fear causes us to seek consensus rather than really seeking the voice of the Lord.

#6 - Fear causes us to not engage the broken, the hurting, the misfits and the neglected because if we include them in our lives and actually invite them into our homes then it could get messy. (I’m so glad Jesus didn’t have that attitude…if He would have then I would have been screwed!)

#7 - Fear causes us to refuse to embrace change because we care way more about being comfortable than being conformed into the image of Christ.

#8 - Fear causes us to control things and take matters into our own hands rather than trusting the Lord and trusting others. (People who are control freaks really do fear when things don’t go their way! BUT…remember, control is the biggest illusion in the world.

#9 - Fear causes us to conceal sin and shame in our lives when God’s Word is so clear that we should ask others for help - James 5:16

#10 - Fear causes us to seek the easy decision rather than seeking the right one.

1 Peter 5:8 ESV - Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

2 Timothy 1:7 ESV - For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

1 John 4:18 ESV - There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

John 8:44 ESV - You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

James 4:7 ESV - Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.