Creflo Dollar - How to Defeat Fear - Part 3
2 Timothy 1 and verse 7. Let's read it out loud together. "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind". Now it's, pretty clear here you know, that, you know, fear is more than a figment of our imagination or something that can be overcome merely by exercising willpower. The world would have us to believe that it is a normal part of life, that fear is a normal part of life. However, there is nothing natural or normal about fear, and it should never be tolerated on any level. Did you hear what I just said? Fear should not be tolerated on any level. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that fear is a cancer that's affecting people from all walks of life. It is a spiritual force that is designed by the enemy to steal, to kill and to destroy.
One of the things we looked at last week was the fact that, you know, God hath not given us the spirit of fear. So stop making it a part of, you know, don't look at it as, well fear is normal and fear is natural because the day you, you know, conclude that, you know, fear is okay, then that's the day you will tolerate it. And fear will come in on what I see as a innocent level, you know, the fear of heights, the fear of space and all that kind of stuff, only to get a foothold in there and begin to affect you on greater levels. So you've gotta be careful not to in your mind think it's natural and that it is normal and then you end up tolerating fear because when you tolerate fear, Satan now has a foothold into your life. He has a foothold in your life.
Somebody says well, you know, there's nothing wrong with a little fear, that's just like saying there's nothing wrong with a little adultery or a little murder. No, you've got to recognize how the enemy operates, just trying to get just a little foothold in there and then later on take advantage of what you open your life to, and then it graduates and begins to torment you. Fear is the faith of the devil. Pick the phone up and tell 'em you're busy right now. Fear is the faith of the devil. Now, what do I mean by that? God needs faith, the kingdom of God operates by faith and without faith, what Jesus has made available, it won't come to pass.
See, we're saved by grace, but we get it through faith. Everything in the kingdom of God operates by faith, okay? And so what we understand is that, I'll teach this morning if we get to it, we're gonna talk about the laws of reciprocals. That faith has a reciprocal, that's an inversion. A direct opposite. North and South, there are directions, on the compass, but they're opposites of one another. And so like faith operates for us that believe God to turn on the life cycle, the opposite or the reciprocal of faith is fear. And so like God needs faith in order to bring his Word to pass, Satan needs fear in order to bring his word to pass.
When you operate in fear and you begin to mature in fear, you turn on the death cycle, and things start with a small, small seed, eventually leading up to destruction. When you operate in faith, it turns on the life cycle. You don't see the promises of God right away, but if you'll stick with it, then it begins to manifest. So there is a battle. Satan needs you to operate in fear. He cannot have any success in disrupting your life, if you don't maintain a foundation of fear in your life. Somehow some way, there's got to be fear to operate in your life. And so this is very important because there are a lot of things that derive out of fear. For example, please understand this. If you wanna practically look at fear for the Christian and see what it's trying to do to Christian people, fear is, for a Christian, fear is like, I'm trying to get you to not believe that what God promised will come to pass.
The number one fear for Christian people is you are afraid that what God promised won't happen. You're afraid when he says, "By his stripes you're healed," that you're not really gonna be healed. You're afraid that when he says, "Sow a seed, reap a harvest," it won't happen. And so if you'll notice, the enemy is saying, all right what I'm gonna do is, you may not even be aware of it, but I'm gonna get you to operate in fear and ultimately what it says is, you don't believe what God promised will happen.
Now, think about that. Think about the number of times in your life, maybe it was protection, maybe it was favor, maybe it was something that you were standing on, and maybe it didn't happen when you wanted it or how you wanted it, and now the next go around, you hesitate a little bit, watch this, you doubt a little bit based on what didn't happened before. And then as a result of it, now fear has got a foothold in there and you ultimately don't believe what God promised will come to pass. So what happens? At this particular point, you go to self, you look at self, you're going to self-preservation. Since I don't believe what God promised in his Word, then I'm gonna have to work it out myself. Self-preservation is based in fear. You look at selfish things, you look at how you can now do it. Man, the world's full of that. How you can do it.
God is no longer valued anymore, because of some experience you had that you didn't understand why it turned out that way, and how about just trusting God? How about maybe it wasn't time for a certain thing to happen right now? And how about God knows about your life better than you do? He knows what's down the street around the corner, behind the building, and you're immediately getting upset because you rubbed on the genie lamp and the genie didn't give you your three wishes. That's not how this operates, it's a relationship with God. Look at this, talking about turning to self. James 3 and verse 16, if you will. Let's look at it at the King James and the New Living Translation right quick and then we'll get into this. You know in these sermons, I'm learning how to take my time to make sure that the Holy Spirit can infuse things that I didn't study. That he can infuse things that I wasn't playing on going that way.
So I got my notes and all of that, but you know, we'll get to it when we get to it. If we can tap into the Holy Ghost, then that's what we want. I want a Word from the law, the Lord, excuse me. All right, he says, "For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work". Somebody says, "Well, what does that have to do with fear"? Look at this in the New Living Translation now. Same, James chapter 3:16. He says, "For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition," wherever there's jealousy and selfish ambition, "There you will find disorder and evil of every kind". Anything that's based in selfishness, is rooted in fear. Selfishness is fear based.
You don't trust God to preserve you, so you move out of fear into self-preservation. You don't trust God to provide for you, so then a man will go steal. You don't trust God for a lot of things and what happens is, when you don't trust God for it, then all of a sudden you are afraid to trust God, you are afraid to believe that promise can come to pass, and you turn towards self-preservation. But see here's the problem. Wherever there is selfish ambition, you're gonna find jealousy, he says, you will find disorder, you will find evil of every kind and all of that is based in fear. It's based in fear. The number of wickedness and the evil things we see in the earth right now, it's fear based and Satan's trying his best to cover it up. He doesn't want you to see very clearly that this is based in fear.
You know, he wants us to just stay, fear is defined fright. "Oh, you made me afraid". There are lots of things that are based in fear. You know, anger is based in fear. When you get angry and start cussing folks out, you know, you said you buried the book of cuss when you got born again, and somebody made you mad and you went outside in the back and dug up the book of cuss and you turned to page 666, that's fear based. That's based in fear. I need you to think about the number of things you might be yielding yourself to, that are rooted and based in fear. Ultimately it says, I don't believe God. I am now, I am placing a greater value on what I can do for myself, than what God can do for me. It's all based in fear.
I was amazed to see that anger was based in fear. I just thought I had an anger problem, and now I found out I had a fear problem. Anger was just expressing my fear. It's based in fear. There are lots of things you're doing that's based in fear. You'll tolerate a toxic relationship because you are afraid that that might be the only person that you'll ever have a potential of marrying. So you'll put up stuff that if you were in faith, you wouldn't put up with. But fear allows you to put up with a lot of toxicity in your life, a lot of junk that you wouldn't put up with if you've trusted God. You know, you don't, your identity is under attack, you don't believe that you're righteous, you don't believe you're forgiven, you don't believe that you are who God says you are, and so I'm afraid, therefore, I'll choose these other things and make it even more toxic.
Honey, let me tell you something, whoever you are afraid to stop dating, believe me he or she is not the only one. You just fear they're the only one, he or she are not the only one. Now that means you men you can't be afraid to approach people and keep going, but a lot of, a lot men are afraid to approach women because they can't, they can't you know, get over the rejection and the hurt they had from the last one and so what you've done, you've opened, you've allowed a door of fear to come in and now fear is governing me. Well, "I'm scared". Now, you're fearful. You're afraid of rejection, you're afraid of, you know, I became vulnerable and the vulnerability hurt me and I don't wanna do that no more, so every time you look at a woman, if she remind you a little of the one that hurt you, you back up, you ease in too slow, by the time you get there, she married.
All right, I'll leave y'all alone. In essence what we're looking at here is, fear is the foundation of darkness. And when I use darkness it is, it's when you can't see and understand the light of God's Word. You're living life in darkness, and you just can't figure it out. You're in a toxic relationship, but you just can't see it. You don't know what to do about it, you just feel bad. You can believe God, but you just can't see how you can believe God. God can change everything about you, but you're in darkness. You don't know how, you don't know, you have no word, you stop going to church once you, you got old enough to leave grandmamma and your mama and you're in darkness. You think you are involved in intelligent movement in your life and you're dark. All you're doing is paying attention to what everybody else is doing, and you think that's light and enlightenment.
So you hang around people, you know, somebody says well, "If you wanna be successful, hang around successful people". Ah be careful about that. Be careful about that. You better make sure that their success is based in the light and not based in darkness. Are you listening to what I'm saying? And the world's dark. Go to Isaiah 60 real quick. I haven't got started, I gotta hurry and get started. Isaiah 60. Now, this whole chapter 60 is talking about the Jewish people returning back to their home and that's taken place as the prophecy, but I think I'm allowed to see some prophetic things in this verse 3, in these first 3 verses. Verse 1 says, Isaiah 60 verse1. "Arise, shine; for thy light is come".
When I use the word light here, I'm talking about a clear understanding and awareness of God's Word and way. When I use the word darkness here, I'm talking about a misunderstanding or blindness concerning God's Word and way. And I tell you one of the biggest sins we can have in our life is spiritual blindness. I just can't see, I hear what you're saying, but I don't believe it, so I'm going all the way through with this and then when I'm beat up, messed up and just go through all of the stuff, I sit back and wonder, why did I not listen to the light? You were dark, you were afraid and fear kept you there. It kept the darkness there, but it kept you there as well.
Fear works very hard to maintain darkness over your life so you can't see. He don't want you to see. He talks about the light of the gospel being hid, so you can stay in darkness, so that light won't shine under you. Satan's working real hard to get you and keep you in a position where you don't see, where you don't understand even where churches are concerned. If you don't get to go to the right church, you'll be going to church thinking that suffices and it doesn't. You go to church and you're still dark. You're still in darkness. You don't know how to live, you don't know how to pray, you don't know how to walk in love, you don't know how to live together, you don't know nothing.
You know about Shadrach, Meshach and A-baaad-Negro, that's all you know, but you don't know, you don't know how to live from day to day, and you don't know how to fight the devil, when he starts fighting you in your mind. There's a war going on. Then the war is to keep you dark, to keep you where you're not enlightened. You go get a degree and now you think you're smarter than God, and you get some light from the Word and the Word will still outdo everything you learned in your degree. It's the wisdom of God. Knowledge is one thing, but wisdom is how to use knowledge. Hallelujah. In other words God's not just gonna tell you two plus two equals four, what God's gonna do is he gonna show you how it worked.
God gonna show you what to do when your wife ain't talking to you and you don't know what you did. God will show you what to do in the middle of an assignment you got on the job, but you've never done it before, but you believe you got the equipment on the inside to do it, and then the Lord starts talking to you, and then they wanna promote you again. Honey, there's coming a time in the life of wise people where you're gonna be able to go in and state your salary and they'll give you exactly what you say you wanna pay for. The Word is the wisdom of God. The Word is the enlightenment that'll show you what to do when you don't know what to do.
How many times you've been in a situation you didn't know what to do, and the light of God shined and all of a sudden you knew exactly what to do? This is what's gonna cause you to stand out. You're gonna operate on a level of wisdom that you can't get through a degree. Ain't nothing wrong with the degree, but in all your getting, get understanding and get some wisdom. Get the degree, but make sure you get God with your degree, amen. "Well, I have my BS, and I have my Master's, and I have my PhD," you better get that born again degree. That word wisdom degree. I'm a WW. What's that? I got the Word and wisdom, but you can't... they go together. Are y'all following what I'm saying?
So the world's dark. You know what, you know, when you can realize that the world is really, really dark? It's when they don't think they're in darkness. It's when the light shines and they would rather have the darkness instead of the light. I'll show you that in the coming weeks, that's the scripture. God says, "It's coming a time, when I will present the light and they will decide, no, I want the darkness". We're there. This is not coming, we are there. And Satan's doing everything he can cause he knows his times is short and he knows Jesus is coming back, and he knows he doesn't have long. For some reason he keeps telling himself because he's dark, he keeps telling himself he can win.
And the Bible says, and God laugh he looks at him and he laughs. It's like, there's no way you're gonna ever be able to win. Just like that and he can be over with it and it will be. I don't want to be in darkness and then realize how much I could have lived. Like, you know, some people they get married the spouse goes on and then tradition and religion says, you can't get married anymore, you'll dishonor your husband or you'll dishonor your wife they're dead. You should go hunting that day.
The Bible says, "Till death do us part," so when death do you part go find another part and learn how to live your life. Because God does not congratulate you for maintaining the pain for the rest of your life. God wants you to learn how to live, he wants you happy. He wants you happy. Now, if you're satisfied with staying single all the rest of your life, praise the Lord. But I know if something happened to me, I know what Taffi is gonna do, sell everything, go on the trip, marry somebody. She gonna be like "He dead". And I told her, I said, if there's any vision that hadn't come to pass, don't try to finish something that God told me, I'm dead.
Now you got to go before God and ask him what he wants you to do. If I started the building and I'm not around to finish it, tear down, do what God tell you to do. We have a wrong perspective on that kind of stuff. Now see, my wife kind of scared me, she says, "Now, if you get married again, I'm gonna haunt both of y'all". And I believe her, so I say, "If you do that, I'm gonna bury you in the backyard, above ground so I can come and check in on you every now and then make sure you"... You know what God wants more than anything? He wants you to enjoy your life. Enjoy it, be happy.
Listen, when people go home to be with the Lord, you may have to rearrange some things, you're used to doing this one thing, now you got to, you got to figure out how to fill that spot. How do I fill that time? What do I do with this situation? But don't just, sit and rot away waiting to die, thinking it's honorable, 'cause somebody told you, "You can't get married no more ever again and if you do people gonna be mad at you". Forget the people, they got somebody, but you upset with me, 'cause I decided I'm gonna get married again.? Mm, he ought to be ashamed of himself, see you're in the dark. The marriage covenant is over at death. I can go hunting.