About ten years ago, God challenged me while I was praying for a family member. He said, “Wendy, you are not praying the prayer of faith, you are praying a prayer of fear.” He began to show me that my “problem was not the actual problem,” but my fear was the bigger issue. He revealed to me that I could not defeat anything as long as I prayed from under a spirit of fear. Before I could pray effectively for any situation, I must master fear so I could pray from a place of faith and rest.
Once I recognized my real battleground, I began to spend time defeating the real enemy and saw far greater results from my prayer life. The real battle was to defeat fear and then I could defeat any other enemy with the weapon of peace (“And the God of Peace shall soon crush satan under our feet,” (Romans 16:20)).
The enemy tries to get us to fight him on his turf, called fear. It gives him the “home team advantage.” God desires us to fight from the place of peace and rest, which gives us the “home team” advantage. Fear is faith in the power of the enemy! It is faith in the inferior realm. When we pray from the perspective that Satan has more power than God to influence people and circumstances, then we are praying on Satan’s turf. It is essential to believe in the supernatural working and goodness of our God. We must become convinced in the superior power of God to influence people and circumstances.
I now use fear as a signpost of a wrong belief system, or a spirit at work. God began to show me areas where my belief system or doctrine did not line up with the character or promises of God. Now I question every doctrine that keeps me in fear or hopelessness. Once I realized that fear is usually a spirit, I knew I could not tolerate it. It was the enemy. The battle wasn’t with what I was afraid of or afraid about – it was fear itself. Perfect love casts out all fear. I now take that literally!
Once you recognize fear as a root issue, I encourage you to do the following:
Renounce a spirit of fear and repent
Command it to go
Read and feed on the faithfulness, goodness, and power of God through Scriptures on God’s promises, listening to testimonies, worshipping, and meditating on Him.
Ask, “Is my God too small?”
Declare war on fear!