Understanding The Spirit of Fear Through The Story of Job

ALL PRAISES TO THE MOST HIGH GOD.

This whole week the The Most High has been pressing on my spirit to pray, read and meditate on the issue of fear. For some reason the Book of Job kept on reverberating in my mind so I thought it would be a good idea to share some key insights on fear from this story.

A lot of people tend to misunderstand what The Most High was trying to teach us through the story of Job. 

In the book of Job we are told of a certain man from the land of Uz who was "perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil" (JOB 1 verse 1) whom Most High had blessed with so much wealth. 

Now we are given details of the discussion that The Most High had with Satan in which The Most High essentially brandished Job to Satan as "a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, escheweth evil." Despite his unabating reverence to God, The Most High still gave permission to Satan to afflict all forms of suffering on Job from striking his body with boils, killing his children and taking away his livestock (See Chapters 1 and 2). 

Now a lot of people seem to think that Job had no role to play in his affliction, but this is a gross misunderstanding of Job's demise. 

JOB'S FEAR

After Job is afflicted and starts languishing, he admits that "for the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me" (JOB 3 VERSE 25).

Now what is it that he feared?

Job was tormented by the spirit of the fear of losing his family, particularly his children as well as losing his riches. This is evident in how he would continuously offer a sacrifice to God every time that he suspected that his children had offended The Most High ( JOB 1 verse 5). 

I want you to understand something, even though Job was a diligent servant of  the High, his obedience did not disarm him from his fears. By living in constant fear Job opened a portal to be afflicted by the spirit of fear.

SPIRIT OF FEAR V DOMINION

See, the Bible says that God has not "given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 TIMOTHY 1 verse 7).  From this assurance we should understand that fear is a spirit which consequently mean that when dealing with fear we are dealing with the spiritual realm. From this verse we can also understand that the spirit that God has given us is one that commands dominion, mental stability (free from worry and mental torment) and compassion. 

When the Bible says God has given us the spirit of power what is it referring to?. 

Well in the book of LUKE 10 verse 19 we are told that we have been given " power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy ; and nothing shall by any means hurt you."  However we are warned in the book of LUKE 10 verse 20 that we should not waste too much time rejoicing in the fact that "the spirits are subject unto you ; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." 

Now from this we can see that SPIRITS ARE SUBJECT TO US. This goes back to the fact that God gave us dominion from the very inception (GENESIS 1 verse 28). The subject of dominion is one I will explore later on because it ties into a lot of issues dealing with the spiritual realm. 

Now how do we exercise the dominion and power that we have been given by The Most High in order to repel against being tormented by the spirit of fear? 

Well we do this by walking in unwavering faith.  It is not enough to be diligent in fearing God and observing his instructions, one must also have enough faith in him to dismantle any fears that might seek to torment them. The scripture make it clear that it is impossible to please God without faith.

CONCLUSION

There are so many people who are committed in the things of The Most High, they help the poor, they give generous offering at Church and yet they are gripped by certain fears. This does not mean that they are bad people, this simply means that they have certain areas of their lives that they do not trust God with and have unintendedly opened a portal for the spirit of fear to affect them. 

God willingly, I will explain in subsequent posts on the idea of coming into agreement with spirits. See, because God has given us dominion over all things including the spirits in the spiritual realm, they can only exercise dominion over your life if you come into agreement (covenant) with them (expressly or tacitly). So for example if you violate the principle that death and life lies in the power of the tongue ( Proverbs 18 verse 21) by constantly expressing how much you fear not finding a compatible partner or dying prematurely, what you are doing is possibly inviting those fears to manifest from the spiritual realm into your physical reality. 

So yes, Job was a loyal servant of The Most High God but he violated an important spiritual protocol by allowing the spirit of fear to have such an overwhelming grip over his life. Therefore, we need to constantly pray for God to deliver us from the spirit of fear but usher our spirits to move in faith in his plans and will.