Cousins Fear and Faith

    

    You know, if you are not wise with the Word, you can use it wrongly.  You can use it to strengthen your Spirit, or, you can use it to strengthen your old flesh.  If we mind the things of the flesh, even with supporting Bible verses, we are in trouble.  We are not to mind the things of the flesh but the things of the Spirit.  It actually takes a bit of wisdom, especially in preaching, not to mind the things of the flesh with our preaching.  Without wisdom, without close leadership of the Holy Ghost, the things we are preaching may well be appealing to the flesh in some of those we are preaching to and doing them harm   For example, when we preach about earthly blessings we may be appealing to greed in people to have "stuff".  Or, preach the prosperity message and appeal to the greed for riches that so many  have.  We can preach about God supplying all our needs and appeal to the terrible fear some have of being not having enough.  Sometimes the message of healing appeals to the fear people have of dying.  They grab hold of it, not because they have faith in the will of God to heal, but because they are scared to death of dying, or even being sick.   In such an instance, what motivates the listener is really not faith at all, but fear.

    Faith and fear could be first cousins, if such were possible.  In some ways, they are so alike. They are both deep inward convictions that motivate and drive us in life.  Sometimes they may seem like the same thing, speaking the same thing, but they are not.   God has not give us a spirit of fear but He has given us faith, or a sound mind.  When we confuse the two, failure follows.  Then, after failure usually comes a change in doctrine or belief.   Since something didn't work, as we supposed it was going to, so we assume it was all wrong. And then, more failure follows that.  Maybe it was wrong,  but then maybe we weren't operating in faith at all, but fear, or greed or some other earthly human emotion that we thought was faith.

   When it comes to healing, we are fighting a battle of death - incipient death, or death hanging over us or death threatened.  That is the battle.  When we are sick, we must rise up with the boldness of a lion and resist it with everything within us, but not with fear. Fear enlarges the power of the enemy.  With poverty, we must not fight that fight because we are afraid of doing without but because we know it is God's will that we prosper.  If we don't prosper, then we learn to be content in whatever state we are in, we learn how to be abased.  Those are the words of Paul, who knew both how to abound and how to be abased.

     Maturing as a believer means we are constantly vigilant about what is behind our beliefs.  Sometimes flesh will slip in where we thought there was faith.  We must always be checking our motives, on the lookout for faith substitutes such as greed, or fear, or ambition or insecurity.  Faith is basically wanting, desiring, having the same deep convictions as does God, about matters.   A few simple question may make it clear where you are in this; "Do I want the same thing God wants?  Do I want it because He wants it?"