Fear Is A Liar

And the children of Israel said to them, “Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

(Exodus 16:3)

 

There is a song by Zach Williams called Fear Is A Liar. It speaks of fear telling us many different things such as:

How many times have we heard these words and more? We aren’t good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, thin enough, lovable enough and no one will listen to us. We aren’t accepted, appreciated, we will fail, we will never change, etc.

The enemy has a way of casting fear and doubt into our lives so we will never progress forward and be what Jesus has called us to be. He fears if we know the truth, we will become spiritually powerful and overcome our strongholds which means he will have no more control over us.

Fear is a stumbling block for many people. People fear to do the right thing or speaking the truth because they worry what others will think or say. People fear moving out of their comfort zone because they worry about failure or how they will be seen. Fear can cause us to make incorrect decisions because of the worry that we will go against the grain and come into opposition. Fear can even cause us to stay in a bad situation either because our lives are threatened or we don’t know what we will do or where we will go once we are away from the danger. In other words, how will we survive.

In the Exodus scripture, God had heard the Israelites cries for help as we see in Exodus 3:7-10:

And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

God was concerned for His children. Why were they oppressed in the first place? We can find it in Exodus 1:8-14. A new king in Egypt had risen up. He observed the size of the Israelites compared to his people and realized there were more of them than there were Egyptians. He realized they were mightier than the Egyptians and this caused him fear. He was afraid they would multiply, join the enemies of the Egyptians in the event of war and take over his territory so he told his people they will deal shrewdly with the Israelites. They put taskmasters over them to afflict them with burdens. Surprisingly the opposite happened. The more they afflicted the Israelites, the more they grew and now the Egyptians were in dread of the children of Israel. This means they were in greater fear than before. So now along with the afflictions, they became harder on them in their service to the Egyptians. Vs 14 states “they made their lives bitter with hard bondage – in mortar, brick and in all manner of service in the field.” They made it worse for them in every area of service.

So, we see that the Israelites were put in bondage due to the fear of a king. He felt by treating them harshly and putting more pressure on them, it would keep them in line but it only made them multiply. In the process of time that the king of Egypt died, the Israelites began to groan and cry out because of their bondage, so God heard their cries and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, looked upon the children of Israel and acknowledged them.

If the King of Egypt had been a follower of God and trusted in Him, He wouldn’t have had to fear. If he would have treated the Israelites in a different manner, He may not have had to worry about them. But fear took hold of his heart and he felt he had to figure out a way to control them and prevent them from rising up and joining forces with his enemies if a war broke out. Fear can cause us to make wrong choices that can affect many people. This king feared something would be taken away from him…his power, his authority, his land, his people, his position, so he reacted shrewdly in harshness which caused great distress amongst the people instead of a secure environment. In other words, he took matters into his own hands under the assumption of fear that something “might” happen.

Fast forward to the Israelites in the desert. They became disgruntled and fearful and began to complain because they feared they were being led out only to die in the desert from hunger. They began to look back at their days of being in Egypt, a place of bondage and harshness, and thought it was better because they had pots of meat and bread that filled their stomachs and never had to worry about being hungry. The options weighed were be under oppression but not be hungry or be in freedom but be a little hungry. They didn’t stop to think that the God who would lead them out of the oppression would also provide for their every need which includes food. They felt their stomachs growl and because they didn’t have anything with them to feed themselves, they became fearful of not eating at all and dying in the desert.

How does this apply today? When we come to Christ, Jesus frees us from the bondage Satan had us under. But we must go through the desert. The desert is a dry place. It’s hot, there are dangerous critters, it can be lonely, and sometimes we get a bit hungry. But this doesn’t mean God has deserted us. It just means He is teaching us to rely on Him. The desert is a place of learning, building spiritual strength and where we see the true glory of God. Whatever we struggle with, God will walk us through it but it isn’t always going to be easy and painless. That’s why when we are trying to overcome something we have struggled with for so long, it may hurt a bit. If we have financial issues, God may be breaking us of something which means we must learn to rely on Him for our every need until we learn how to utilize finances properly. This means we may only have enough for the needs but not the wants. We are learning discipline and self-control. If we have issues with rejection, maybe we will face rejection a little bit more in order to turn our eyes to God and surrender it to Him and realize that He won’t reject us. The more we surrender to God the more He takes from us, cleaning us out and making us spiritually stronger. If we struggle with food, we may feel a little more hungry while trying to have self-control over how much we eat. This means we must get even closer to God, surrender the hunger pains and trust in the words of God in Deuteronomy 8:3:

So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.

He will teach us self-control if we allow him too and how to choose the right things that will bring good health and healing both spiritually and physically. He teaches us to reach for Him instead of the things that bring us a temporary comfort such as alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, etc.

We must realize that if God brings us to a place in the desert where the walk is a bit difficult, He’s not going to leave us there. He’s going to provide for our every need. We don’t have to fear and try to take matters into our own hands and do what we think is best. We seek the Lord and pray for his guidance to see what He wants us to do or to give us strength to simply stand firm until the situation is over. Sometimes we will have to do something and sometimes we simply have to wait upon Him.

When we listen to fear, it will lie to us every time. It always speaks opposite of the Word of God. The next time fear begins to speak to you, cut it off. Go to the Bible and declare the opposite of what fear is trying to say to you and do as James 4:7 tells us:

“Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

Remember, the enemy fears God’s children rising up and overcoming the strongholds he’s worked so hard to chain us up in. He knows what God has planned for us and the work He calls us to do and will throw every obstacle in our path to lead us away from God and his plan for us. But we must remember that Jesus is our savior and is more powerful than the enemy. He has unlocked the door to the jail cell we were in and it is our choice to walk out of that cell. The enemy will fight to keep us in it and then once we are out he will fight to put us back in that cell. But when we become closer to Christ, nourish ourselves with His word and exercise the word by applying it, we will become stronger and will be able to live in true freedom. We must not be lured back through our fleshly desires.

The choice is ours to make. Appreciate what God has given to us and that although we may feel some pain in the desert, the end result is a permanent healing. Or give in to our flesh and go back to our old ways which brings temporary comfort and pleasure but a lifetime of bondage.