Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. That is the word, “Be anxious for nothing.” There is a great need for this. The next verse informs us, And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6, 7.
These two areas are where all the battles are lost or won. It is in your heart or in your mind that you can become anxious or draw back from something that God sets before you. You almost have to be dedicated to pray because when you start, know this: you are going to find an encounter somewhere along the line where Satan will try to bluff you out. He will try to threaten or intimidate you in every way he can.
When you’re moving toward a goal, it is from the pit, right out of Satan’s heart, to try to intimidate you, to threaten you with certain reprisal, with certain things that will happen to you if you hold onto the promises of God and insist on going through with it. Satan will do everything he can to put you in a position where you will draw back.
a battle on a very simple plane involved a sister in the Body. Every time she was moved by a sermon to make a dedication, Satan knew how to hit her, and she would draw back completely. He knew all he had to do was press a certain button—he knew where her fears were—and she would draw back.
After two or three years she said, “Even if I die, I am going to trust the Lord.” She broke through, and it wasn’t long before her whole life was changed. God gave her a husband and two beautiful children; everything has worked fine for her. But she would have had none of that; she would have been fearful of anything happening because she knew where her weaknesses were and that the enemy could push the button that would put her in a battle for her life.
It is true that prayers are answered by faith; you believe God and something happens. But while you’re praying for one thing, Satan knows how to hit something else that is a weak area, the place where the fears come up, and it wipes out the faith. But be anxious for nothing; refuse to be fearful about anything. In everything with prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God. Then there is a peace of God—God’s peace, it isn’t human; it is divine in its origin and its very nature—which guards (the Greek word means “referee,” like a referee in a prizefight), it referees your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. It keeps you from getting to the place where you can’t handle the thing in your mind or in your heart. It helps you to come into a faith you can walk in consistently.
I have been thinking about how Satan manages to disturb faith. First of all, we are constantly assaulted with the illusion that God and His promises are mutable—that they change, they vary. How Satan creates that illusion I don’t know. The day we understand that, we will have him beaten; we will have him in a corner.
You may get a promise from the Lord, and the next day or two everything happens to make you feel that the promise is the changeable thing, the thing that isn’t to be. Or, you may get a commission from the Lord, a promise or a prophecy, and in two or three days the whole thing looks completely different. However, nothing has changed. It is Satan’s trick to create an illusion that things have changed. He can highlight appearances that you accept until you would declare that yellow was green and blue was red, you see things differently—they look different than they did before.
On the other hand, Satan creates the illusion that certain things that are supposed to be mutable (changeable) are actually immutable (unchangeable) until a man will waver in his faith toward God. He will have complete confidence that not one thing is ever going to change in his life—that certain circumstances, relationships, assaulting personalities (in the spirit world or natural), or certain needs will ever change—they are going to remain exactly as they are; he is stuck with it the rest of his life. Yet the truth is that everything is in a state of flux and change.
Look back and consider: is your life the same now as it was a year ago? How many changes has the Lord made? You say, “Well, they are not fast enough to suit me.” That is where the enemy comes in. In your impatience he will convince you; he will use impatience to get you to believe a lie that nothing will ever change in your life. And he will use past failures, for you may have had a pattern: every time He gave you a promise, you drew back in fear so that nothing changed.
Have you stopped to think if you ever believed God consistently for thirty days, your life would be completely different? Can you point to thirty days in this walk that you’ve walked without wavering several times? It was just enough to wipe you out, then you start back up again. See? It gets to be an illusion. It is as if almost everyone is on an LSD trip when it comes to spiritual things. I have never taken LSD, but those who have say that there is a time factor—it seems like everything is slowed down. They can listen to a record for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes but it seems that everything slows down and they have an illusion of almost endlessness, unless it is a bad trip.
I think that Satan puts us on some kind of a trip until the things that we are undergoing seem interminable, that we are in them and can’t get out, and on and on we go and there is no end to them. But the sudden realization is how swiftly things are really moving. It is Satan who wars against us with an illusion of time and tries to convince us that there will never be any change, things are not going to be different, that we shall be in a situation forever.
“But,” you say, “I’ve been in it a couple of weeks now.” It hasn’t been quite that bad. “Well, I’ve been praying and seeking God and nothing has happened.” How many days have you been praying? “A couple of weeks, now.” Keep on, because they are going to change. When Satan wants to destroy faith he brings illusions and lies in so many different subtle ways. They are illusions out of the pit of hell. You may be moving right into the threshold of the greatest victory you have ever won, yet how the enemy would cause you to give up right at that moment if it were possible.
These are the problems of walking with faith, and the Lord says to be anxious for nothing. Don’t be afraid; don’t be anxious; don’t worry. Oh, how easy it is. I notice the minute that I’m on the right track, some distraction will come up that has nothing to do with my goal or objective, some haunting, disturbing little thing that worries away at me. Sometimes when I feel that the Lord is trying to do something and I must listen to it without the distraction of all the little sheep bleating and messing up the pasture, I will miss a few services to keep myself free for a while. Yet, I could be smitten with such guilt over that: “You know they have needs.” Yes, I know they have needs, but you know, the need is the same with all of us—to follow the will of the Lord undistractedly. We have to do it. And in that process our needs will be met. God will raise up ministries and He will see that they are met.
How are we going to cope with this problem of fear? It isn’t just fear of the negative forces that come against you; it is the fear of what you trigger off when you start to walk with God. You don’t want to take a swing at the devil for fear he will swing back. We always have this thing confused in our mind: “Well, the devil is a lot smarter than we are. He is shrewd and wise—he knows. In that perverted wisdom, look how many people he has destroyed.” I know that is what people think, although it may be unconscious—they may not even be aware that they are thinking that. But they are fearful that if they get into the battle, they are going to be hurt.
There has to be a dedication to the battle. According to the book of Ephesians, God’s pleasure, His whole purpose through the ages (it was a mystery hidden until He revealed it to Paul), was to manifest His wisdom through the Church to the principalities and powers. All of Satan’s wisdom and all of his shrewdness has come up against something that is just unbeatable, and that is the divine commission of Christ’s authority to you to move in.
You may not be very bright. “Well, I don’t know the source of it, but I’m getting hit—I don’t know who is doing it.” Don’t spook it—don’t use your imagination. Just say, “I stand in the authority of Jesus’ name and the authority that name represents. I submit to it with all my heart and I come against the powers of Satan in that name.” Authority is better than anything. I have to believe that. Authority is greater and better than wisdom. Why do I believe that? Because I know as I draw back from areas that the elders must move into, and let them move in, there are areas where they are doing the wrong thing. Sometimes I am angry, or sorrowful, or physically ill over it; for I have a burning desire that if a word is given, it be a word from God, not a word off the top of someone’s head, and I’ve seen how many times that has been missed.
You say, “Why don’t you do something about it?” I don’t have to. God has given them authority and if they don’t know one end from another, God will bless the authority He has committed and make it come out right; even if they have nothing but marbles between their ears, He will make it come out right.
Authority is greater than wisdom, and so I stand with divine order and I believe in it. If we have morons as elders and deacons and we lay hands on them, God can still do a perfect work in bringing forth a New Testament Church. He is not limited by the limitations of human intelligence or wisdom. That is why I’m pushing it, because I know it works. It is in divine order and I know if I keep my hands off, eventually they will all come into the wisdom of the Lord. They will all come into it.
We believe in that authority. I’ve done a lot of praying about this: will we have a word or the word? We must all strive to have the word of the Lord. Many of the elders have a word, but we are going to see what we can to move into the word. That is my job—to teach them and lead them and help them into it. I stand amazed that God is doing such a perfect thing through such imperfect channels. And who are the imperfect channels? All of us at this point. Our limitations are frightening, but they are going to change. I’m more determined about that than anything else. God has better things for me to walk in than what I’m walking in, and I’m going to believe it. I’m going to protest it.
I hope this causes your faith to rise. If you start to pray for something, don’t stop. You say, “Well, I get snowed out.” I know. I know how it happens: you really get determined to walk with God and everything looks just fine, and the next day the enemy throws something at you to keep you from praying. Keep pressing in. Are you discouraged with prayer? You can’t be. Press for the goal with all your heart. Sometimes it helps you not to let yourself think too much about your limitations; you will scare yourself to death. You’ll realize that you are walking out there way beyond your abilities, your knowledge, your understanding, your capacities—that you are out of your depth.
It takes a long time to really learn fears. They can be communicated; they can be transferred to you; they can be imparted by others. I have watched this: in a home where there has been uncertainty and confusion, wondering which way to go and what to do next, the children are affected. But when they are taken out of that situation and blessed they start changing, almost immediately; they begin to relax and be little children. It is a beautiful thing to watch. You can learn so much from studying a child. You learn the deadliness of fear, and you learn how you can convey faith instead of fear to people. I don’t know whether a child learns more from a wise parent or if the parent grows wiser by watching the child, but you learn.
We’re going to have a battle, but it is in the battles that we take new ground. If you’re afraid of the battle, where are you going to go? Are you going to withdraw to your own circumstances and problems, or can you press into the thing that God has for you, even if it is with a great deal of opposition? Put your confidence in the Lord. Will everything change? It will change. You say, “But I know myself. I’m too weak; I back off.” But there’s always that one moment you break through. I have seen it over and over again: people who have had a pattern of defeat can break it in an instant and walk in victory the rest of their lives. I believe in the power of God to change a person’s life. So we stand here and we believe. You say, “I tried and it didn’t work.” It will work the next time or the time after that. Get up and go after it.
“I don’t know which way to go. Every time I start something, everything happens.” That is a good sign. You can change things. In this walk, there is no such thing as a lock washer being on the whole mechanism. What is a lock washer? It is like an ordinary washer, but it is split so that when pressure is on it, it will hold the bolt steady; it locks, and it will not come off of its own accord. Circumstances are like that; it takes a little more force to finally break them loose than it would normally. The bolt would come off easily otherwise, but if it has a lock washer on it, it is going to stay there. That is the way your life is: your circumstances, your heredity, your reaction to environment—the whole pattern will not change much until you determine it is going to change and you set about crying unto the Lord, putting the pressure on the thing until it gives way. Soon it will change completely.
Do you want your life overhauled? Do you want God to do something for you? This is the way to do it: believe and put on the pressure in faith. No matter what opposition and resistance comes to keep it from changing, stay right with it, and it will change. You can believe God for it.
“There has to be that total dedication, an undeniable, fixed set of your heart and your own will that every obstacle, every circumstance, every adversity in a challenge to success. You can succeed because there is no failure in Christ; He will always clothe you and equip you for every circumstance and every situation. But you have to set your heart, your thinking, your confession, and your action to really get with it and say, ‘I’m going to succeed in this situation. It is literally to come down because I’m going to have faith that I’m going to change it.’ And it will change—it may take a few hours, sometimes a few months, but it will change—there is nothing that can stand before you.”
Faith is not something that floats around; you have to set it, you focus it on a thing. Your faith has to be set on a Person concerning a thing, concerning a circumstance. Set it on the Lord. David said, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed on Thee” (Psalms 57). Set it.
I felt such a burden to bring this word, for so many of the people need not just a blessing—they’re not just trying to survive, they need their faith built up because they need to prevail over all the powers of darkness. They need to break through in the things that are bothering them, the things that they have accepted as immutable and unchangeable. They can be changed. Anybody, anything, anyplace can be changed!