Satan has many strategies but only one objective. His objective is to separate man from God by any means possible so that we don't have access to the wisdom and power we need to be overcomers. To accomplish his objective, he uses strategies such as condemnation, worry, unforgiveness, bitterness, depression, addictions, doubts etc...

One of his major strategies to separate us from God is fear. To fear means to run from as if in terror, to take flight, to run away frightened. Fear is not a feeling but it can produce feelings. Fear is a spiritual force and it can change the colour of your hair, cause you to lose your appetite or even keep you awake at night. The bible says fear involves torment (1 John 4:18). Fear is a spiritual force that can affect you emotionally, intellectually and even physically. Jesus said men's hearts would fail because of fear (Luke 21:26).

Fear is a spiritual force just like faith is a spiritual force. How do we know that faith is a spiritual force? Because Jesus said that if we had faith we could command a mulberry tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey us (Luke 17:6). It would take a significant force to be able to do that and the force required according to Jesus is faith.

Fear is a spiritual force in the same class as the force of faith but it's a reciprocal force. Faith and Fear are reciprocal forces of one another. What's a reciprocal? A reciprocal is something that is almost identical but inverted to the original. The ends of a see-saw are reciprocals of one another; when one end goes up, the reciprocal end goes down. This is how faith and fear are related; when fear increases, faith decreases. Both ends of the see-saw can never be up or down at the same time and in the same way your faith can't be great if the level of fear in your life is high.

An example of this is when Jesus and the disciples were crossing the Sea of Gallilee and they encountered a great storm. Jesus was sleeping in the back of the boat while the disciples were trying to manage keeping the vessel afloat and moving across to the other side. Finally Jesus wakes up and calms the wind and the waves and said to his disciples: 'Why are you so fearful, O you of little faith?' Notice that when you are full of fear then you have little faith (when one end of the see-saw is up, the other end is down). This is very important to understand because if we allow fear to build inside of us, we are diminishing our personal faith level. This is why many fail to receive answers to prayer; because they've allowed fear to grow within.

There is much more to say about fear and how we can be free of it. The messages below go into much more detail. Part 1 explores how fear and faith are related and how it affects the believer. Part 2 focuses on the Fear of Man and its dangers. Part 3 looks at the Fear of Failure and Part 4 ties it all together with an exploration of the Fear of Death.

 Part 1: The Force of Fear

 Part 2: The Fear of Man

 Part 3: The Fear of Failure

 Part 4: The Fear of Death