FEAR; THE OPPOSITE OF FAITH.

MARK 5:22-36.  In this passage of scripture we see the story of Jairus and his daughter. We see in verse 23 that Jairus begs Jesus to come to his house as his daughter is very ill, almost dead. Jairus says to Jesus "come and lay your hands on her, that she be healed, and she will live" Jairus knows that Jesus can heal here and so is motivated by this that he begs Jesus to come to his house. On the way there the woman with the issue of blood comes and touches Jesus and is healed. While Jesus is talking to her Jairus servant comes and tells Jairus that his daughter is dead and not to bother Jesus any further. Note what Jesus does in verse 36, before Jairus can say anything Jesus turns to him and says "Do not be afraid only believe", in Lukes version of this story Jesus says "Do not be afraid, only believe and she will be healed". Fear is the opposite of faith and where fear operates faith will be stifled. We know that they continued on and the girl was raised up.
2 TIMOTHY 1:7   "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind."
Fear comes as a spirit to rob us of faith and to stop us from walking in what God has called us to. We know that faith comes through the word, as we hear it and then apply that word to our lives and walk in it.
MATTHEW 13:18-23.  This is the parable of the sower of the seed. In verses 21 and 22 we see that when the seed is sown among the stones it is received with joy, it endures for a while but when tribulation and persecution arise because of that word the person falls away or stumbles. In lukes Gospel he refers to it as temptation. The temptation here is to doubt Gods word, we go through tribulation and persecution because we stand up for Gods word. We know that temptation does not come from God and so this is just the enemies attempt to rob Gods word from us and stop us from being fruitful in our lives.
2 CORINTHIANS 10:4-5.  "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself above the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." Satans strategy is to build strongholds around our minds, if he can control your thoughts he will control you. Fear and unbelief is one area that he tries to use. Our strategy is to recognize his thoughts, his lies, his attempts to get us to doubt Gods word, to take those thoughts captive and cast them down, and then to walk in obedience to Gods word.
So we can see through these scriptures that there is a process that we all will go through, in Jairus case he believed that Jesus could heal is daughter and so she would live but Jesus saw the potential of the bad news to rob him of his faith and so stop his daughter from being healed, which would have resulted in her death.Just like Jairus, we will have times when we are trusting God for our miracle, and the enemy will try to stop it, it's at these times that it is so critical that we listen to what Jesus is saying to us.
  Paul is encouraging Timothy to stir up the gift that God has given him, but he realizes that fear will try to come in and rob him of his destiny and so he encourages him to realize that fear is not of God and that he has no reason to be ashamed of the testimony that he has. We too can be encourage in times in our own life when fear tries to raise its ugly head and stop us, that fear does not come from God and we can rise up in the gifts and anointing that he has put in our lives and walk in our God given destiny.
   In the parable of the sower we see how critically important it is that we have a good foundation for the word to be sown into, that our hearts be good soil and that we don't allow the lies of the enemy, that will come against us because we dare to stand up for Gods word, to rob that word from us, and so cause us to be unfruitful.
Yes we are in a battle, it is spiritual warfare but we have weapons that are divinely empowered to tear down the strongholds that the enemy will try to establish in our lives. So let us all be encourage to know that if God is for us, then who can be against us, and that no weapon that is formed against us shall prosper, and that every tongue which rises against us we shall condemn, because this is our heritage.
AMEN.