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Epidemic of Fear
Episode #822
9/04/2022
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
This is a continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #821
We use fear as a motivator but fear as a source of a life is death.
Martha:
In Matthew and the beatitudes all through the Bible it’s about “Don’t worry”!
You worry about clothes? Don’t worry about clothes. You have clothes. Don’t worry about what you are going to eat. That’s not your life. There’s something better than just worrying about clothes and everything human.
John:
This whole season of our country and our world is very anxious. The whole crisis with covid has been a pandemic. But it’s been an epidemic. It is made an epidemic of fear. It’s been an epidemic. I believe the true pandemic is fear and anxiety. If we are fighting a virus to have anxiousness put on top of that it’s making us more susceptible to it and vulnerable to it. Fear is never going to be a beneficial thing to bring health and healing and wholeness.
Martha:
I remember when the nurse said…we had an encounter with a nurse in a hospital.
John:
Yes, we were at the hospital and we were checking out your heart and making sure everything was ok and she said that if people would be just normal and calm and respond how we’ve always told people to respond, the hospitals wouldn’t be full. But people are freaked out and scared and anxious. The word is anxious. They are anxious. We have been made to be anxious.
Martha:
The goal of the helpers is to make it anxious for you.
John:
If you remember when I did the sheep, when they were up on that hill, I used fear to motivate them to get down because I had busted myself several times and I needed them to move to the barn because I knew that they could break their legs. I became a greater fear than their fear. I screamed and ran at them and they ran immediately back to the barn where they needed to be where there was safety.
Fear can be a motivator. Even when we are growing up our parents can use fear. “If you do that, you will poke your eye out or you’ll go blind.” We use fear as a motivator but fear as a source of a life is death.
Martha:
You say in here “I know so many people who dwell daily in anxiety perhaps all of their lives.” You just make it so visible. We kind of live with it and we don’t think much of it. You have exposed the evil of anxiety. Do you see that?
John:
Yes, absolutely. As a child I was anxious. I was an anxious child. My parents took me one time to Disney and I was afraid of every single ride because I thought I was going to die. I had an inordinate fear of death and I was anxious. It paralyzed me. Living in that and experiencing that as I grew up and to now not have anxiousness as my source… It’s not that I can’t get anxious about things. This is not like the end all to be all I will never have anxiety again. This is destroying the stronghold of anxiety that is controlling lives. It’s a stronghold.
Martha:
That’s incredible. You are so passionate to defeat anxiety and you are so passionate to want the church, Christians to be free. Of all people who need to be free of anxiety would be born again Believers who have everything we need. It says the Father knows what you need before you ask. Just let Him be Father. I love this message, John. It is really incredible.
Let me read this scripture and then I’ going to turn it over to John for his commentary and what he understands about it so we can learn from him.
Isaiah 35:4 ESV
Say to those who have an anxious heart…
And it’s in the heart isn’t it, John?
John:
Absolutely.
Martha:
Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.
Tell me how that speaks to you in your journey about anxiety.
John:
I say here, “Anxiety is fear and fear is faith in something other than God.” Really, if you put it down to the core level, anxiety becomes our source and god. We literally worship it. We worship anxiety because it gives us the motivation, it gives us the energy. Adrenalin is a powerful drug to motivate us to get us going and it is intended to be used when we trying to run away from something that is an immediate danger. But if you live in that problem, if you live in using adrenalin as your source, it will hull you out eventually.
The reason I want the church to really see this is because when we have anxiety as source and there are so many anxious people in the church, when we have anxiety as source, we are thwarting God’s power and presence in our life; the experience of Him as Lord in our life. And that’s tragic!
Martha:
You have in forward section here- “The consequence of an anxious heart is that it separates me from my consciousness of God and leaves me floundering in a soup of unrest.” It like if you want to worry, you are going to be alone.
John:
It does isolate. Anxiety isolates us.
Martha:
I never saw it that way, John. The balance of this book is fabulous because it goes from commentary to the word; back to the word; then to the personal. There is no way in this little conversation to get everything that this book is. You make the remedy and the solution to be our God.
John:
Here’s a quote from Watchman Nee that says, “The world is an anxious place. We seem to let it fuel us to perform. What then is the use of being anxious?” And then it gives the scripture reference:
Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit and measure of his life?
Martha:
There’s this funny story in here and it happens to be true. Then you come to bitterness paired with anxiety. I would not have put those two together but it’s absolutely brilliant because it is that. Paired with anxiety is bitterness.
John:
If you are an anxious person for too long, you will be a bitter person because you are robbed of life and joy. You are vanquished of all true fulfillment and life because you are bound by the chaos and by the fear.
Martha:
Chaos eats you up.
John:
I tell on myself with that with my little five-year-old “Jesus loves me.”
I say, “Anxiety is not the same as our normal response to fear. Our normal rush of adrenaline is in the fight or flight response is not the same thing as anxiety ruling us.
Martha:
You even go so far as to say anxiety makes us sick and it does. I know that personally. This wonderful scripture you have here:
Psalm 139:23-24
Search me, O God, and know my heart.
This is a terrific prayer to be begin the pursuit of pulling that stronghold down and destroying it.
Search me, O God, and know my heart.
Let us be absolutely open to the Lord with our entire being in our thoughts and in our feelings. I am saying that but here is what you say and what you list in the scripture:
Test me and know my anxious thought. See if there is any offensive way in me and led me in the way everlasting.
Isn’t that beautiful. God gives the scripture; He gives the command so that if you say yes then He can come in and make it happen. It’s so exciting. We can live a different life.
God has given us everything that we would be worried about and He has solved everything. He has solved our sin; He solved our past; He solved our current; He solves everything and supplies you with everything. He doesn’t leave you lacking anything; if we will just look to Him for the answer and the power. See, I could just go on and on because it’s so exciting to have it clear and identified. You have identified it and exposed this wickedness. I see it as wickedness.
Epidemic of Fear – Episode #822 – Shulamite Podcast
Anxiety is fear and fear is faith in something other than God. God says to our fear, Be strong; fear not! Behold, He will come and save you.
This piercing, penetrating, infusing, liberating booklet! My heart held still for it, my spirit knew its need in me, my mind bowed, tears fell…& I leaned against His heart with all of me. It’s a terrible thing to believe ‘life is hard’…& then make it so, & sabotage true faith. The false strong, false weak, I can be both. Anxiety ‘knew’ it would be this way. Now comes emergency excuse ‘to do something’, anything, to survive anxiety’s self-made crisis…run from it, or run into it, & this god rules. To quiver & hide, the ‘I will be strong’, both proud control…with a demand to serve & worship fear. You’ve brought definitive clarity to anxiety & the evil, deathly, constricting energy behind it. To see GOD anew, is to see past, present, future…from the foundation of His world, the Lamb!…to the Eternal, the Lamb! on the Throne. Love is the only true motivation…& GOD IS LOVE. In Christ our vulnerability is wrapped in Love. Jesus doesn’t ‘repeat’, He’s not by rote. Anxiety’s lie tells us ‘we’ve been there before’. Our expectation is our worship. (Ps.32:9) “..when I take you where you’ve not been before. Don’t make me tug you along. Just come with me!” YES! “and then witness His freedom lived through us.”