You Can Pray Away Your Fear!

Inside: Let me show you how
you can pray away your fear in 3 easy steps.
(They work because
they’re filled with God’s promises FOR YOU!!)

What freaks you out?

Is it the sound of the dentist’s drill or having to speak in front of a crowd?

Or, maybe you’ve come to a place in life that you’ve got a work around for all those common fears.

But what do you do when something sneaks up on you,
do you know how to pray away your fear?

I thought I had it all under control until my surgeon’s assistant said, “You’ll need to get a new baseline MRI and then we’ll want to do them regularly for a while just to keep an eye on things.”

An emoticon picture of the fear I needed to pray away.

Thank you, Shubham Dhage, for sharing your picture!

When you’re freaking out,

a lot of people will hand you a Bible verse like this one and say,

“Be strong and courageous!
Do not be afraid and do not panic . . .
For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you.
He will neither fail you nor abandon you.
(Deuteronomy 31:6, NLT)”

And do you know what?

They would be right, except that reminding us of a promise in the Bible doesn’t always change the way we feel about what we’re going through, does it?

Sometimes, we’ve actually got to do something to partner with that verse to make it work.

We’ve got to appropriate it.

How do we pray away fear
and appropriate God’s promises?

We do it with God.

When we do that, we learn how to apply the verse God gives us for a particular situation exactly the way He says to do it so it works! ☺️

Step One: Get everything off your chest.

God already knows what’s going on, but somehow when you vent to Him and explain your side of the story, you’ll feel better. Trust me, I know.

Why?

I think it’s because, in the process of doing that, we explain things to ourselves and land on the specific kind of help that we need from God.

After that phone call about the MRIs, it took me a few days before I could get myself into the prayer chair to talk to God. But then I blah-blah-blahed everything out in my journal and landed on this,

God,
Help me to believe that Your Word
will do FOR ME
what it says it will.
Help me to trust You.

The lies that we believe about God can really steal from us. But guess what, the truth really does set us free! ☺️

What is it that you really need from God right now?

HINT: You might need to blah-blah-blah
for a minute to figure it out.

Go for it because God loves to hear your heart!

Anxiety tries to beat us up, right?

But when we put our feelings into words
AND PRAY THEM,
something happens.

I could refuse to step foot in another MRI machine for the rest of my life.

But if I hadn’t had that first MRI that led to the surgery to remove the tumor, it would have grown and caused more problems.

So, I told God what I needed.

God,
I’m afraid of crawling into that MRI machine again
because the last time I did it,
I felt trapped.

Would You please fill me with peace,
so I don’t feel that way again?

To pray away your fear, you need to receive His Word.

And Spoiler Alert: That’s what happened!

With friends praying for me, I dared to climb back into that MRI machine.

I didn’t want to take Ativan and have a reaction. So, I took God with me instead. And He came through for me

just like I believe He’s going to come through for you!

Yes. You are going to pray away your fear! I am partnering my agreement with you and covering you with my faith.

“Do not worry about anything;
instead, pray about everything.

Tell God what you need
and thank Him for all He has done.

Then you will experience God’s peace,
which exceeds anything we can understand.
His peace will guard your hearts and minds
as you live in Christ Jesus.”
(Philippians 4:6-7, NLT)

Step Two: Stand on the promise God gives you.

Have a look through these verses and ask God to show you which one He has for you in this particular situation.

Why do I say that?

Because He’s given me different verses for different situations. I wish I could, but I can’t just pick the verse I want.

Here’s another hint:
You will know which verse He has for you
when you can’t move onto another.

It’s weird how that happens!

I’ll be thinking to myself, Nope, that’s not it!

But for the life of me, I cannot even consider another. I can’t tell you how many times that has happened and I finally go back and say, “O-o-okay . . .”

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity,
but of power, love, and self-discipline.”
(2 Timothy 1:7, NLT)

Step Three: Let’s take your verse and pray it.

How?

As I read through the verses on fear, the one that got me like a dog-with-a-bone was Psalm 34:4, 7-8. So, I prayed that verse and owned it.

I prayed the first two lines exactly as they are written in the Bible,

“I went to the Lord for help.
He answered me
and rescued me from ALL my fears.”
(Psalm 34:4, God’s Word)

Then, I personalized the next four lines. The Bible says,

“The Messenger of the Lord camps around those who fear Him,
and He rescues them.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Blessed is the person who takes refuge in Him.”
(Psalm 34: 7-8, God’s Word)

In my journal, I declared and decreed:

The Messenger of the Lord camps AROUND ME
because I FEAR (OR REVERE) HIM,
and HE RESCUES ME.

I WILL TASTE AND SEE THAT THE LORD IS GOOD.
And HE WILL BLESS ME AS I TAKE REFUGE IN HIM.

Do you see the difference?

We don’t want to change the Word of God.

But we do want to appropriate the Word,
which means that

we want to apply the promises
of the Word of God to ourselves
in context and according to what God says.

For instance, the Messenger of the Lord doesn’t camp around and rescue everyone. He does camps around and rescues those who draw close to God.

This verse is a gift to you from God.

Photo by George Dolgikh.

And this is one of the ways
we can begin to appropriate the Word of God.

That’s all you have to do to pray away your fear!

Seriously, try it and feel free to come back to me if it does not work and we’ll take it to God together. That’s what He’s promised you and He does not lie.

So, every time this situation come to mine, your pull out your verse–the one God gave YOU for THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION–and own it out loud.

Yup! There’s something about speaking it. I know, you might feel stupid at first, but your spirit recognizes your voice and nods in agreement.

Aren’t you much more likely to agree with yourself than anyone else?

Every time you do this,

you are applying God’s promise

in spirit (with God)
and in truth (with the words of the Bible.)

And God can’t lie.

The promise will work for you because the Bible is the Truth.

You may be experiencing a fact right now that does not yet line up with the Truth. But as you stand on the Truth God gave you, something will happen.

When God gives you a promise
and you stand on it,
you will have a story to tell.

And when you do,
I want to hear it! ☺️