=====================================

Reality vs. Illusion: Fear in the Life of the Believer - Is it Real or a Trick of Satan?

- by Dan W. Dooley

=====================================

Recently, I was a participant in some discussions on the nature of our fears and the ability or lack of ability on the part of the enemy, Satan, to influence our lives based upon those fears. There are two directions of thinking and teaching.

There is the direction of thought that fear is simply the response to the realities of life. Both the realized and the anticipated realities of life. Things go wrong which may or may not be put upon us by the enemy. Those problems are real, and beyond our control. The remedies range from acts of our own doing (we have a headache, we take an aspirin, and the headache goes away) and those things which only God can handle by His power. Satan is powerful and capable of fell deeds of destruction, and many of the problems we face, the realities, are the work of his evil designs. Not all of course. If you run a stop sign and get hit by another car, you can hardly blame that mishap on Satan.

The opposite thinking, and teaching, is that our fears are totally unfounded in any case and Satan has absolutely no power in the life of a Christian. That what appears to be such as danger, catastrophe, sickness, misfortunes of all sorts, etc., are nothing more than lies of the enemy. We can accept these problems as fact, or we can (by standing on the Word of God and faith) counter them as they are in fact, not real. If we fail to exercise faith and believing the promises of the Word, then we have allowed these things to become reality in our lives.

I think the truth is a little of both, and somewhere in between. What happens in our lives is indeed the reality. If your doctor tells you that you have heart disease, then you can be assured that there is a mechanical, electrical or pathological problem with that blood pump in your body. It is not an illusion of the devil. You cannot will it away by rebuking the enemy, or believing it out of existence. Whether he put it upon you or not, is of little consequence. The fact is, you have heart disease. You live in a temporal body while you live on this earth. From Adam's time on, it has been cursed to decay and die.

Where Satan has his way in the situation is with the area of the unknown. It is not a lie of Satan that you are sick. It becomes a lie of Satan when the possible outcome is considered and debated. Or, it becomes a lie of Satan when the root cause of the disease is considered and debated. This is the area where you wage spiritual warfare. Satan puts the fear into your head that you are going to die of this disease. He could not tell you such a lie convincingly were it not for the possibility that you could indeed die of the disease. So you struggle between hope of healing and the morbid fear that this disease is going be the means of your death.

You try to exercise your faith. You pray and you read and try to reassure yourself of the truth in the promises of healing you read in the Word. You struggle and either you are able to overcome those fears - and these are the fears which dwell in illusion - or you succumb to them and accept the enemy's prognosis on your case. It will be one or the other. Satan has influence, or he does not. It depends on you. You don't know what the real prognosis is. Only your doctor and God know that, and God with more certainty.

Satan does not have influence over the outcome, but over your expectation of the outcome. And, depending on your expectation, your reaction and your response. That response can be either uplifting and positive, or it can be depressing and discouraging. You can continue to trust God and believe for your physical healing, or you can accept the enemy's lies that God does not care to heal you, or that God is not listening to your prayers, as well as a host of other discouraging beliefs concerning God's plan in your life. Either of these responses can have to some degree an affect on even how well your body responds to treatment and healing.

That does not mean that a so-called "positive attitude" will change the outcome. Only God has the ultimate say on that. It can certainly affect your faith and your trust in God, and that affects a lot. Including how God is able to work on your behalf. To say more on this aspect of faith and belief, however, is a topic for another study.

The lie of Satan concerning your sickness may come in the form of an accusation. You would not have developed this disease if you had been a better Christian. If you had only exercised more faith and claimed God's promises, God would have protected you and you would still be healthy. This lie, if you think about it, is not too far removed from the temptation Satan put upon Jesus when he suggested that Jesus jump off the roof of the temple. "Surely the angels will protect you. It's promised in the Bible."

He twists a promise out of context and turns truth into lie. In other words, "you are God's child and protected and should not suffer hurt. If you do, there is cause to question your relationship to God."

If you lose your job, it is a reality. Satan is not lying to you telling you that you have lost your job when in truth you have not. As absurd as it sounds, this is not an uncommon belief and teaching. The reality is you no longer have a paycheck coming to you. That is as real as it can get. Just like the issue of sickness, it is through the thoughts of the outcome and the cause that Satan works. The "known" he avoids for he can not with any creditability dispute those.

It is through what you don't know that he works. So when we say that Satan is totally impotent and his work is unreal, this is the area where this is true.

On the other hand, let us never underestimate the power of the enemy. Were he to be as impotent as claimed by some teachers, and nothing more than a shadow we could simply ignore, or casually toss aside by our own will, the Apostle Paul would not have spent so much time writing on the battle against this foe. Paul took him seriously. James did as well. James told us,

Peter too took the war against Satan very seriously.

Were Satan simply a cowardly little bluffing shadow whom we could brush off as we would an annoying fly, the Word would not be so filled with instructions on obtaining and using the weapons God has provided for us and meant for us to use. This is the armor detailed by Paul in Ephesians:

I think those who teach the underestimating of the devil do so at their own peril. Their seeming lack of fear is really a lack of healthy respect. The same kind of respect we would give to a deadly cobra. You don't have to be afraid of it if you are exercising proper precautions, but a flippant disregard lacking respect for the snake's ability to kill can have deadly consequences.

I have always been repulsed by the silly, yes they are "silly" theatrics of some, yes, even some ministers of the Word, who perform antics such as symbolically kicking and punching the devil. "Take that, you old devil!" As if they themselves have the power to physically overcome the devil. We as humans don't have that power, nor do we have the authority. Were we to meet the devil in physical form, or even one of his demons, without the power of God protecting us, we're going to be on the losing end of that fight. Look at this example from Acts.

One demon against seven men. Fair odds?

We would be wise to take a warning from Jude.

We operate by the power of the Holy Spirit in the realm of the spiritual. This is not a physical war we wage. It spills over into the physical of course. We need to learn to know what is physical and what is spiritual and use the tools and weapons God has provided us in both realms. It is how we respond to those lies of Satan that will determine our victory or defeat.

© Dan W. Dooley 2006

----

Dan W. Dooley is husband, father, grandfather, and creator and owner of Dooley's Treasure Chest and Treasure Chest Ministries. He is an ordained minister in affiliation with United Christian Faith Ministries (UCFM).