Recently, I was speaking in a church when a man I know came to say hello. He shared that he had been battling cancer. After the initial overwhelming emotion of that diagnosis was first delivered, he began to experience the fear associated with the possible outcome of an early death. My friend shared with me that after praying for healing, the Lord spoke to him and said, “Give Me your fear so that all that remains is you and Me.” That one profound sentence of revelation became his weapon of warfare against the lies produced by the presence of fear.

Whenever the possibility of death exists, whether in our physical body or in the potential death of a close relationship, fear will always come to pay a visit. Fear is like a seductive sexual predator that comes in our moment of weakness when our despair is shouting loud lies about our future. With the deceptive and cunning tactics of the serpent in Eden, we are offered the fruit of fear that will attempt to destroy our naked innocence with God and have us try to find a place to hide from His presence with fear as our only companion. Only a Redeemer like Jesus can free us from this kind of bondage.

When my friend heard the Lord’s promise, “Give Me your fear so that all that remains is you and Me”, he experienced the first glimmer of hope. From there he was able to go through the medical procedure that became a miracle itself when his particular kind of cancer, that normally is violent and invasive, was discovered to be subdued and isolated. The surgeon who performed the surgery said, “This is a miracle of sorts. Normally this kind of cancer does not respond this way!”

God’s promise to us that we can be free from fear does not always come in a single moment of time because we made a right decision. That first right decision is the start of spiritual warfare that takes place in the battlefield of our mind. Victory over fear requires a lifetime of right choices. It is an ongoing campaign of hope.

I am sure my friend, after making the initial choice to remove fear from his relationship with the Lord, had to make that same decision a few more times as he walked toward a place of healing. In the process of rejecting the lies that fear was promoting, my friend became stronger. What created a paralyzing fear in him when the dark news was first delivered no longer had a platform in his life from which to steer his thinking toward a destination of hopeless desperation.

In all things, choose to believe so that all that remains in any situation is you and the Lord. That relationship of intimacy and purity is your place of victory. 

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love” I John 4:18).