Of Faith and Fear

"This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith" (1 John 5:4)

No matter what the circumstances, we Christians should keep our heads. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love and of a sound mind. It is a dismal thing to see a son of heaven cringe in terror before the sons of earth. We are taught by the Holy Spirit in Scriptures of truth that fear is a kind of prison for the mind and that by it we may spend a lifetime in bondage.

To recoil from the approach of mental or physical pain is natural, but to allow our minds to become terrorized is quite another thing. The first is a reflex action; the latter is the result of sin and is a work of the devil to bring us into bondage. Terror is or should be foreign to the redeemed mind.

True faith delivers from fear by consciously interposing God between it and the object that would make it afraid. The soul that lives in God is surrounded by the divine Presence so that no enemy can approach it without first disposing of God, a palpable impossibility.

This is the victory that overcometh low spirits, a sinking heart, whispers of the devil and all the discouragements of this lower world - even our faith.

~A. W. Tozer~
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The War Never Ends

"Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11)

It is the spirit of Christ in us that will draw satan's fire. The people of world will not much care what we believe and they will stare vacantly at our religious forms, but there is one thing they will never forgive us - the presence of God's Spirit in our hearts.

They may not know the cause of that strange feeling of antagonism which rises within them, but it will be nonetheless real and dangerous. satan will never cease to make war on the Man-child, and the soul in which dwells the Spirit of Christ will continue to be the target for his attacks.

Immediately after a person has received the witness of the Spirit, the adversary charges down upon the soul. It is well for all such assaulted individuals to remember that just as soon as the Son of God received the baptism of the Holy Spirit on the banks of the Jordan, that He was immediately afterwards driven into the wilderness and there tempted forty days by the devil. He conquered by faith and in the use of the Word of God. We can do the same.

~A. W. Tozer~