When our problems look enormous we may feel anxious and small. Suddenly we only see our inabilities, and the problems seem unconquerable. But if we look at our huge God, even in the midst of grief, sorrow or sheer terror we can stop feeling like grasshoppers, unlike ten of the Israelite spies. So, how can we see God’s greatness, instead of our smallness? How can we feel safe when that trust seems illogical? Please join us in this post as we explore some unusual ways we can decrease our anxiety and increase our trust in God during times of enormous problems.
We are not sinning when we feel anxiety, worry or fear. Those emotions are only a sin when we refuse to tell God how awful we feel and refuse to cry out for his help. We are not sinning when anxiety attacks us, even if we give it to God, but it comes back again and again. But when anxiety keeps creeping back, we might think the problem is so huge, that we forget how much bigger God is than our problem. Before we look at ways to forgo our fears, we must first establish the truth that our fears are not sins. We are frail, and God knows our frame and does not judge us for those fears. (Psalms 103: 13-14 “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” And Romans 8:26, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”)
Satan buffets us over and over with those fears, so they return to our minds, even when we push them aside. Then Satan tells us we are sinful worriers when we are not. The fears and doubts came from Satan. He is the huge accuser (Rev.12:10.) Because many Scriptures speak of our need to not worry (Matt. 7:7-8), Satan accuses us when we do worry. We do not sin just because worry enters our heart. We do not sin when we tell God we are scared and helpless. Please never accept blame for Satan’s constant attacks of fears or worries returning over and over. This is not your sin but Satan’s. He often accuses you (and all of us) of things he is actually doing. He will also accuse you of things your flesh wants to do. But remember, there is a new spirit in you that wars with your flesh (Gal.5:17, “For the desire of the flesh is against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another in order to keep you from doing whatever you want.” And Romans 8:13b, “But if by the spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body you will live.”) The temptations are not YOU sinning, but the spirit of God fighting your sinful flesh or even the devil.
Having a sinful flesh does not make you an unrepentant sinner. It makes you a human. Even as a believer, you will feel many temptations, but these do not make you a sinner. But Satan will tell you that lust, fear, greed, anger and any other strong feeling he sends to you (against your will) is your fault. Just sensing these emotions does not make you a sinner as long as you do not act upon them. Remember that! You can call on Jesus and say, “Jesus, Satan is knocking on the door of my heart. Please answer.” If you have to say that (in your mind or aloud) many times, you are neither crazy nor sinful. Satan will look for your weakest areas to tempt you.
This is why it is essential that you spend some time alone writing down the areas where you are the weakest and most prone to sin. You must be brutally honest with yourself, and you don’t need to share this list with anyone else. But if you are not honest with yourself, Satan will attack you in those areas, over and over. It is only your honesty about your weakness that will help to free you. Remember Jesus’ warning in Matt. 26:41, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” When you admit to your weaknesses, you can write them down. Please don’t do this in your head. If you type it or hand write it in ink, you can access this list over and over. This honesty about your weakness is essential, because until you die, Satan will use those weaknesses against you.
I don’t want to discourage you when I speak of your weaknesses and Satan’s desire to attack you there. Once you are honest with yourself, the battle will become easier. But until we die, we are in a spiritual battle. This may scare you, but when you admit you are in this battle, it gets easier, because your mind can stop resisting this reality. The frail human mind does not want to admit how hard some things are. Yet that resistance (some call it denial) adds to the pain and difficulty. As a result, you are fighting the flesh and Satan, but also your own mind.
When you admit you have weaknesses and then acknowledge that spiritual battles will always exist, you have removed part of the fight—the denial. When your mind and spirit have submitted to this truth, you change on the inside. I cannot explain it fully in the physical realm, but something does change, and it is a strength that only God can give, but he can only give it to the surrendered soul. 2 Cor.12:10, “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
This is part of why the spiritual battle seems so foolish to worldly people. They actually struggle and have an enormous amount of self hatred for their weaknesses. But outwardly they deny they have weaknesses that bother them. Outwardly, they mock Christians who say they are weak and admit they need the Holy Spirit to empower them. But be aware, every single one of them is suffering. Not one person who has not surrendered to Jesus has full peace of mind and spirit. But they will never admit this unless they come to the Lord. Only after they surrender to the Lord will those people admit that they had intense inner struggles. There is no peace without the Lord.
The secular world cannot understand this surrender, and sadly, many Christians do not fully enjoy it, because they try to live life on their own terms. They do not analyze their specific weaknesses. They do not pray over them, daily. Some call these Christians, partially defeated believers. They know the Lord, and they will go to heaven. But they have lost peace of mind. They fall for their weaknesses, like the ten spies did in the book of Exodus; the ten saw their problems and felt small instead of seeing God’s enormousness and their place as victors. Look at the account in Numbers 13:30-33, “Caleb told the people to be quiet and listen to Moses. Caleb said, ‘Let’s go now and take possession of the land. We should be more than able to conquer it.’ But the men who had gone with him said, ‘We can’t attack those people! They’re too strong for us.’ So they began to spread lies among the Israelites about the land they had explored. They said ‘The land we explored is one that devours those who live there. All the people we saw there are very tall. We saw Nephilim there (The descendants of Anak are Nephilim.) We felt as small as grasshoppers, and that’s how we must have looked to them.’”
Look at Caleb and Joshua’s response (Numbers 14:6b-9): “Joshua (son of Nun) and Caleb (son of Jephunneh), tore their clothes in despair. They said to the whole community of Israel, ‘The land we explored is very good. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us. This is a land flowing with milk and honey! Don’t rebel against the Lord, and don’t be afraid of the people of the land. We will devour them like bread. They have no protection, and the Lord is with us. So don’t be afraid.’”
Joshua and Caleb looked at God’s faithfulness and were instantly ready to enter the Promised Land. The other ten spies looked at the Canaanites’ large size and then panicked. But the ten committed other sins too. They told lies. They rebelled. Those ten men had many weaknesses, to which they were blind. The Israelites actually had these weaknesses long before they left Egypt. Remember when Moses insisted Pharaoh let the people go, but instead Pharaoh told the Israelites to find their own straw? After that the Israelites grumbled, gave in to their fear, and rebelled against God (Exodus 5:20.) The Israelites had a history of unconfessed weaknesses, which they did not surrender to God. They acted out of those weaknesses, as we see in this history of the ten spies.
When we write down our weaknesses, we are not claiming defeat. We acknowledge our weaknesses as part of our battle and victory. We do not say we will always be terribly weak. I have grown so much since acknowledging my weaknesses. I have worked to overcome them. But when I finally wrote down that list, I realized I could consciously pray over every area, every day. No longer were these “nagging doubts” or lingering problems that caught me off guard. I brought all the main ways I sin to light, by writing them on paper (I just jotted down a word or phrase—not even full sentences.) And by praying against them, daily, I admitted to God where I struggle. For example, at times I get overwhelmed by conflicting demands on my time. In the past I might waste time wondering which to do next. Now I tell God about this problem in the morning. Then I pray against confusion and ask the Lord for his wisdom and discernment. If I have a day when I get overwhelmed, I quickly remember to call out to God for his discernment and wisdom, and he quickly redirects me.
Here is another area: I tend to fear people and want them to love and like me. Yet Proverbs 29:25 says, “The fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord will be safe.” People-pleasing has been a curse in my life where I rushed about trying to please others, often with them taking advantage of me. So I pray against this desire, with the addition of this prayer, “Lord, thank you for loving me so much. Remind me that you delight in me so I am so full of your love, I love others and have compassion for them.” I pray against this fearing others and desiring every person to love and like me. But I also pray for myself to remember God’s adoration of me and then the empowerment for me to love others and have compassion for them.
Since writing my weaknesses on that scrap of paper, I have been able to pray about them, every day. I am aware of what trips me up and pray for the strength that opposes those weaknesses (such as remembering God loves me and then loving others instead of fearing them.) When I pray this way, I see how huge God is. My weaknesses no longer surprise me. Instead I find God’s strength.
It must seem funny that I can only forget my weaknesses by NOT denying them and fully embracing their reality. But it is true; I look at the ways God is the opposite of my weaknesses. By finally voicing to myself that these weaknesses exist, I can begin to over-power them with God’s strength. In this amazing way, I can be like Caleb and Joshua, and see myself in God’s eyes as one who can over come. I am amazed by how many of my weaknesses I have tackled. Do those weaknesses tempt me and come up during the day now? Yes, they still do. But now I am aware of each one, because I prayed over them in the morning. Now the temptation (attack) is not a surprise. And I know what to do to call out to God.
When I did not do this, I did not realize I was being attacked, and I fell into dumb sins (self pity, grouchiness, confusion and poor use of time, etc. ) Now I am aware and better able to resist the temptations. So I have found my answer for seeing God as big, and it is part of the Christian paradox. I first needed to see how small I was, but then give that tiny nature full of sin and sorrow, to the Lord. I might see myself as small, even small like a grasshopper, in my flesh. But when I tell the Lord, then I can ask for his big strength, and he gives it to me, over and over during the day when I am tempted.
I pray this made sense to you, and I would love your input on this surprising subject. Truly our spiritual walk is baffling to unsaved people of the world, because Jesus turned the world upside down, making the last first, and the weakest the strongest (Matt. 20:16.) So I pray we have blessed you with this post. Thanks for joining us!