The answer to being healed from fear issues is for you to get closer to God. He offers the training through Jesus on how to yield to His power; that will set you free; and, that will bring you closer to God. If you are going to be able to get closer to God, you are going to have to learn how to take advantage of His spiritual provisions. They come through Jesus so you can be empowered to handle the circumstances of your life. This is what Jesus wants to be doing in you, as you and He go through these courses together.

>Eph 6:12 (NIV) For our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood [people], but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil [Satan and demons] in the heavenly realms.

If you use human effort and human procedures to try to handle your problems, it will continue to backfire on you. Human effort will spiral you into divorce, disease, stress, financial difficulties, people problems, and spiritual problems. As Jesus takes you through the process of growing closer to God, you will be able to see that your problems are being caused by you not knowing how to operate in the spiritual world. You haven’t learned how to resist temptations and spiritual pressures that are forcing you to have issues with fear. If you could use human solutions, you would have already solved your fear problems.

Since your problems aren’t being caused by yourself or the people around you, you must learn how to have a strategy that allows Jesus’ power to flow through you. You must allow Jesus to change your objectives in life. You must allow Him to teach you how to deal with an enemy that hates you. You must WANT to be trained to win against Satan who is trying to hurt and destroy you. Even though this hasn’t been any part of your plans and strategies up until now, if you are going to win over your issues with fear, it must become a priority now.

James 4:1-2 (NIV) What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. Jesus wants to teach you how to stop fighting yourself and the people around you. Instead, He will teach you how to start asking God for the solutions to your problems. The way to block off fear problems and all your other struggles will come through you growing spiritually; and, growing spiritually will involve prayer.

John 4:24 (NIV) God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. We work very hard at getting an education so as to learn how to operate in the world around us. Most of us spend a lifetime learning how to live here. However, we are going to spend eternity in the spirit realm. God wants you to start right now learning how to work in His world. Jesus wants to take your problem with fear and use it to teach you Biblical principles, spiritual concepts, and human relationships that will empower you to win at life.

The main reason you are here on earth is so you can learn how to live in the spirit world. God designed this world as an example for you to use to learn spiritual principles. If you only learn world principles and don’t use them as examples for your spiritual training, you will have missed the main reason you exist. You need to grow spiritually by allowing Jesus to show you how life on this planet works. The principles on this planet are showing you how win at life here AND how to win in eternity with your heavenly Father in His Kingdom. And, it all starts with learning how to worship God “in spirit and in truth.”

James 4:7 (NIV) Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Your assignment is to learn how to yield to God and the things of God; and how to resist the devil and the things of the devil. You have been resisting, fighting, and hurting yourself and the people around you unnecessarily. John 15:14 (NIV) You are My friends if you do what I command. If you will do what Jesus tells you to do, you will be set free from you difficulties with fear. AND, here is what Jesus is telling you to do: John 15:12 (NIV) My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Rom 13:9-10 (NIV) The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Not only is Jesus asking you to stop fighting yourself and other people. He is telling you to love yourself and other people. He isn’t just telling you to feel love for yourself and other people, He will draw out actual scenarios and life-situations where you are to treat yourself and others a certain way. But, He won’t be asking you to do this by using your own power. He will be empowering you to create win/win situations for everyone involved with you. And, you will be doing it by following the Scriptures in the Bible and receiving Jesus’ power to do it. This will take you into the world where your heavenly Father and Jesus live.

Why do you have to learn all this spiritual training? Why doesn’t God just set you free from fear issues so you don’t have to put forth all this effort? The main reason is because you are being trained for eternity. Learning how to be involved with spiritual issues is learning how to live the new life God has given you AS A CHILD OF GOD. You can’t enter God’s eternal Kingdom acting the way you do now. You would be a destructive contaminant there even worse than you are now. Jesus has to make some wonderful changes in you that you can’t make in yourself.

How much poison would you be willing to drink? How many bullets would you like shot into you? How many stab wounds would you like to be inflicted into your abdomen? NONE! That is the same thing as, how many sins are you willing to have in your life? When you mistreat yourself and others, you are sinning. God labels these mistreatments sins so you can see them like you see poison, stab wounds, and bullet wounds. There are things that kill your body; and, there are things that destroy your eternal life. You know most of those things that can kill your body; but, you must know what is hurting your spiritual life.

Accepting Jesus as your Lord, Savior, and King brought you into a wonderful new life through the experience of salvation and justification. You INSTANTLY became a child of God, a member of His family, and a citizen of His Kingdom. All your past, present, and future sins were forgiven and forgotten BY GOD. You are now STARTING OVER with a new life with God, the Bible, and Christianity. BUT, even though your record with God is now clean, YOU and those around you still remember what you DID. AND, YOU and those around you can still see what you are DOING. There is another work of God that deals with that.

SINCE God considers you free from all sin through grace and mercy, that gives you all the rights and privileges of a child of God, a member of His family, and a citizen in His Kingdom. IF you DIDN’T receive salvation and justification, you would NOT have Jesus and His power working in and through you right now. BUT, you MUST understand why all this happened to you. You may have your reasons for why you accepted Jesus as your Savior, Lord, and King. But, God has His reason for making all that happen. If you don’t know what God’s reason is, you can’t cooperate with it. GOD gave you salvation and justification so you could get Jesus’ power and help to start treating yourself and others properly; that was His reason.

Don’t let this strange word, sanctification, scare or bother you. Jesus will be covering it and most of its parts over the course of your time with Him. The first thing you need to know about it is that, in this study, sanctification is also called spiritual growth. Sanctification or spiritual growth is you learning how to yield to Jesus’ power to fulfill Mark 12:30-31: (NIV) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Until we start studying about spiritual growth we really don’t learn much that we can get involved in. Salvation and justification don’t require much on our part. Salvation and justification are exclusively done by the grace (God giving you blessings you don’t deserve), mercy (God protecting you from consequences you do deserve), love, and power of God.

We had almost nothing to do with being saved and justified; we just prayed The Lord’s Prayer and obeyed Romans 10:8-10. Rom 10:8-10 (NIV) But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are JUSTIFIED, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are SAVED.

Let’s take a look at what we did:

1. Jesus died for our sins.
2. The Holy Spirit convicted us and made us feel guilty concerning the sins (bad deeds against ourselves, others, and God’s plan) we were committing.
3. The Father drew us, which caused us to start understanding spiritual things for the first time.
4. The Holy Spirit started opening up the meaning to God’s Word which made the good news message make sense to us.
5. Jesus gave us the necessary measure of faith to believe the message.
6. We decided to pray The Lord’s Prayer and confess with our mouth that “Jesus is Lord” and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead.
7. Jesus saved and justified us.

All you did was pray and ask for it; then you confessed and believed that what God said was true and God did all of the rest of salvation and justification FOR you. God made you His child, a member of His family, and a citizen of His eternal Kingdom. Now He wants a relationship with you as His child. He wants you to be a vital part of all He is going to be doing in and through you for the rest of your life and through out eternity.

Since, your heavenly Father wants a relationship with you, He decided that the only way you are going to move into the victorious life in the Spirit, is to learn how to work together with Jesus. You and He are going to be using your difficulties with fear for you to learn Biblical principles that enchance that relationship. These Biblical principles, the ones Jesus will be teaching you, will bring spiritual growth into your life that enhance ALL your relationships. Jesus’ spiritual growth training empowers you so you can experience greater and greater success in all your life in time and in eternity. Spiritual growth consists of you and Jesus working together to help you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,’ and to, ‘love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:30-31).’