The Spirit of Fear: What It Really Is And How to Beat It
[Note: The next few blog posts will each contain part of Chapter 10 in Spiritual Warfare Made Simple. This is a big chapter, dealing with many misconceptions in spiritual warfare. It’ll be a lot easier to digest as a blog post in smaller bits.]
Misconception 7: The Spirit of Fear
It’s common in church circles to talk of a spirit of fear, or a spirit of anxiety, or a spirit of confusion. When we speak of these, they often take on mythic proportions — a spirit so powerful that it can overwhelm a person with anxiety, or overwhelm a church with fear, or overwhelm a city with confusion.
But such a thing isn’t found in the Bible.
What we do find are demons who can tempt us and lie to us. These demons can trigger our fears or anxieties or confusion. If we don’t resist the lies, we can end up more fearful, anxious, or confused. But the demon didn’t overwhelm us. It merely triggered us.
What do we mean when we say a spirit of anxiety is troubling a person?
What we do not mean is that a powerful demon overwhelms an anxiety-free person and forces them to feel anxious. Demons can’t force you to feel anything. You have dominion. They don’t.
Rather, demons know what you already feel.
The devil is evil, but clever. He watches and studies. He knows if you struggle with anxiety. He knows what topics, people, or beliefs trigger your anxiety. If he wants to make you feel anxious, all he must do is whisper those things in your ear. This stirs up the anxiety already in you.
A “spirit of anxiety” is a boring old demon who triggers your anxiety in the same way any human could.
What do we mean when we say there’s a spirit of fear gripping a church?
What we do not mean is that a powerful demon can cast some demonic field of fear and make an entire church afraid through its supernatural strength. Demons don’t have dominion. They can’t force you to feel.
But demons can lie. They can trigger your fears by lying about the things that make you afraid. Pay careful attention: the demons are triggering your fear, not giving you theirs. If you aren’t afraid of anything, as Jesus wasn’t, the demons can’t make you afraid of anything.
So what do we mean when we say a spirit of fear has gripped a church?
It means demons are triggering fear in its leadership through deception. They point out how low the finances are, or how disgruntled the people are, or how anti-God the culture is, and lie that these problems should make them afraid.
The leadership then believes this lie and worries about these things, instead of trusting God with them.
The leaders choose, with their dominion, to submit to the devil’s lie instead of to God’s truth. Because they submit to the devil’s lies, the devil doesn’t flee, even if they try to resist him. So the demons stay, continually stoking fear every day through their lies.
What do we mean when we say that a spirit of confusion is covering an entire city?
What we do not mean is that a super-powerful demon is overwhelming everyone in the city and forcing them to feel confused when their minds are perfectly clear.
A demon is never the most powerful spirit in a city. The Holy Spirit of God is always the most powerful Spirit in that city. And God is not a God of confusion.
When we talk of a “spirit of confusion” affecting an entire area, it may be a coordinated attack of many demons. But their methods are the same as above. They can’t overwhelm people with their confusion. But they can pay attention to what already confuses people and trigger what’s already in them.
In every case, dealing with these spirits is the same as dealing with any other demon.
Submit to God. Don’t submit to the lies that are triggering anxiety, fear, or confusion. Resist those lies with the truth of God.
Ask the Lord to speak into each of these lies. Let Him break their power and replace it with truth, peace, and calm.
Yet some will push back and say that spirits do overwhelm people in Scripture. They may point to passages like Jehoshaphat and Micaiah, in which he says, “The Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets” (1 Kings 22:23 NKJV).
It’s true that the Lord sent this spirit.
But this spirit never overwhelmed anyone.
These prophets didn’t care about speaking the truth. They told the king whatever he wanted to hear. They knew they were lying, but did it anyway to maintain their position at court. Jehoshaphat hated Micaiah specifically because he was not a prophet who would tell him what he wanted to hear.
The point is this: the spirit gave the false prophets what they wanted anyway. He didn’t make an otherwise truthful prophet lie against his will. The false prophets used their dominion to lie to the king repeatedly. The spirit empowered them in what they had already chosen to do.
Don’t be deceived.
The devil lies, trying to make you think these spirits are super-demons.
They’re not.
You have the dominion over them.
This post comprises the sixth part of Chapter 10 of my book Spiritual Warfare Made Simple. We’ll cover the entire book in this series of blog posts, along with additional content and Q&A. If you’d like a permanent copy for yourself or a friend, you can grab the ebook or paperback here!
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This is fascinating- I'm enjoying your posts on this topic as they are stretching me & tweaking my perspective on some things. I do have some questions though. It sounds like you're saying there is no demon of anxiety or demon of depression or demon of fear, etc. They are just basic demons that attach to our anxiety and take advantage of our triggers? Just clarifying. This seems to make sense as I don't see any demons by those names in the Bible. In fact, there are very few demon names in the Bible. (Of course that doesn't mean necessarily that they don't have names, but I'm guessing we just don't need to know them and God probably doesn't want us focusing on them.) But it's interesting how the whole charismatic deliverance movement believes in all these different spirits. I'm wondering where they got this?? However, I have had success with calling out spirits by their so-called names and commanding them to leave. But maybe it just forces them to "unattach" from my anxiety or depression that's already there? Just thinking out loud here. (haha, sort of)
Also, I'm wondering what biblical basis you have for demons being smart enough to study us and know our triggers? I'm not disagreeing with you- I've always believed this but just seeking more biblical proof on this specific thing. Because I've always been told they can't read our thoughts- but I suppose they could know our emotions & what bothers us by observing us. That would make sense. Thank you for writing & posting about all this. I'm still currently wrestling with some things and my view on deliverance & the spiritual realm is evolving. I'm not sure yet where I land on all the issues.
Hi Kyle, 2 Tim 1:7 says “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
I’ve always read that as OUR spirit, not a demonic spirit. Because it is in contrast to power, love, and a sound mind, which are characteristics of the believer’s inward parts. Do you read it that way?