Part 2: Elijah’s Spiritual Victory-Two Mistakes We Can Learn From

This is part 2 to the three part series, learning from Elijah’s victory and two major mistakes. In this blog post I want to cover a major spiritual hurdle that Elijah fell prey too and that is fear. After he had his greatest victory he encountered Jezebel who then threatened to take his life (1 Kings 19:2).

As believers we can also face fear in our lives to varying degrees. The main goal of fear is to paralyze us from making decisions or to run away from them. We all have a fight or flight response. Each one of us, when weak, tend to either fight our way through anxious times with anger or frustration, or try to outrun them like Elijah (1 Kings 19:3).

What the enemy will do is place an emotional burden on you to feel like it is to much and you can’t handle it. He will tell you things like “you will die if you try this” “You won’t make it” “it is too hard”. In fact, fear is such a big issue that the bible mentions us NOT to fear 365 times.

For me personally, I used to have major anxiety issues. I was terrified of speaking to people and had constant panic attacks. Whenever a tense situation arose, I would tell myself “I’m going to die” or “I’m having a heart attack” and panic would set it. It debilitated me from making life choices and living normally.

Satan will use fear to dismantle and attack you. The best thing we can do when fear tries to attack is to look at the truth of how God sees the situation instead of running or freezing up. This is why it is so important to have key scriptures or truths you can tell yourself when the fear comes back.

When threatened by the messenger, Elijah could have risen up on the inside and told himself the truth. The truth was that God had sent him and would never leave him nor abandon him (Deut. 31:6). But Elijah had no response to the threat. When we are tempted with fear, we must ask the Holy spirit for the spiritual response to the temptation. Even if things seem like they are turning for the worse, God always has an answer. He sees beyond our situation, past the fear, into what will come to be.

Most the time, we believe in the worst possible outcome. We dread going through it and ruminate on what could happen. When we sit in these thoughts and obsesses over them they devour us internally and adrenaline consumes us until we are exhausted.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to have scriptures memorized for when the fire comes to your life. Remember the word is a sword, it will help you in the battle. Also, keep watch over your thoughts, take time to write them down. Before the emotion of anxiety comes up, there are lies or thoughts that are forming, which cause the anxiety. Ask God to show you the continual theme, and what Satan is using to attack you. It may be worries about finances, fear of the future, fear of failure etc. Replace those insecure thoughts with Gods truth and breathe!

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” 2 Corinthians 10:5