Palm 37:8: “Cease from anger, and forsake wrath. Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.” This is simply saying, “Don’t let your anxiety drive you to a point where you will sin against God.”
Proverbs 12:25: “Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop; but a good word maketh it glad.” This is saying that the spirit of anxiety would turn a man upside down.
Matthew 6:25-34: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air. For they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature; and why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat or wherewithal shall we be clothed. For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
What is Jesus saying here? He is saying that we should not be anxious about anything.
Philippians 4:6-7: “Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” It is when you are not worried, and you go to God in prayer and supplication, that what is written in verse 7 would happen.
If you were a good reader of the Bible you would have discovered that the vocabulary of God is different from that of man. Many things exist in the physical world that carry no weight as far as the spiritual realm is concerned. For example, the calendar of January to December exists only here on earth. And so or so time exists only here. Means of transportation from one place to another are needed only on earth. In fact, when you read your Bible very well you can identify five kinds of language:
1. The language of God: When God speaks, He does so with absolute authority and with power. He also speaks with absolute glory. When He speaks, He speaks with absolute might and He speaks with faith and love.
2. The language of angels: When an angel is talking, his words are filled with delegated power from God. For example, Angel Gabriel stood and said authoritatively, “I am Gabriel standing by the altar of God. I have been sent to deliver this message.” Angels have no time to waste words. They are specific and direct, and their words are filled with absolute obedience and commitment to God. Read your Bible very well and you will find that those who asked angels for their names never got an answer.
3. The language of the natural man: The language of the natural man is filled with death, sickness, doubt, poverty, hopelessness, fear, confusion, chronic unbelief, hatred, envy and negativity. Sin is the language of the natural man.
4. The language of spirit-filled believers: The language of spirit-filled believers is filled with God, faith, power, authority, love and holiness.
5. The language of the devil: The language of the devil is filled with lies, deception, woe and destruction. Death is a word from the bottom of hell fire.
It is only in the vocabulary of men that you find words like impossibility, failure or death. In fact, somebody told Jesus that somebody was dead and Jesus said that the person was sleeping. It is in the vocabulary of men that you find poverty, bad luck and defeat. This is why we must readjust our vocabulary. Many of us have been naturally programmed to speak the language of the natural man and the devil. The more we speak this, the more unfavourable the situation becomes.
Examine what you say in the light of the Scripture. The language of God is the language we should be speaking and not the language of the devil. However, we speak the language of defeat because of anxiety spirits.
ANXIETY SPIRITS
Anxiety spirits are very dangerous spirits. Jesus spent time explaining why we should not give them room. Why are these spirits dangerous? It is because a 100 years of worry will not pay 1 kobo debt that you owe. Your crying everyday because things are not moving well will not move those things because crying out of worry does not move God. Worry will not remove the problem of tomorrow; it will only empty your strength for today. That is why Jesus said, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Don’t carry it to the next day. When tomorrow’s burden is added to that of today, they become a very heavy load. And when a person becomes very loaded, he starts forgetting God and God would become a spectator. Then small problems would look big.
Worry is the interest you pay in advance before the interest is due. Worry will keep a person very busy, but it won’t get him anywhere. Those living in worry invite quick death. Worry sends more people to the hospital than all the sicknesses that can be mentioned. Worry kills more people than hard work. A closer look at the origin of the word ‘worry’ reveals some interesting truths. One source says that it is a division of the mind. Another source says that the word means to strangle or to choke and these are the things that worry does. Worry is very sinful. It is the producer of fear. It is a disease and if a person has it, all other problems come in. A person who is worrying is borrowing a problem that cannot be paid back.
Worry is a grave digger. It has no sympathy. It kills prematurely and makes people to commit suicide. So, it is a terrible and clever spirit. For example, as you are reading this bulletin, you may be worried, but you do not know. You may be smiling, but you are worrying inside. It is not like the sin of adultery, fornication or stealing which you can easily know. Worry and anxiety spirits work quietly like termites eating away men’s souls. It anticipates the trouble, which may not really come. For example, when an employer says that he is going to lay off some of his workers, immediately something would grip the hearts of the worrisome ones who would assume that their names would be included. When eventually, the list is out and their names are not there, all the period they have worried themselves would have been a period of exercise in foolishness, because worry is a very foolish activity.
A person who worries lives like an orphan, without a heavenly Father. If you have a heavenly Father and you know that all things belong to Him, you won’t bother yourself at all about anything. Worry is a disgrace to God and wasted time and effort. It does a lot of havoc to people’s minds. It is a very clever spirit which moves along with a junior brother called fear. Immediately worry comes in, fear is standing at the door and when the two move in, Mr. Discouragement will also move in and the victim would be finished.
As you are now, you are a whole entity by yourself. Individually, you are a kingdom. You are a house. You are a spirit. You are living in a body and you have a soul. But the real you, whatever your name is called, is your spirit. Your soul and body are your tools for functioning as a human being on earth. As a Christian, when you die, your physical body will be discarded and replaced by the resurrection body of Jesus. The soul and the spirit man either go to heaven or hell fire because the spirit and soul go together. God’s proper order is that your body should be in submission to your soul and your soul should be in submission to your spirit, then the whole man should be in submission to God. However, when worry steps in, it creates disorder and the mind will be jumping from one place to another. A person who is trying to pray and at the same time is thinking about how bad the situation is, can never be fervent in prayer. This is the most terrible thing about worry. It drinks the blood of prayer fervently. This is why we must really deal with it.
At a particular psychiatric hospital, before a patient is discharged, a small test is carried out on him. They would push the patient into a room, open a tap and give him a mop. If he goes to the tap and closes it, they would know that he is well. But 90 per cent of the patients does not close the tap. They continue to mop the water while the tap is left open, and some continue like that until they collapse out of exhaustion. Many people are like that. They take the mop of crying, grumbling, fighting, shouting, drinking, dancing, socializing or music while the tap of anxiety is still open.
What we need to do is to bind and cast out anxiety spirits. When they are in control of a person, the person may be feeling headache and may take all kinds of drugs but the headache will not go. Anxiety spirits also cause pain in the neck, restlessness, etc.
A man prayed to God for blessing and God blessed him so much that he had ten transport vehicles. Every night, he was at the gate watching them coming in one after the other. If any one took time in coming, he would start pacing up and down worrying about what might have happened to it. He would be afraid that it might have been involved in an accident or that the police might have arrested its driver. In this way, he doubted the power of God who had blessed him.
When something bad happens some people would first of all transfer it to themselves. It is the work of anxiety demons. When some people are troubled you can see their hands trembling. They cannot hold anything or see clearly. When some people are attacked by anxiety demons, they feel tired. You know that you are not tired but something is telling you that you are tired, it is an anxiety demon at work. Sometimes, the attack results in dryness of the mouth or loss of appetite. This demon can also cause some people to have diarrhea. You may think that what you have is a big problem, but perhaps all you need do is to go and close the tap instead of using the mop and running all over the place. All the lightheadedness and uneasy feeling are the handiwork of demon of anxiety. Intense or irrational fear and emotional stress are also evidence that a demon of anxiety is at work.
A sister complained that all the seven men who proposed marriage to her disappointed her and she drew the conclusion that all men were wicked. When the eighth man came, she said, “This one may probably behave like the rest so I will place him on trial.” The man said that he did not want to be placed on trial. What happened was that anxiety demons have taken over. These clever spirits come in when miracles are piled up and very slowly and gently leak them out. You really need to deal with them.
The Lord has a lot to do for you if you would cast all your cares on Jesus and stop carrying them by yourself. Release everything into His holy hands, then pray your normal prayers and read your Bible. You will be shocked at what the Lord will do for you. Many people need deliverance from these spirits. Sometimes when these spirits have entered into a life, hypertension, diabetes and all kinds of things come in. But once you close the tap and say, “Look, satan, I am not going to worry my brain about anything because the Bible says, “Be careful for nothing,” you will be released.
Some people constantly feel that something bad is going to happen to them. I saw somebody going from place to place in search of help because he honestly believed that he had HIV. He went for a test and it was negative. He came back and said, “No, I must go to another place.” I asked him why he was doing that and he said, “It is because I read a book on it and everything they say in the book that would happen is happening to me.” That was anxiety demon at work. A lot of people fear for their safety, fear for their family, their friends or and fear for loosing control of their affairs. Some are highly irritable: if any small thing happens to them they would explode. They get easily frustrated. They find it difficult to sleep and when they wake up, they are unable to sleep again or they are frightened in their dreams. Some exercise the fear of going mad. All these are anxiety demons at work.
Some are worried that they may not find a husband, when they find a husband, they are worried that he will run away. Some are worried that they don’t have money. When they have money, they are afraid that it will be stolen. Some are praying that God may send them abroad and when God is sending them abroad, they would be shaking inside the plane. They are afraid that the plane may crash land. That is anxiety spirit at work. It is the elder brother of fear and discouragement is close to it.
THE WAY OUT
The important thing to do is to repent. Worry is a sin. Ask the Lord to forgive you.
PRAYER POINTS
1. Every evil power that anxiety has introduced into my life, come out now, in the name of Jesus.
2. You demon of fear, come out with your entire root, in the name of Jesus
3. I return every witchcraft curse back to the sender, in the name of Jesus
4. The enemy will not drag my life on the ground, in the name of Jesus.
5. Every fear of financial failure, vanish, in the name of Jesus.
6. Every satanic load in my spirit, go back to your sender, in the name of Jesus.
7. Every body of water harbouring my blessings, release them now, in the name of Jesus.
8. Every witchcraft operation against my prosperity, be dismantled by fire, in the name of Jesus.
9. Every satanic prayer issued against me, be nullified, in the name of Jesus.
10. You my business, multiply, in the name of Jesus.
11. O Lord, let no man prevail against me, in the name of Jesus.
12. I bind every spirit of anxiety and I cast it out, in the name of Jesus.
13. (Lay your hand on your chest): Every internal cage, be broken to pieces, in the name of Jesus.
