Attack!
By David Berg - June, 1972
Fear is a very interesting subject!––It's a lot of amazing things! And you don't realise so much of it is subconscious until you try to put it in words and try to analyse it! I suppose being afraid to talk about your fears is one of the worst fears of all, because to confess your fears is really to expose your innermost self––the part you hide from everybody––even those dearest to you!––In fact, the part you're even trying to hide from yourself, because you're afraid to think about it. You don't even want to confess it to yourself that you're afraid because that would be admitting you're a coward, and you don't want to confess you're a coward for fear of being exposed, I guess!
And I think the fear of failure is probably one of the greatest fears anybody could possibly have!––The fear of failure in life, love, labour and the Lord! If you're failing God, I think that's one of the worst for a Christian. And it's perhaps second only, I think, to the fear of failing others, because you know that God will forgive you, but others find it hard to forgive! The fear of hurting them because of your failure, fear of letting them down, disappointing them, hurting their faith, disillusioning them, discouraging them––the fear that because of your failure others will fail too!––This is hardest to bear! It's the kind of thing you don't even want to admit to yourself!
The fear of failing yourself is least of all! Really, in a way, it's a fear of the truth about yourself! But now here's where it pays to face your fears, because you have to draw a line of distinction by facing them—between that which is the truth and those fears which are the lies of the Devil!
I'll never forget when I was a kid about 12, delivering handbills, and I had to go into a certain yard to get to a house in the rear, and out from the back yard came this huge Great Dane, barking and growling furiously and coming at me full speed, leaping and bounding, and I thought, "This is it!" But I knew I didn't dare turn my back on him or he would bite me for sure, yet on the other hand, he was a little too big for me to face and I was invading his territory!
So I thank God I remembered to cry out to the Lord, and I suddenly jutted my hand out toward him and I yelled, "I rebuke you in Jesus' name!"––And did he put on the brakes! He skidded to a stop and looked absolutely startled!—And turned tail and ran!
So it not only pays to face your fears and to acknowledge them––even confess them––but to take a positive stand against them, especially in the power and Spirit of the Lord with the promises from His Word!
You have to find out the difference between reality and the imaginary––the Truth and the lie––because if it is reality, it doesn't do any good to try to tell yourself it isn't there—to just shut your eyes and hope it goes away, and when you open them again you'll find out it didn't exist––it was just your imagination!—And in that case, the best thing in the World to do is to face it and take some kind of action and do something about it to eliminate the danger by taking the initiative and launching an attack!
As any military strategist knows, it's impossible to win a defensive warfare! Defensive war is doomed to defeat! To win a war you have to launch an attack—you have to go on the offensive! You have to take the initiative! You have to be positive! You have to attack and invade and overpower! You can't just sit there and try to ward him off while he attacks and invades or he'll finally overpower you.
So it pays to face your fears, recognise they're there, decide between the real and the unreal, the truth and the lie, and go to the attack to dispel the vaporous fiction of the fairy tale and to drive away the genuine reality of real threat!
We're in a spiritual warfare, and our weapons are not carnal but spiritual––mighty to the tearing down of strongholds! This is a picture of your attacking the strongholds of the Enemy and ripping them apart, destroying the opposition! Jesus said of the Church, in Matthew 16:18, "The gates of Hell shall not prevail (withstand) against it!"
The picture is not of the church standing fast behind its closed doors while all hell attacks, but the picture Christ painted was of hell trembling behind its closed doors, while the church was in an all-out attack against Hell's gates, which were collapsing and crumbling under the weight of the power of God through His Church!
There's no such thing as a war which is not won or lost! You're either winning or losing! And if you're not winning it, you're losing it!
It's almost like a siege of a city in olden days. Sometimes the city would last several years—a city surrounded entirely by the enemy's armies, cut off from the rest of the World, from reinforcements and supplies which finally dwindled down to nothing, in food, manpower and ammunition, and became so weak, while the enemy just sat there and patiently waited and didn't even have to attack––because the city wasn't attacking!
You get weak from sitting still! You get weak from doing nothing. You become totally incapable of even defending yourself, much less launching an attack, while the Enemy gets stronger and stronger from one attack after another––from action, aggression, movement, invasion! You become weakened by a false sense of security, behind barred gates and closed doors and blinded eyes and the desire just to hold on to what you have without gaining any ground!
He's taking the weak things to confound the mighty, and the things which are not as though they were! He's made something out of nothing—you and me! "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit!" "Not of works" but "by grace through faith", and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against us! Hallelujah!