The Absence Of Fear
By Phil Scovell
I awakened one morning with a mild tooth ache. Such isn't
all that uncommon for me. I have about a dozen gold crowns and I
have had at least 8 root canals over the years. It isn't
unusual, therefore, for some of my teeth to ache when I have a
cold or even when I am overly stressed. Plus, I've been told by
my dentist I grind my teeth at night.
My very first root canal was performed by a family practice
dentist fresh out of school. He nearly killed me. It was an eye
tooth, or canine tooth, on my upper right. I had no hospital or
dental insurance in those days. The root canal became infected.
After going back to that dentist a couple of times for help, I
gave up. The Christian man who was his partner, didn't want to
become involved. He strongly urged me to go and be admitted to
the hospital to get the infection under control. I told him I
could not do that since I had no insurance. I ended up going to
a family doctor and being treated with low level antibiotics
which didn't help at all. I soon found myself living on pain
medication.
The infection in the root of the tooth became so severe, I
got cellulitis and the right side of my face swelled up like a
balloon. After being on strong narcotics for over two weeks, my
hearing became distorted, and I was finding it impossible to even
function. Through a friend of my wife's at work, we found an
Endodontist, dental specialist, and I went to see him. He said
he would have to get the infection down first. I was on more
antibiotics, but this time very strong antibiotics, for three
more full weeks.
When the tooth settled down, I had no more pain, and he,
fortunately, finished the root canal with no problems whatsoever.
Recently, something very similar occurred but with my other
canine tooth on my upper left. That tooth already has a crown
and a root canal but it was hurting and getting worse. When I
went to our family dentist, he did some testing and discovered it
was the tooth behind the canine tooth which was dead. It was
also becoming infected. He began the root canal. He has done
most of my root canals over the years and I have never had any
problems. This time, however, he just could not find the pulp
chamber which contains the tooth nerve endings. A root canal is
conducted, once the nerves are removed, so that your tooth can
continued to receive blood flow. The dentist just could not, as
I said, find this pulp chamber with the nerves and he was afraid
if he drilled any deeper on my tooth, it would fracture the base
of the tooth and I would have to have it extracted. So, he sent
me to a Endodontist.
The Endodontist was great, very professional, keenly
compassionate and his staff was equally helpful. He fixed the
root canal, put me on tons of antibiotics, gave me explicit
instructions, and the infection soon went away and the swelling
went down.
I realize this information seems superfluous but as you can
see by what I have said so far, I did have cause to be concerned.
Additionally, it was a golden opportunity for anxiety to
manifest.
Although there were a couple of unusual spiritual things
which occurred as far as communicating with these medical people,
at both dental offices, I'll save that story for another time.
What occurred in my life recently, on the other hand, is what I
want to share concerning the absence of fear.
If you have taken the time to read any of my other
testimonial articles, a little over two years ago, my life
radically changed. I reached a point in my walk with the Lord
where I felt I could advance no further. I felt the Lord
speaking to me about quitting my job and that scared me. The
Lord had already told me He had a plan for my life but He only
told me enough that I knew basically it had to do with
intercessory prayer. Well, I don't mind telling you, I did not
want to quit my job. I have been broke many times throughout my
life, and in particular, super broke, upon occasion, while
working full time in the ministry. I in no way wanted to go
through that again.
Frankly, I didn't trust God. After all, He hadn't provided
for me many times in the past so why would He now. This was a
lie, of course, but I was thinking with my flesh and not with my
spirit at the time. So what happened? Life began to close down
all around me. I felt the depression and anxiety coming and
began doing everything in my power to stop its advance. I buried
myself in prayer, Bible reading, confession, memorization of
Scripture, and I crammed in all the church work I could find.
The darkness continued its slow ominous advance upon my life. I
felt the fear in that darkness and struggled to stay clear. The
fabric of my life began to tear in insignificant places and the
fear, masquerading as pain, began creeping in. I beat at it,
cursed it, commanded it away, jumped and stomped on it, and
pounded on it but it only continued to come closer.
I began having bad nights where I would awaken multiple
times throughout the night. Cold raw flashes of anxiety washed
over me occasionally and I knew it was coming no matter how hard
I tried to stop it. I begged God to help but still it came;
seeping into every corner of my life. Circumstances all around
me began to look larger than life and soon larger than God's Word
and eventually bigger than God Himself. Voices, which had only
been thoughts before, now demonstrated they had personality.
Using their skills at deceitfulness, they confirmed things were
rapidly becoming hopeless.
Eventually the voices became bolder and began attempting to
keep me from falling to sleep. I began to double and triple my
sleep medication to silence the voices long enough that I could
fall to sleep but they soon were able to even awaken me out of a
drug induced sleep and startle me awake with such force, I
thought I was having nightmares. Let me describe one of these
nocturnal events to show you how bad it was becoming at that
time.
One night, I took a whole pharmacy of medications to force
me into sleep. I was sick of hearing the voices and sick of the
fear they brought. No, I wasn't becoming a drug addict; I was
just scared and frightened of what was happening to me. What
were the voices doing to keep me awake? As I would drift off to
sleep, they would wait until I was just about asleep, and then I
would hear a loud pop or bang or click in one ear and I would be
startled awake. As I tried going back to sleep again, other
sounds and noises, would be used. Sometimes even my name would be
called loudly and I would jump into full alertness. The
prescription sleep medications helped, at times, to deaden the
sounds I heard, enough to allow me to go to sleep but more and
more, the voices and sounds were invading my sleep.
One night, as I said, I took an unusual large dose of the
medication. I wasn't afraid of over dosing but I was afraid of
the voices and what they were doing to me. I went off to sleep.
Drug induced, yes, but I was asleep. I had not been asleep more
than perhaps an hour when it happened. I felt like I was a deep
sea diver. I saw myself swimming about twenty feet below the
surface when something dark swam up behind me and grabbed one of
my legs by the ankle. Fear instantly flooded my mind and I felt
myself being violently jerked to the surface. When I reached the
surface, I was instantly awake. I was totally disoriented from
the drugs and the frightening nightmare and began to cry out. My
wife awakened and began talking to me to give me a point of
reference. I do not know what I would have done if I had been
alone because I wasn't even certain where I was at the time.
Things grew worse.
As I have said, the voices eventually took on personalities.
Yes, I knew they were demonic but no matter how often I used the
name of Jesus, they remained. The tormenting increased until I
could no longer go to sleep due to fear. It finally came to the
point I was not only unable to go to sleep but I was unable to
eat. I was awake, and without food, for five days. Then things
got worse.
I have written concerning the details of all the took place
beyond this point so I won't detail all that now. I felt it
necessary, however, to say this much in order to identify the
fear in my life and how it became impossible to manage.
I have experienced major surgery in my life about fifteen
times. Over a dozen of these were related to my retinal
surgeries when I was eleven years of age. As I have told the
story before, giant amounts of fear were plugged into my life
during those days and for various reasons. If you want to read
the details, read my testimony called, I Flew Kites With Jesus.
Over the last two years, the Lord has been healing me in
place after place after place where fear has been implanted. The
Enemy has been steadily losing ground. Strongholds have been
exposed by the Holy Spirit and pulled down. Footholds have been
discovered and eliminated through prayer. I am not suggesting
all fear has been totally eradicated from my life but now I know
how to find it and how to get rid of it. So, now. Back to my
root canal story.
After all the stress and pain I was experiencing, I knew it
was a good atmosphere to generate anxiety because of the physical
stress and strain and physical pain involved. After all, few
people enjoy going to the dentist and nobody likes stabbing
piercing pain. Those of us who have horrible experiences with
the dentist are especially susceptible at the time we are being
worked on.
By the end of this particular day, I was laying in the
dental chair as the Endodontist and his assistant worked on my
root canal. My back hurt, my muscles were stiff, and to say the
least, I was stressed out.
As I lay there letting them do their work, I realized
something was different. I thought about it for awhile but
wasn't certain as to its nature. Something, however, definitely
felt different. Then it hit me. I wasn't nervous or afraid like
I normally would have been. You see, with all the fear that was
implanted in my life when I was a child going through all that
major surgery, and even then, only to lose my sight, such
stressful events in my life almost always triggered lots of
painful memories of those earlier days. This time was different
because there was no fear which to trigger.
As they worked on me, I began to feel around in my emotions
to see if I could detect any areas of fear. If I would have
found some, I would have known there were other areas along those
lines which need healing. I found nothing. I felt around in my
emotions again and pushed deeper into my thoughts to try and
expose any fear. Still nothing. I tried generating the fear
myself by making fearful suggestions such as, "They aren't going
to be able to fix it. You are going to have worse pain than ever
before. The same thing is going to happen to you this time that
happened the last time and you know how bad that was." Even
after these thoughts were deliberately created in my mind, still
no fear came. I was at peace.
I wonder how many of you reading this article have had
something like what I am about to describe ever happen to you.
Often, even in the middle of the day, as a grown adult man, if I
went into the basement alone, sometimes, while doing whatever I
went downstairs for, I would suddenly feel a cold fear wash over
me and I'd get goose bumps all up and down my arms. Sometimes it
would run down my spine. Something felt fearful and frightening
around me. I would always brush it off as having watched too
many spooky movies as a kid. I remember one time being in the
basement alone at night and those cold fearful thoughts came
around and it literally felt like something put its hand on my
shoulder. Yes, it did scare me but again, I shook it off. After
all, I'm a grown man now. There's nothing there.
In the past two years, I have received healing from fear in
places of my life I never dreamed existed. As I lay on my back
and listened to the people working on me, I suddenly realized I
could not generate, even on my own, any fear. As I thought about
it, I realized there was only one answer. The healing of fear by
the Lord in so many other places in my life had now reached even
into this realm of my physical life. In short, fear had no
foothold.
Several months ago, I was in our basement alone. Suddenly,
I realized something was different. There was no awareness of
fear. I stopped and deliberately attempted to generate the fear
by thinking certain thoughts. Nothing happened. Even now,
almost every time I go to the basement alone, I try and generate
the fear I used to feel. It is gone. Why? Because the demons
associated with the fear are gone. They have no more foothold
upon which they can gain access to my emotions.
The solution is simple. Allow God to heal you in the areas
of deep rooted fear, let the Holy Spirit expose the lies
associated with it, and you will then be able to hear God's truth
spoken to you and the truth will set you free.
End Of Document
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