In the last post I described to you a dream that I had of a Woolly Mammoth which I understood to be a fear that I held in my heart regarding those in authority.

When God shines His light on such a fear, I have come to see this as an opportunity to be free from it.  I have learned to simply turn to God and say, “Forgive me, Lord, for coming into agreement with this fear.  Please show me when it entered my heart.”

When I did this for the dream described above, I saw an incident from my teen years. I don’t share this with others often, but I was actually a very troubled youth.  I was part of a quasi-gang in Newfoundland that caused a lot of trouble in our neighbourhood.  We got drunk, vandalized property and stole from our neighbours in richer neighbourhoods.  Many of my friends got into trouble with the law, and I myself was arrested twice by the time I was 15 years old.

When I was 14 or 15, I spent an evening in the back seat of a police car trying to convince the police that I was not involved in a robbery.  The truth was I was actually a lookout for my friends who were doing the robbery.  The police tried for two hours to get me to admit to the crime, but I did not.  I invented a story that I kept feeding them over and over.  They arrested me but nothing ever came of the charges, but the fear of the experience remained.

Six months after this incident, I left this gang and became a Christian.  I have tried to observe the tenets of the law from that day forward but there has always been this fear that I would be arrested again, as I was that night for being involved in some crime with the Law.

The truth is I keep feeding this fear with thoughts.  I would overanalyze my every action trying to find reason why someone would find fault with my life and throw me in jail.  These thoughts are the Woolly Mammoth that came charging into my dream and which I found myself trying to appease with junk food.

The junk food represented wrong thoughts that I would feed my mind.

The only way out of this mess is to repent of the fear, so I will model how this works for you in my next post.

In the meantime, would you also ask the Lord to show you when fear (or other emotion) may have entered your heart. He will answer your prayer, just as He did mine, and get you going on the road to freedom.