By Lucas Pruett

The past few Sunday’s I have been attending a new church in Atlanta called Influencer’s Church. It is a great environment. A couple of my co-workers attend there and I thought I would check it out. The pastor’s name is Ashley Evans and he is a powerful communicator of the Word. I have been drawn in immediately because he has been doing a sermon series called The Defeaning Silence and it is about how to hear from God and the believers struggles with hearing from God. I challenge you to go to their website and check those past three messages out. They are golden stuff! After my second visit, they gave me a book that the pastor had authored titled “No More Fear”. I decided to start reading a chapter a day moving forward. That has been an extremely fruitful decision to this point. The book dives into the basics of fear and the intimidating role it plays in our lives. I never realized how our fear paralyzes us daily and causes us to live short of God’s plan for us. God is so amazing and is such a powerful father. He has this amazing life of abundance in store for us. However, we allow fear to keep us from completely experiencing that. The enemy sets up shop in our minds and uses his lies and manipulations to strike fear into us. Now that I have been made aware, I am able to see how heart breaking of a cycle this is. God will intersect with us and speak a big vision into our hearts and the enemy comes swiftly in with doubt and speaks big lies (that are completely powerless) and we retract back into our comfort zone and back into a life that is less that what God planned. This process just stinks. I pray that God opens your eyes to that this week. He intends for us live in abundance, adventure, and expectation of what he is going to do. He does not intend for us to live in worry, shame, and in this place of curioristy about his existence and involvement in our lives. One of my favorite quotes from the early chapters of No More Fear has really impacted my life. Evans says, “Make a decision today to stop letting fear rule your life. Start believing God’s promise that He wants to do abundantely more through you than you ever thought possible.” Let’s break that down for a minute. We have to make a decision to stop letting fear rule our lives. It’s up to us. That is why I have titled this article what I have. This is a huge and life changing decision. We have to consciously look ourselves in the mirror and claim God’s victory over our thought lives. If we don’t, fear will continue to ravage our thoughts and actions. The opposite of living in fear is believing God’s promises. Our lives are that simple. We make things really complicated but the basic decision is either live in God’s promises and will, or live half measure due to fear. God’s promise to us is that He wants to do abundately more through us than we could ever think possible. In Ephesians 3:20, Paul prays, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” That is the God that has become our spiritual father. He is able to do immeasurably more than we could ever brainstorm, think tank, or imagine. However, fear tells us that God is small, not faithful, and isn’t even thinking about us in the first place. Nothing could be less true. No matter what place you are in your life right now, God, your father, has a huge plan for you that is eternally significant. I challenge you today to believe that! We talked last week about how your belief determines your behavior. This could be huge for your behavior. If you believed God at his word, that he wants to do abundatly more through you today than you ever imagined, then your life could be transformed. Today, punch fear in the face. Then make the decision that you will believe God’s promise! As always, if you have questions or comments then you can reach me at writingonpurpose@gmail.com.