ATTACK!  GP 171   6/72

         1. 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 & 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, & you don't want to confess you're a coward for fear of being exposed, I guess!
         2. I GUESS IT'S KIND OF LIKE A DISEASE: You can't very well find the CURE unless you confess you HAVE the disease & you reveal the SYMPTOMS. It's one of those secret, dirty diseases that you're ashamed to confess you have, because you know it's the result of sin. Because if you're honest, you know your fears are results of doubts, & usually your doubts are the results of disobediences or feared disobediences or failures--feared failures, past failures or possible future failures!
         3. 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 & 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!
         4. 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 & those fears which are the LIES of the Devil!
         5. I'LL NEVER FORGET WHEN I WAS A KID ABOUT 12, DELIVERING HANDBILLS, & I had to go into a certain yard to get to a house in the rear, & out from the back yard came this huge Great Dane, barking & growling furiously & coming at me full speed, leaping & bounding, & 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 & I was invading HIS territory!
         6. SO I THANK GOD I REMEMBERED TO CRY OUT TO THE LORD, & I did something that I've even tried since then with people!--I suddenly jutted my hand out toward him & I yelled, "I rebuke you in Jesus' name!"--And did he put on the brakes! He skidded to a stop & looked absolutely startled!--And turned tail & ran!
         7. SO IT NOT ONLY PAYS TO FACE YOUR FEARS & TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEM--even confess them--but to take a positive stand against them, especially in the power & Spirit of the Lord with the promises from His Word!
         8. IT DOESN'T PAY TO TRY & SAY THERE'S NO DEVIL & NO DEMONS & NO SUCH THING AS EVIL, sin or sickness & just try to ignore the facts! It would be like trying to ignore that you have a disease when you've really got it, because as long as you have it & try to hide it, you can't very well find the remedy!
         9. YOU HAVE TO FIND OUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REALITY & THE IMAGINARY--the Truth & 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 & hope it goes away, & 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 & take some kind of action & do something about it to eliminate the danger by taking the initiative & launching an attack!
         10. 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 set him back on his heels! You HAVE to take the initiative! You HAVE to be positive! YOU have to attack & invade & overpower! You can't just sit there & try to ward him off while HE attacks & invades or he'll finally overpower YOU.
         11. THIS IS WHY COMMANDO & GUERILLA WARFARE IS SO SUCCESSFUL, even with such few numbers & very little manpower.--By sudden surprise attacks in unexpected places & weak spots in the enemy's armour you can do a lot of damage! You can hit & run before the enemy even knows what happened--before he even has a chance to retaliate. You can choose the time & place of attack, with lightning strikes, & disappear as quickly as they appeared, like little David with Goliath.--One little guerilla defied a whole army, like Gideon & his little band, a bunch of guerillas who defied a whole army; like Jonathan & his armour-bearer, a couple more guerrillas who defied a whole army! And boy, if you've got God with you, you're unbeatable, no matter how small you are! Jonathan said, in that particular attack of his, "God is not limited by few or by many!"--1Samuel 14:6.
         12. SO IT PAYS TO FACE YOUR FEARS, recognise they're there, decide between the real & the unreal, the Truth & the lie, & go to the attack to dispel the vaporous fiction of the fairy tale & to drive away the genuine reality of real threat!
         13. WE'RE IN A SPIRITUAL WARFARE, & 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 & 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!"
         14. 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 & crumbling under the weight of the power of God through His Church!
         15. JUST LIKE YOU DO WHEN YOU GO OUT WITNESSING--right on the Devil's ground--right into HIS strongholds! YOU'RE launching the attack, YOU'RE picking its time & place, YOU'RE taking the initiative, you're overwhelming the Enemy by surprise & suddenness & often he doesn't even know what happened until it's all over! You've come, you've struck him, you've wounded him & you've carried off some of his prey before he had a chance to get organised or retaliate or call the cops or decide what to do about you--because you came, you saw, you conquered!--And you hit him so hard he didn't have a chance to recover until you were already gone!
         16. THE ENEMY NEVER KNOWS WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO DO NEXT! He doesn't know what kind of a shenanigan you're going to pull next and you've put him on the defensive! He rocks and reels from sudden blow after sudden blow, so that he has no time to organise an attack on you, he's too busy defending himself! In this way, tiny guerilla forces and commando units can keep an entire numerically-superior conventional army at bay, and an army continually on the defensive will never get anywhere!
         17. 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!
         18. 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 & supplies which finally dwindled down to nothing, in food, manpower & ammunition, & became so weak, while the enemy just sat there & patiently waited & didn't even have to attack--because the city wasn't attacking!
         19. YOU GET WEAK FROM SITTING STILL! YOU GET WEAK FROM DOING NOTHING, as the church has for generations now. You become totally incapable of even defending yourself, much less launching an attack, while the Enemy gets stronger & stronger from one attack after another--from action, aggression, movement, invasion! You become weakened by a false sense of security, behind barred gates & closed doors & blinded eyes & the desire just to hold on to what you have without gaining any ground!
         20. YOU CAN BE DESTROYED BY DEFENDING, INSTEAD OF ATTACKING! NEVER LET YOURSELF GET PUT ON THE DEFENSIVE! Never let THEM do all the talking, ask all the questions, give all the answers! Sock it to them with the Word of God! Survey their condition, find the chinks in their armour, the weakness in their defense, then launch the attack with the Sword of the Spirit! Don't let them put YOU on the defensive or you're doomed to defeat!
         21. SURE, WE'LL HAVE CASUALTIES! Sure, we'll have losses! Sure, we'll have wounds!--But we'll win, because we cannot lose! It's impossible, for God is with us! And we're on the offensive! We're moving! We're attacking! We're active! We're DOING something, getting things done!--ACTING, not just talking!--SAMPLES, not just Sermons!--ACTIVISTS, not just theorists!--Converting, changing, conquering!
         22. ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS FOR OUR SUCCESS HAS BEEN OUR WILLINGNESS TO FACE THE FACTS, to tell it like it is & know where it's at!--To refuse to continue to drift along in that dream-world of religion, but to stand like a tree against the storm, like a rock against the floods, & then to move to the attack!
         23. WE'VE FACED THE FACTS, FACED THE FEARS & DECLARED WAR ON HYPOCRISY--war on their lies--war on their deceptions & delusions--& we are determined to destroy, to cast down, to uproot that which is false!--Actively!--Offensively!--That the Lord may plant & build the Truth & His True Church in its place! Hallelujah! "Onward Christian Soldiers, marching in His War, with the Cross of Jesus, going on before!"
         24. HE'S TAKING THE WEAK THINGS TO CONFOUND THE MIGHTY, & the things which are not as though they were! He's made something out of nothing--you & me! "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit!" "Not of works" but "by grace through faith", & the gates of Hell shall not prevail against us! Hallelujah!
         25. LET'S GO! ATTACK! YOU CAN'T LOSE, because they don't know how to fight! They don't have the right kind of weapons & they aren't facing the facts! They don't know the Truth!
         26. FACE THE ENEMY! ATTACK HIM! "Resist the Enemy & he'll flee from thee!" Praise God! Face the fear of Man in the power of His Spirit on the promises of His Word & you cannot fail! Praise God!