JANITOR FEAR(with lily Oluwatosin)

Picture a Janitor or gatekeeper as he opens and shuts a gate. A person whose job is to clean and take care of a building is called a Janitor. He/She controls access to a person or place.

Picture you! How blessed you are, with your great talents and gifts coupled with the Spirit of God within you as a Christian. Now picture the door of your heart being guarded by a gatekeeper called FEAR. Picture fear standing at the entrance of your beautiful heart, controlling what you access or what accesses you. That’s trouble!

Fear is a strong, negative emotion caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.

How then can you place an invitation to Janitor fear who is just sitting gently in his house? How can you write him a letter, offering him a job vacancy at the ministry of your heart affairs?

Ways We Invite Fear In.

• Fear can come from you being too aware of yourself that you lose sight of God. In more practical terms, I mean fear comes in you focusing too much on your weaknesses that you forget the person of GOD.
• Fear can come when you focus on what people say about you more than what God says about you.
• Fear comes when you misunderstand the term “humility” and you substitute it for “low self-esteem”. This in particular has placed fear at the forefront of our gates.

God has placed so much in everyone He created and when I say everyone, I mean including you. So many potentials has God embedded in gifts, talents, ideas, and visions that we carry but we see little of these on display especially among Christians. This is because we have written invitations to Janitor fear consciously or unconsciously in one way or the other to come and man the gate of our hearts.

Fear is a great janitor, He performs his job well! May I tell you how dutiful and diligent he is? He keeps and watches over every gate committed into his hands with great care. He painstakingly carries out his duties as he is very concerned with minute details. That is why when that idea comes knocking—those small, minuscule ideas, fear would whisper, “O soul, discard this. It is not worth your time and attention.” And when big ideas come, fear would shout out loud till your eardrums almost erupt “no! This is too big for you. You won’t be able to handle it. You won’t cope.”

You see, Janitor Fear is a hard worker. Do not take him lightly. He is always awake because he keeps you up all night, tossing you in bed, ridding you of sleep and sound mind. He doesn’t mind being busy all day so long he keeps you busy worrying over things you have no control over. That’s janitor fear for you!

Did I tell you of the sieving nature of Janitor fear? He sieves better than a colander as he diligently sifts out the bad, retaining the good. That sounds nice, right? Wait, let me explain. Janitor Fear reminds you of how inadequate you are; how helpless you are; and so stops you from letting out the great things you have within you. By that, he hedges in your potentials, giving them no room to find expression. Then he tells you you are not worth much and you begin to let out negatives like insecurities which rob you of healthy relationships. You spill out negative emotions of anger, hatred, jealousy, envy. So you see, he allows you to keep in the good potentials and let out the negative character. All because Janitor Fear is the access regulator. He is the gatekeeper.

Let’s move on to see Janitor fear’s neighbor. His name is Faith. They actually look alike and they do the same job of gatekeeping but they carry out their functions in very opposite ways.

You see those things fear does, Faith does the exact opposite. Faith tells you you are possible. Janitor Faith amplifies your strength above your weaknesses. Faith reminds you constantly of what God has said concerning you in the face of things people say. Faith sieves out the good. Faith helps you to release your potentials to bless your world. He not only keeps back the bad but rids you of them.

As good as Faith is, it seems Fear gets employed faster than Faith. Guess what? Janitor Faith is the only gatekeeper recommended by the one who created you. See that in 2Timothy 1:7. The Bible says “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind”.

The creator hasn’t given you the spirit of fear. What has he given you? The spirit of faith!

Hebrews 11:1 has this to say about Fear’s look-alike, Faith.

To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. (GNT)

The things the creator has said concerning you may be things that are not physically evident now. But faith says it is where fear says no, it can’t be. Your weaknesses may be towering above your potentials right now but faith says “you can do it despite it all for the strength of the Lord is made manifest through your weaknesses” but fear says “don’t even try. You will fail even before you get started. You are too weak for anything good.”

Looking at that 2Timothy 1:7, I was shocked to see that Janitor fear is an anaconda! Are you shocked as I am? He swallows up power. He renders you completely powerless.  He swallows up love. He makes you hard to love and makes it hard for you to love. And he swallows sound mind! No wonder you can’t sleep at night when he is in charge!

When Janitor faith is manning your gate, you have the power to do the things God wants you to do. You have love towards everyone around you and you also have a sound mind—peace of mind!

I have brought these two janitors to you so you can consciously choose. Probably you have unconsciously chosen janitor fear before now, you can change now and move on to Faith’s side.

How do you do that?

Simple! Change your thoughts, Repent. Repent means Rethink. Change the way you think. Begin to conform and align your thoughts with what the scriptures say about you. How can you do that if you do not read your Bible? Cultivate the habit of studying the word of God.  Oh, I didn’t mention that not studying the word of God is you taking hold of Janitor fear’s hand and dragging him from his house to your gate? So study the word to realign your thoughts with the mind of God cause fear is not in God neither is it of HİM.

And if you do not know this God yet, that can be a little tricky. Well, not that you can’t overcome fear persay. But you’ll just get to a point one day and you’ll realize you need a power higher than yours to confront that fear. Before you get there, come get your arsenal in Christ now. Sin is the cause of the separation between us and God. And God sent His son to bridge that gap. It is simple to come to God now that Hİs Son has died for our sins. Simply come to Him and confess those sins and ask Him to come into your heart and phew! You are cleansed!