Acts: Belief and Fear

Well, to catch you up to date, Prince Harry and Princess Megan did not go on a honeymoon right away.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this.

They decided to take a little break, so they're still in London.

In case you haven't been reading us weekly, just to be caught up on our Our Princess, sort of, right?

Like it's sort of our princess.

She's American.

So she was raised in LA.

She was raised in Hollywood and raised mostly by her mom.

She attended private school in Hollywood.

And then she went to Northwestern University there.

She double majored in theater and international studies.

She served an internship in Argentina.

I mean, by the time she's like 22, she's done, she's already like, well, she's done more than I have.

And then she began acting, and then she began waitressing to pay the bills, right?

Like she's done a lot.

And at the same time, what's really clear is she is worlds away from royalty, from being royalty of the British monarchy.

Finally, she lands a role on General Hospital, worlds away from royalty, right?

And then her big break comes in 2011 when she gets a regular role on the TNT show Suits.

A good job.

Like she's making good money.

She's a humanitarian.

But she is worlds away from being the royalty of the British monarchy.

Along the way, she gets married, she gets divorced, and then she goes on a blind date with the prince.

Because isn't that what life how life works after you get a divorce?

Like you get a divorce and then you go on a date with a prince.

That's how it works.

I mean, this lady's done amazing work.

I mean, if if anybody can earn something here, I mean it's pretty much this lady.

I mean, she has she's spoken around the world on gender equality and modern-day slavery.

She's spoken at the UN.

She was a global ambassador with world vision for clean drinking water.

She's traveled to India to raise awareness on women issues.

I mean, this lady could work it.

She could earn.

But what's clear is no matter what, royalty had to come by a gift.

Right?

And they stood in St.

George's Chapel in Windsor, and she's no longer Megan Markle, right?

Like her name, her literal name is Meghan, Duchess of Suxus.

And I don't know how that works on a driver's license.

That's her name.

There's no last name.

It's just Megan, Duchess of Success.

A princess of the British monarchy.

She was a commoner, and then by gift imputed upon her, she became royalty.

Right?

There was a change of identity and direction, and it had nothing to do with what she earned or worked.

It had to come by imputation, gift upon her.

There was a conversion.

There was a conversion.

Now there's a religious word, right?

To be converted.

All it really means is a change of position or identity or direction.

I was that and now I am this.

I was headed this direction, now I'm headed that direction.

I didn't believe, and now I believe.

Conversion, conversion, conversion, is what that is.

And what we see in Acts 9 is we see the conversion of Paul earlier in the book of Acts.

It's Saul, same guy.

He's murdering people, he's threatening people, he's rounding up anybody who's a believer in Jesus.

He is shutting that down with all he can.

And he's shutting it down to him out of religious conviction.

And he has this extreme story.

I mean, this is unbelievable.

Walking down the street, you see a light, you go blind, I mean, you hear a voice.

I mean, this is a radical conversion story.

Now, I doubt maybe many of you have a conversion story.

I've heard a lot of conversion stories.

I've done probably over 200 like one-on-one meetings with people over the last eight to ten years where I hear people's journey of faith or conversion story, and I would say about half of them have some sort of like particular moment in time.

I was hearing this happen.

I walked denial, I raised a hand, I prayed a prayer.

I was in a particular time at a particular moment, and something broke in.

God broke in.

Probably half the stories.

The other half are like, you know, I grew up in it, I came to a growing awareness.

Yeah, there was this time in high school when this happened, you know.

Like it, like kind of like walking into an ocean in July.

Like it's not cold, you know you're going in, but like you're just walking in a little at a time.

I don't know where your story's at in that.

I doubt you're like Paul and we're blind for three days.

It's probably not that extreme.

But all the stories, all the stories have one commonality: belief.

Like belief right now.

That's the commonality.

Some point along the way, unbelief turned to belief.

Maybe we can figure that out.

Maybe we can't, but the true thing is, is like right now, there's belief.

Belief has been born inside of you.

This is what's going on with Paul.

And Paul was incredibly content with his life.

He was actually proud of his life.

He was a member of the elect race.

He was in the elite group.

I mean, he was he was doing things.

He was at the top of the ladder.

And then something happens.

Suddenly that bright light, God's initiative into his life, interrupts his life.

So Acts 9, 4 through 8, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And he said, Who are you, Lord?

He said, I'm Jesus, whom you're persecuting, but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.

So Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.

So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus, and for three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank.

So a few points.

Point number one the process of coming to belief in Jesus always involves facing your own darkness.

The process of coming to belief in Jesus always involves facing your own darkness.

It took blindness for Paul to face his own personal darkness.

I mean, often for us it takes some measure of suffering, but we all have to face it.

And it is by God's grace we are gifted with the painful but freeing process of seeing your own darkness.

How do you know what binds you until you see what binds you?

How do you know what binds you until you see what binds you?

And so for three days, Paul's in this darkness, and finally he sees all that religious zeal and that self-effort and that just toxic moralism that's turning into anger.

And he's forced to see what's true in the world, and that is that by merit and self-effort and works, he will never be enough before God.

Megan Markle could never make herself a princess.

It had to be imputed upon her.

So maybe you've been driving with your sweet someone to a birthday party, your friend Cindy Joe, he lives way out in Paulding County, right?

Like way down Whitlock, and it turns into another road and to another road, and the names keep changing.

And you've been to her house a few times.

So you feel pretty confident on how to get to Cindy Joe's house.

So you and your sweet someone, you'll get in the car and you head out and you leave your phone at home at the end of the neighborhood.

I'm not turning back.

She has her phone.

I'm the pull-up ways and see how to get there.

And you say, oh, let's can't we just do anything without a phone?

And so she's like, okay, that's fine.

So you sit in an additional 20 minutes on Whitlock for no reason at all, but you're fine with it because you're going without a phone.

You are free, and you roll down the windows and you put on the beach boys, and you're having a great time.

You've been there several times.

You can find your way there.

You're very confident about this.

And so you keep driving and you make a few turns and you get out there, Whitlock turns to the whatever highway, the whatever highway, and you're getting out there, and there's more land and a few turns, and time's clicking away, and you're starting to feel that little bit of feeling like I don't quite know where I'm at, but I don't want to confess it to her.

She's sort of aware of that.

Party's about to start, you're not at the house, her phone dies, your car charger's broken.

She reminds you your car charger's broken.

You remind her of a few things that you've been holding back.

That doesn't go well.

So now you're without music.

She wants the windows up, you want the windows down.

It's not going well.

And then you have the bright idea, right?

At this point, you know you're lost.

You know you can't work your way out of this lostness.

You don't know where you're at.

The phones are dead.

You are at your end.

And you look at her and you go, Yeah, I think I'm gonna pull into the quick trip here and get directions.

Like it was your idea, your brilliant idea.

Like she hadn't had this idea for the last 30 minutes.

And the point is this you don't change directions until you see the direction you are headed simply doesn't work.

You just don't.

We don't.

None of us do.

You don't change directions when it all works.

You only change directions when it doesn't work, when you see it's not working.

And what we need is we need the light to take us into the darkness so we can deal with the darkness we don't even see.

Now that's metaphorical talk to say this.

By God's grace to us in Jesus, we see that our lives of escaping and earning and proving will are always ultimately darkness.

By God's grace to us in Jesus, we see that our lives of escaping and earning and proving are always ultimately darkness.

But the light of Jesus takes the darkness away.

But listen how Paul, he's working out his conversion as he writes all these letters later in his life, after his conversion, and he says this in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.

Maybe you've heard these verses, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

So he's understanding what happened at Damascus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.

You imagine him, a religious zealot, coming to these conclusions about his faith?

For by grace I've been saved through faith, it's not by my own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of my work, so that no one may boast.

And that's simply point number two.

The whole self, your whole self is redeemed by God's grace in Jesus.

The pursuit and the power always originates with the loving, gracious Heavenly Father.

Incarnate in Jesus, our sin put upon him, his righteousness is given to us.

It's not a little bit of grace and a little bit of self-effort, and they meet in the middle.

No, it's by grace, through faith, not of your word.

It's the imputation upon Megan Markle to be royalty.

It had to be imputed, it had to be gift.

Now we get to the second part of the story.

This is what's interesting because the first part of the story is all about like a conversion of belief, unbelief to belief.

And then we get to the second part of the story, that the second character, Ananias, he's already a believer.

He's already a follower.

But it's like a conversion of fear to love.

It's like after you're converted as being a Christian, now what do you deal with?

Well, what you deal with is fear, is what we deal with.

And I know a lot more Christians who are afraid, or just as many who are afraid as non-Christians who are afraid or not afraid.

Being a Christian doesn't mean you're not afraid.

It just means being a Christian, maybe perhaps, hopefully, you can appropriate your conversion of belief into that fear and be free of the fear.

So this disciple Ananias, he's living in Damascus, and this vision comes to him about this guy, Saul of Tarsus, who's now in his city, and the vision says, Hey, go to this man, go to him and lay hands on him.

Acts 9, 13 through 15.

But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem.

And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name.

But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and children of Israel.

Can you imagine what this probably felt like for Ananias?

Right?

To go toward the very man that's your worst nightmare, who literally he's thinking, this guy is a good chance he's just gonna, he's gonna handcuff me.

He's gonna take me in.

It'll be the end of my life.

I'll be leaving my family.

I mean, you imagine that.

It's so easy just to read through the story and forget the actual human reaction that would be going on inside of this guy.

There'd be such fear to go walk to your enemy.

How could Ananias do this?

Just would seem a lot easier to me, just not just don't deal with them.

Nah, I'm good.

I'm good.

Point number three is this after belief arrives, we have to deal with our fear.

This man was already a believer, but he still had this fear, this hesitation.

Go do this act of love.

I don't know.

I've heard about them.

Don't know.

Don't know if I want to do that.

Don't know if I want to face that.

Right?

It's so easy to know your position with God as a child of God, but not have to integrate it into a fear.

But integrating it into your fear is what transformation or growing in grace is all about or sanctification is all about, is integrating the conversion that's been given to you as a child of God and pulling that and putting that into your fear.

What does it mean for your fear?

Many of our fears are centered around our hurt.

We're afraid we'll be hurt, hurt again.

So we're defensive or possibly swing the other way and we're aggressive.

Maybe we're just distant in general.

Or we're afraid we'll hurt someone else, or we'll let someone down, or we'll not receive their approval, so we're needy or exhausted.

It's all darkness.

Maybe, maybe, maybe fear of not being enough.

Fear of failure, fear of being ordinary, fear of being useless, fear of being betrayed, fear of being uncomfortable, fear of being weak, fear of conflict.

And either fear will run your life or love will run your life.

It's always gonna be one or the other.

And point number four is this love is greater than fear.

So we recognize the fear, right?

Because you know when fear is going on, right?

What I've heard said before is uh anxiety is like a tiger in a cage with a room with you.

That's what anxiety is like.

That's that feeling.

It's bound, but it's in the room with you.

I mean, I'm anxious about that.

Hope the cage is enough.

Right?

Fear is you're in the room with the tiger with no cage.

That's what fear is.

So we know these feelings.

We know them.

Now, what we do when we feel them is something different.

That's the process of growing in grace.

Freedom is freedom is choosing not to be dominated by the tiger that's in the room with you, but by another source of life.

And this is where that conversion means everything.

That belief means everything.

That new identity and the acceptance and absolution means everything.

So we recognize the fear of feeling this, this is real.

And then we remember the belief.

I'm saved by grace, I'm accepted, I'm already accepted, I'm already absolved, I don't have to feel ashamed, I don't have to be afraid of whatever, wherever I'm running in my mind, I don't have to be afraid of that, I'm already a child of God.

But fear comes in.

I'm gonna be hurt again.

I'm gonna keep hurting.

I'll never be like her, I'll never be like him, I'll never have that.

The tiger's loose.

So we recognize the fear, we remember the belief, and now we have to abide out of that belief, out of that gift.

Paul words it this way.

Toward one of his last letters, Romans 8, 15 and 16.

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons.

We could say sons and daughters, by whom we cry, Abba Father.

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

We just have a greater source to live from.

We're already accepted, we're already absolved because of the work of Jesus.

So when we fear all that fear, we come back and we go, I remember the conversion of belief.

I believe I'm a child of God.

I know I'm putting a lot on this story with Ananias, right?

But we see it with him.

Somehow he gets over this fear, somehow he gets out of it.

He goes.

Maybe he's afraid the whole way, but but this call of love somehow, somehow overcomes his fear.

And he gets there and he places his hands on his greatest fear, and the man sees.

And when the man sees, his greatest fear does not threaten him back.

They become brothers.

So, my brothers and sisters, may your belief in Jesus strengthen and may you walk by love and not fear.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you for the stories in this room of conversion of belief.

For those of us that can remember, we were with our parents, we were with our grandparents, we were at camp, we were in a church, we were in the privacy of our own bedroom, we were driving in a car and we did not believe, and then we heard something, we saw something, we thought something, and our hearts and our minds were flooded with belief.

By grace, through faith, we have been saved.

We thank you for the stories of conversion of belief for those of us that it has been a growing awareness, and somewhere along the way, we believed.

By your grace, through faith, we are saved.

And now we believe and we are believers of the way of Jesus, and yet we walk around with a lot of fear, hearing the call of how we should live, to love neighbor, to love our families, love our enemies, face our fears, and it's so easy for us to escape, to numb ourselves, rather than to face that darkness, that we might move greater into freedom.

Would you help us to remember who we are, as your children, that we might cry out, Abba Father, and remember we have not been adopted to walk around in a spirit of slavery, of fear.

But we are adopted as your sons and your daughters.

Put this in our hearts in greater ways, in Jesus' name.

Amen.