Help! Series: Facing Fear | Dr. John Ewart

Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Inglewood

Baptist Church here in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.

Thank you for tuning in to the podcast today.

Today we're going to continue in our series called Help Searching

for God's peace with him, with one another, and with ourselves.

Listen closely to what God has to say to you today.

Good to see everybody here tonight appreciate you being

here live with us and those of you who are listening to this as

a podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in

to this episode. I hope that you'll go back and

listen to the other episodes if you happen to miss those.

And we're going to study God's Word tonight.

Appreciate so much those of you who have been praying for us as

we've been moving and we've made an initial load over to the

temporary place we're going to live, which we appreciate, on

the Manning farm out there near MO Meyer.

Here's what's going to happen next.

We're going to be out of our house in Roseville by Monday.

We have no choice at that point. We'll be in violation of

contract. So Teresa will be cleaning the

house on Monday. Some of you have expressed

interest in helping Teresa to clean the house, the final

cleanup. If you're interested in that,

contact Michelle in the office. She'll actually line you up and

help you understand how we might do that.

So I appreciate those who are willing to do that.

Appreciate the men who came over yesterday and helped us or

didn't help us. Did everything.

I stood and watched them. It was great.

I was too busy banging my head on cabinets.

I'm thankful that I got a little sun.

If not you would see a a real red mark right here.

I walked flat out full speed into a cabinet door that was

wide open and I thought I can cuss myself so I may teach

better tonight than I ever have. Then I was out earlier and got

hell. Hell come down beating off my

bald head. So maybe God's trying to teach

me something. Appreciate you.

So take your Bibles and turn to second Timothy while I, I catch

up to you. You have a listening guide.

Those of you listening online can download that.

Thank you for listening. This series is going to continue

for a few more weeks. We appreciate that.

You know, most of us, you know, we, we're driving on 64 all the

time. You've heard me bemoan the

construction on 64 a little bit. I appreciate the the workers who

are working. My son actually sells asphalt,

so I should be happy they're they're doing things.

So my son is a regional manager of asphalt sales.

Now. I never thought I needed to know

about asphalt, but I've learned more about asphalt.

And most of the time when you're getting on the highway, you know

how it is when the, you know, people coming in those on ramps,

you know, they're just coming full speed.

You know, I remember a day when they used to yield, but now they

don't do that, do they, this kind of full speed and you're

kind of expected to yield for them and get out of the way.

You know what I'm talking about? And you know, as they come,

you're, you're, you're doing 79 or so, you know, and they're

doing 85, you know what I'm saying?

Or something? Well, one day there was a driver

and, and, and they come to that on ramp and they, and they, they

get scared and they just stop and they stop.

And of course the people behind them are just honking on the

horns and honking on the horns and honking on horns.

How come you're not going? And finally, 1 driver rose the

window down and says the sign says yield, not give up.

You know, that's kind of like this series we're talking about

how to yield to God's help, but not to give up.

We are people who need help, all of us.

I'm very thankful, as I say in every session, every episode,

that very thankful for Christian counselors.

I'm thankful for recovering ministries and ministries like

that in our church for the people who help one another.

And you might need that extra support of network because you

might be dealing with something very intense.

Perhaps you need help from medical experts or even law

enforcement. And I say that every week on

purpose because we deal with those situations sometimes where

people need in cases of abuse, they need, they need extra help,

they need that network of service.

And so we all though, because regardless of where we are in

life, we all need help. We're all seeking, we're all

seeking peace with God, peace with ourselves, and peace with

others. We seek Shalom.

We seek that completeness, that wholeness.

And so we recognize that long term health and long term wisdom

that we need on this journey depend upon us understanding

God's will. So regardless of where else you

are and what else is going on in your life, we all need, we all

need God's word. We all need God's will to guide

us. So that's what we're going to do

tonight. So, so I, I have a lot of

anticipation and excitement about what, what, what God's

going to do and continue to do at Inglewood.

I was very thankful on Sunday. And, and I'm not a scoreboard

person. In other words, I'm not living

by the numbers. That's not what I do.

But I am thankful we had over 1000 people here for worship on

Sunday and just thankful for that.

Just praise God for that. We're going to baptize again

Sunday and just thankful for what he's doing in people's

lives. And obviously the crowd on

Wednesday nights, I'm just a bit thankful.

Thank you for being here. We're very thankful.

And those of you who are listening, I'm here and getting

a lot of feedback from people listening to the podcast and we

appreciate you doing that very much.

We're going to produce more podcasts of other studies so

people can listen. And so when we recognize that we

all need this, so, so, so we have excitement about the next

chapter, but we also need help as we walk together through

God's word and to find that Shalom.

So tonight we're going to talk about an issue that is a common

issue in my world of evangelism. As a professor who teaches

evangelism, fear is always the number one reason people don't

share their faith. But there's a lot of fears out

there. And so we're not just going to

talk about evangelism tonight by any means.

We're going to talk about fear in general.

But fear is an enemy of peace, and you've got to recognize it

now. It's also a Basic Instinct.

One of the most basic instincts, instincts of humanity is fear.

And so we fear things. God knows that we're going to

fear things. God knows that we will likely

deal with a lot of fear on this planet while we're here.

And and so there's a negative fear that paralyzes and will

misguide us, where there's also a positive or healthy fear that

we'll talk about for a moment. But this negative fear keeps us

from being who God desires us to be.

And so in fact, if you'll pay attention to the Bible, the idea

of fear not is found 189 times at least in the Bible, at least

that many times, depending upon the phraseology, at least that

many times. In fact, every single book of

the Bible has some version of fear, not the unhealthy fears

that you should have. So God knew that this was a

problem. God knew that we would struggle

at times with different fears in our life.

And so there was a popular medical dictionary that I was

looking at. It had 368 different phobias.

So let me list 300 of them. Here's let me list just a few.

You'll know some of these. You won't know some of them

probably, or maybe you will. I certainly didn't.

One Arachnophobia, you know that one.

What's that a fear of? Yeah, spiders, Right.

There's Avia, aviophobia, Avio. Fear of you think birds?

That'd be a great guess. But fear of flying?

That's right. Birds might fall into that

category too, because some of those are just like flying

little reptiles. I don't know.

You know, claustrophobia, one of the most famous ones, you know,

you're you're scared to sit by each other.

That's good. There's actually a dentophobia.

Guess what that's a fear of. Yeah, Dennis, a lot of people

don't do that. So your teeth rot out and you

have trouble. Here's a here's a couple of

them. You might not know.

One of them is and I got to read it because I'll mispronounce it.

Pintherophobia. Pintherophobia.

Pintherophobia. That's it.

That's a fear of mother in law's.

Anybody have a testimony? Got testimonies out there that

he get an Amen. I get any look into how

Hallelujah. I have a wonderful

mother-in-law, by the way. She's taught me how to love as

much as anybody has. Here's another one.

Venus straphobia. Venus straphobia.

That's the fear of beautiful women.

See. You got to understand Teresa

scares me to death. See what I did there?

Thank you all. Good night, everybody.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And then you might get this one.

Ecclesiophobia. What's that's a fear of?

No, that's a good guess. Ecclesiophobia.

Think of ecclesia, fear of church.

Yeah. And too many people suffer from

this, but thankfully you don't. But there's also a healthy fear

in there. There's, there's a Basic

Instinct, healthy fear that that that protects us, It motivates

us. It, it, it can even draw us to

God. In other words, you know, when

the when the alarm sounds, we look for the fire, we seek to

extinguish it. We want to remove the danger.

We teach our children to not touch the hot stove or the hot

fire. And so there are healthy fears

that recognize God for who he is, frankly, because we also are

supposed to have a fear of God. And so there's a healthy fear

recognizes who he is. We'll talk more about that a

little bit later, but first, the Bible's not silent concerning

the negative side. So we're going to focus on the

negative side for a while here. And second Timothy helps us do

that. So let's look at this, this

warning or encouragement that Paul gives to his spiritual son

in second Timothy chapter one, verse 6.

For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God,

which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

For God gave us a spirit, not of what, yeah, but of power and

love and self-control. So we're going to break this

verse down quite a bit tonight, and then we're going to have

some other support text. You have them listed there on

the handout that you can follow along with.

So Paul's context here was actually the use of spiritual

gifts in the in the acting out of ministry.

That's what he's trying to encourage Timothy to do.

And I'll talk more about why he probably did that here in a

minute. But Timothy was struggling with

evangelism, struggling with ministry, and Paul's encouraging

him to use his spiritual giftedness.

Now let me share a different translation.

Let me share from the Amplified version of the Bible.

If you've never heard of the amplified version, some of you

probably have one. It actually will often express

more of what the original language is trying to explore.

And so it's it's difficult to read.

You wouldn't want to preach from it, but it because it, it chops

language up a little bit, but sometimes it elaborates quite a

bit. So let me just read verse 7 from

the amplified version. For God did not give us a spirit

of timidity, of cowardice, of Craven and cringing and fawning

fear, since the strength of it. And but he he has given us a

spirit of power and of love and of calm and well balanced mind

and discipline and self-control. So you can see some of the

meaning behind some of these words.

So there's a strong negative fear that Paul's referring to

here. And so we need to learn several

things from this passage. So the first thing we want to do

is avoid a spirit of fear. We're just going to take Paul's

advice. How do we avoid a spirit of

fear? Because I know people and maybe

you're one of them. And I certainly have known

people in my life and they live in a spirit of fear.

They seem to be afraid of everything.

They're they're worried and anxious.

And there's obviously a strong connection between what we've

already talked about stress. We've got worry coming up in a

little while. And there's a combination, you

know, these things are not separate categories over

there's, there's overlap. And so I know people who are

worried and afraid of everything, it seems like.

And, and so we want to avoid this spirit of fear, this

common, nagging, ongoing, paralyzing type spirit that

keeps us from being who God wants us to be.

So there, there's more than one Greek verb that's translated

fear in the New Testament. In fact, there's several of

them. And some mean different levels

and some mean different types. And, and one of them, Phobos,

That makes sense. Phobos.

That's where we get what word? Yeah.

Phobia. A lot of our English comes from

Greek. And so Phobos is used 47 times

in the New Testament. It's the most common 1.

And it can be either good or bad fear.

So you got to know context to understand whether or not it's

good or bad fear that that when that word is used.

But another one is the one that appears here.

And this is a little more unique, a little little more

specific, because then verse 7, this is a word that's always

used for bad. It's never used for any kind of

positive fear. So there's no question about

what Paul's trying to communicate to Timothy here.

This is this fear or timidity, this dahlia, which is cowardice.

It's a fearfulness. Think about that word

fearfulness. It's not just it's not just a

moment of fear. You're living in a spirit of

fear. If where fear is a part of your

life on a regular basis, you know, to where you're waking up

in the morning for those who've been here these weeks, you're

hitting that that manageable stress level.

You've crossed over and you're just scared of stuff.

And I know people who are scared of this life.

They're scared of the changes in this world.

They're scared of growing old. They're scared of being young.

They're scared of, you know, everything.

So well, you got to be careful because the root word of this,

the root of this word is, is the idea of fright.

It actually, it actually can mean to shrink from fear.

So I just want you to get the spirit of that.

So this isn't just I'm, you know, oh, there's a snake.

That's not what we're talking about here.

In fact, you should probably be afraid when there's a snake.

Ed Joyner has accused me of being a snake handling pastor

because I have some black snakes at my house and I just try to

grab them by the tail so I can move them.

And it doesn't like that. But anyway, so now I don't do

that to the copperheads. You know, I pet them and snuggle

with them, but that's tell another story.

No, I do not do that. Don't do that.

Anybody's listening. Do not try that at home.

So this is a spirit of fearfulness of fright, right?

It's the word also used. Let me read a verse John 1427.

Hopefully you have that reference listed for you.

He says peace, I leave with you. You know this verse peace I

leave with you, my peace I give to you not as the world gives do

I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled,

neither let them be afraid and that word afraid there's the

same word. So what Jesus is saying is don't

live in this state of fear. Don't live in a constant state

of fearfulness. That's not who God wants you to

be. That's not how you're supposed

to go through life. That's not the the type of

disciple that we want to become. So, so we're not to live in

this. So what Paul saying to Timothy,

it's very clear. Timothy, my spiritual son, God

has given you the adequate power to do your ministry.

He's given you the adequate resources to use your spiritual

giftedness. You don't need to be afraid.

You don't need to live in the state of fearfulness, right?

So we're not to be cowards. We're not to shrink back from

this life and our ministry responsibilities.

And we all have ministry responsibilities.

It's not just me, it's all of us.

And So what we recognize is, is that we need to discover who God

wants us to be and we need to live out Our Calling and

giftedness. In fact, the pastors here will

tell you they've heard it a number of times that my

definition of leadership, some of you heard it if you were here

in the view of a call time. But but my definition of

leadership comes from a guy named Kenneth Gangel.

But I paraphrase it to where what I want to do is I want to

understand my giftedness in calling.

And I want to use that to the best of my ability to help you

understand your giftedness in calling so that together we join

all that together and we can feel God's mission together.

So I, I want, I want to equip you and empower you to live out

who you're supposed to be that that's called discipleship for

me and leadership. But many unfortunately, in the

church and outside the church fall prey to these false beliefs

that lead to unhealthy fear, lead to Dahlia.

So there's several these listed here.

Let's talk about these for a minute.

Here's some falsehoods that lead to negative type fear.

Number one, I must be loved or approved of by everyone.

You know, people like that. Anybody know somebody to where

every everybody's got to love me.

Everybody's got to be approved of me or I'm going to kill

myself, making sure everybody loves me and approves of me to

the point of maybe I'm not even authentic anymore, you

understand? And so there's an old saying

that says, I used to worry about what people were thinking about

me. Then I realized they weren't

thinking about me at all. Instead, they were worrying

about what other people were thinking about them.

And you can just cut cotton that you see the trap.

You see the trap there. I, I, I certainly don't want to

offend people any more than I have to.

I try not to be rude or boorish, but at the same time I'm, I'm

trying to, to perform for an audience of one, right?

I'm trying to approve and bless and do what he wants me to do.

And so we've got to be careful. We can get trapped in this

people pleasing mode to where we can lose ourselves and, and not

be authentic #2 I must always be perfectly competent.

This is an interesting thing that people in ministry suffer

from. I have to tell the seminary

children about this all the time because it's weird for some

reason. And you all may be guilty of

this. Shame on you.

Shame. Shame, shame, shame.

It's weird that people think that the pastor ought to know

everything. It's always weird to me, you

know. Well, what does this mean?

I don't know. I don't know what that means.

Well, actually, why should I know what that means?

I don't know what that means. Depending upon what it is.

But some are afraid. They have to be Omni competent.

They must always be right. They can never be wrong.

You have those people in your life, they know everything about

everything, whether they know anything about anything.

And that's just quite a load to carry.

And this may sound disrespectful, but if you

understood my family, it's, it's just a true funny thing.

When my mother died and she died suddenly, it was quite a

dramatic experience. We were, I was pastoring in

Northern Arizona, planted, we were planting churches all

across Northern Arizona. And they came out to see us and

came to see the Grand Canyon. And three hours later, she's in

my arms dying. So it's quite dramatic

experience. And when and after she died, my

oldest sister and I were talking about it at the funeral and I

preached the funeral. But my older sister, and this is

kind of morbid, I shouldn't share.

Maybe I shouldn't share these things, but we were talking

about what ought to be on the headstone and, and, and she said

we really should put on there often wrong, but never in doubt

because that was my mother, you know, and she would have been

proud of that, by the way. So that's the part that's not

morbid. She would have said, yes, that

would have been good for my tombstone.

And and then my sister said that this must have been quite a load

to carry your whole life, to always have to be right, you

know? And so I hope that that's not a

burden you're carrying, because there's only been one perfect,

one perfect person, whoever lived.

And he died on a cross, you know?

And so I try to tell people in ministry, some of the most

freeing words you can ever know are, I don't know, but we can

look for the answer together. We'll discover that together.

But I, I don't have to be omnicompetent.

I don't try to. I don't want to try to be that.

And so they're often wrong. But #3 it's a catastrophe when

things are not as I want them to be.

You know, as I mentioned a few weeks ago there, there are those

who believe that they should always get things just exactly

the way they want them. And it really throws them off

when that doesn't happen. And, and you need to hear my

advice a little bit. And let me put this to you as as

clearly as I can. Grow up a little bit, Just grow

up a little bit, mature a little bit.

Life doesn't always go the way you want it to.

And you can't be afraid. You can't be paralyzed because

this may not turn out exactly the way I want it to.

You're talking about a control issue that we're going to talk

more about in a minute. There's a Lordship issue going

on there. And so they, they, they need to

grow up a little bit #4 it's easier.

This might be one for you. It's easier to avoid certain

difficulties and responsibilities than to face

them. Anybody here put off the

conflict, put off the confrontation, Avoided at all

costs. I've seen a lot of heads nodding

now, so I know I was going to get you before one of these was

over. You're mad at me because I was

mean about my Mama. Now you're cutting down, you're

nodding your head at me. So we're all right.

But listen, they carry their fear.

When you do this, you're just carrying your fear and you're

applying it to everything and everyone and you hold on to it.

Often with the problem with this is, is people hold on to it,

hold on to it until they finally explode in some emotional way,

either anger or just meltdowns. And, and it's because they

haven't dealt with things as they're going in the right way

#5 maybe this is you. My past determines my present

and I cannot alter the influence of the past.

You know, it's interesting. You can't change the past, but

you can run a perfectly good present and future by fearing it

and dwelling on it. Fear often.

And this is what Satan will do. He'll press your nose up against

the future, forcing you to worry about all the what ifs.

One of you posted, I don't know when that's one of somebody here

who's posting that trace on on Facebook or something.

Somebody posted, you know, where it says fear says what if?

And faith says, even if. See the difference?

And so fear presses your nose up against this stuff.

And we can allow negative experiences, negative attitudes

from the past to absolutely drain us of our present and our

future power. Corey 10 Boom once said, worry

does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows.

It empties today of its strength.

And so fear has power. Now, what I'm about to say is

that maybe the most important part of the night, I've said it

multiple times. I will say this multiple more

times. So you'll go, here he goes

again. You bet.

Relevancy and redundancy are a key part of us remembering

things. And one of the things that I've

shared with you before, more in passing, is to remember that

there's a reason why fear has power.

This is this is crucial. This might be the deepest

uridism you may ever hear. And that's because fear is an

act of worship. Fear is an issue of relational

authority. See, we need to be careful that

we don't deify our fears. When you fear something, you pay

homage to it. Think about it.

When you fear something, you pay homage to it.

You you submit to its authority in your life.

You give it power over you when you fear it that way.

And if you fear anything or anyone more than God, you commit

idolatry. And we've got to keep this in

perspective. I'm not talking about being

afraid of walking out in a moving bus.

I'm not talking about being a being afraid of of handling a

snake. It was, you know, Ed doesn't

want me to do that. And then I'm we're putting your

hand in the fire, right? That's that's not what we're

talking. We're not we're talking about

this attitude, the spirit of fearfulness, right?

Be careful because what throne are you worshipping at that

point? And so when we fear the wrong

things and we love the wrong things, we're committing

adultery. Idolatry.

Not adultery. Idolatry.

Idolatry. Oklahoma.

Sorry, idolatry. So number six, fear is caused by

outside circumstances over which there's no control.

And what we're going to see here is we have to lift our eyes

above the circumstance. We have to look to God.

We have to trust Him. We're going to talk a whole lot

more about that. God is sovereign.

He's orchestrating circumstances.

They're all within his realm, within his control.

We got to look to Him. And then #7 I must dwell on

fearsome things continually. That's this description that

Paul's trying to get around, that you can't dwell here, You

can't live here. So some people are certain that

no matter what they do, it's going to turn out wrong.

So they don't do anything. And the response is to not try

anything new. The response is to fear change.

And they become paralyzed by fear, and the future looks

bleak. No matter how they slice it.

There's no way out of this or that.

Some believe they don't have anything to be afraid of and

they need to be afraid of that. You know, so there's a

difference between fear and this legitimate concern.

Legitimate concern produces constructive, positive,

redemptive action. It saves you, it helps you.

Life throws enough at us for which we need to be legitimately

concerned and and to determine God's will.

But healthy fears is healthy fear produces solutions.

It rather than paralyzing, hand wringing, and in fact, unhealthy

fear just wastes time and energy.

One study showed this. This will be interesting to you.

Maybe one study showed this, that the average person's fear

is focused in the following ways. 40% of the time it's about

things that will never happen. 30% of the time it's about

things in the past that can't be changed. 12% of the time it's

other people's opinions that can't be controlled. 10% of the

time is on about personal health, which deteriorates the

more you fear. 8% is about real problems that you're soon going

to face. So 92% of the fear that most

people experience are about things you can't control.

We've got to recognize what a waste of time.

There's an old Scottish proverb that says what may be, may not

be. And so we sometimes fear about

what ifs, what could happen. And so because of this ever

present fearful emotion, a person can run, constantly run

over in their mind all the possible reasons why they can't

do what God wants them to do. They constantly rationalize that

lack of action as well and and they imagine all these what ifs.

So this cloud of pessimism hangs over their heads and a constant

fear of the worst case scenario. And so it's the epitome of a, of

a self defeating cycle and outlook that creates this

unending, cannibalizing cycle in your life.

And you become a person that frankly, nobody else wants to be

around because of your paralysis.

And so unresolved negative fear can lead to major problems.

It can also be physical problems, obviously

sleeplessness, tension, chest pain, increased blood pressure,

you name it. A spirit of fearfulness is not

good for you. Spirit of fearfulness bad,

right? But I don't know about you.

Maybe you're in that cycle. You just can't get out of it.

I'm always thinking about what's going to go wrong.

I'm always the person who's afraid of taking that step, that

person who lives in a spirit of fearfulness.

Luke says this about worry. Really, he says of which you

beat by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life.

Same thing is true of fear. I don't add a single second

because I'm afraid. I often lose minutes, hours and

days because of fear can be the state of being.

So a fearful father told his rebellious son one day he told

his little rebellious son, he said, every time you act that

way, you give me another Gray hair.

And the son looked at him and replied, says, Gee, dad, you

must have been a rotten kid. Look at grandpa.

So fear not only hurts our walk with God, but fear also harms

our testimony with others. It it hurts us.

I mean, if I'm afraid of everything, what does that say

about my walk with Christ to those who know me and watch me?

Why would they want to be like that?

Why? Why do they think I have

something better or different than they?

And this is part of the context of Paul Rudd and Timothy.

So let's get back to this. So Timothy was obviously either

afraid of sharing about Christ or suffering for Christ because

of the context he was in, or he had the potential for being

afraid like that. And so Paul's encouraging him to

avoid that fear. So Paul challenges Timothy

again. Let's start in verse 7.

He says, for God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but of

power and love and self-control. Therefore, do not be ashamed of

the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but

share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who

saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our

works, but because of his own purpose and grace which he gave

us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

There's a lot of stuff in there. And so that's where we infer

that for some reason Timothy was either afraid of sharing about

Jesus or maybe in the midst of persecution, afraid of standing

strong for him and and afraid of the persecution that might come

from suffering. Or it was coming and Paul was

trying to help him before it got there one way or the other.

But we see some solutions here. So we're going to try to avoid

this spirit of fear of of fearfulness.

So what, what do we do? Well, one of the things we need

to do is just listen and read the scripture.

We need to adopt A spirit of power, love, and self-control.

These are Paul's words. So here's what we need to do.

Rather than respond to the past and present or face the future

with some sense of panic or a spirit of fearfulness.

We need to be disciplined enough.

If you remember the amplified version, calm enough, trusting

enough to focus upon the power of God in our lives and reflect

that grace and purpose back as a testimony to be that mirror of

what God is doing for us. And and so we can't live.

Paul's clear here. We can't do this by our own good

works. You're not going to pull this

off by your own good works. You, you got to understand God's

purpose. You got to understand God's

grace which he's bestowed upon us even before time began.

So the true opposite of fear that that issue of relational

authority, that act of worship is not my ability to deal with

things by my own strength. I, I hesitate to even say that

it's bravery or courage. In the Christian realm, in the

spiritual realm, the opposite of fear is faith.

We believe, we trust. And so we must be self

controlled enough, disciplined enough, loving enough to make to

move from this, this negative earthly fear to a radically

different kind of fear. We replace one fear with

another. That may sound odd, but that's

what we're doing. We, we depend upon his power,

his love, his salvation, his holy calling, his purpose, his

grace, which is given to us in Christ Jesus to be able to do

this. So you can't do this on your

own. Only a Christian can know this.

And so since fear is an act of worship, now follow me here.

We have to redirect its proper destination.

So instead of worshipping earthly things and the fears of

this world, we are to fear who God.

That's why the Bible talks like that.

It's an act of worship. So we have to make sure we're

aiming at the right throne, and often we're aiming at ourselves.

We're looking in the mirror when we need to be looking in the

throne room and to recognize that we have to redirect this

act of worship. We have to redirect this this

act of fear. So we take our we must take the

worship off of earthly trials and things around us.

If fear is proper object, the Bible says that we should fear

God above all else. That doesn't mean we're scared

to death of God. That doesn't mean that we're

we're frightened to death by God.

Although to be honest with you, there are aspects of God that

ought to frighten us. His Holiness.

Moses couldn't look upon him directly.

It would have killed him. And when he, when he looked at

him indirectly, he shone like the sun had to wear a veil.

In fact, I've often wondered and it probably says, and I just

don't remember. You know, I was reading through

Exodus and, and I was remembering, you know, he, he

had to, every time he went in there, he, he, he got lit up

again and he'd have to wear the veil again.

And I wonder how long that lasted.

How long did, how long did Moses shine?

You know, did Moses just walk around the rest of his life with

a veil on somebody? Look that up and let me know

when that quit. I don't know if I can find it in

there. But but I do think that the fear

of God, especially in our culture today, because everybody

just wants God to be what in our culture God is what love that's

and he is, but that's all they want him to be.

In other words, what they really want him to be is God is so

loving. He will accept anything I choose

to do and not really hold me accountable for it.

So I can justify anything. So there's there's there's no

objective truth anymore. I get to pick it.

I get to make it and God's love. So it's all OK.

He's just really happy for me. We even have some contemporary

Christian music who probably kind of leads leans into that a

little bit too much for me. But but but what we see is is

that the fear of God is often one of the most misunderstood

concepts in the Bible. God is not out to get you.

That's, that's not the point. He seeks to know you, He seeks

to save you, He seeks to call you, He seeks to gift you.

He seeks to empower you and to use you.

But the fear of God is this true understanding of who God really

is. It's a recognition of his

character and nature. And if we really began to

understand even a fraction, because that's all we get to

understand of who God really is, it, it ought to bring to us an

awesome reverence and respect for his authority.

So fearing God means that that proper, all of his power, His

Majesty, and certainly His Holiness.

And often I'm not too sure we keep up with that.

Will I? We want Jesus as our buddy, God

as our pal. And don't misunderstand me.

They want that intimate personal ABBA relationship with you.

But there's also this other aspect of God.

We need to remember that we can't just justify our sin and

then do it again and then do it again and then do it again and

ignore the consequences of those acts.

So this is not fear of punishment.

It's an unrivalled respect, an unrivalled respect and

admiration and appreciation for God leading them to action.

That's what Paul's trying to get to Timothy.

Don't forget who God is. You know, you're looking around

you. You're getting worried, you're

getting scared, or you're going to because you're in a tough

spot, you're ministering in a difficult place and you and

you're, you're getting paralyzed.

You're not living out your spiritual giftedness.

You're not living out your calling.

You're not doing everything God wants you to do because you're

looking around you too much. You know Peter, Peter, you're

looking at the waves. You know the story.

You're looking at the waves. You need to look at me and

you're looking at the waves. And So what do you, what does

Peter do? Begins to sink.

So we see this, listen to Psalm 2, verse 11.

Psalms 2:11

Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.

Isn't that amazing? Those words go together.

Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice.

See, this isn't something that we should, we should hate.

This isn't something we should avoid.

This is something we need to embrace.

You are so majestic, so, so much greater than we are.

You deserve all of my respect, all of my awe, all of my wonder,

all of my fear, my healthy fear because of who you are.

And I rejoice because I get to know you now.

I made tremble in front of you because that's the way I ought

to be. I need to understand who you

are, and I need to understand who I am, and I need to

understand the difference between the two.

And sometimes I think we we lose that because the fear of God

produces joy, because we know God is our salvation.

We know God is our security. I don't have to fear that.

God's got that. If I'm just right with you, I

don't have to worry about that. You've got that.

You'll take care of that. Or them or the snake, you know,

snakes. I'm going to hear all about that

later. But anyway, so our reverence for

him then draws us to him and it drives us to call on him to

understand what's your will? How can I serve you?

You're the King and and our love for God should also reveal his

love for us. Listen to the Psalmist again in

Psalm 118 verse. What is it for you?

Let those who fear the Lord say his steadfast love endures

forever. So not only does fear and joy go

together, fear and love go together, and we just don't

think like that down here. We see fear as something to be

afraid of, something to dread, something that holds us back,

something that paralyzed. We see this negative side

because that's the fear we live in that spirit of fearfulness.

And if we were to adopt this spirit of power, love and

self-control, we'll recognize that we can rejoice and we can

even love in the midst of the fear because because it's a,

it's a fear that leads us to a better place, to a better

person. But unresolved lingering fear,

hear me now, that's sin. God doesn't want us to live in

that. So it's not God's will.

It's contrary to God's will. So we're missing the mark,

Hamartiya word for sin. We're missing the mark.

It's sin. And So what we see is when you

have your heart set in the world, you're not focused enough

on Him. This is a worship issue.

I'm not focused enough on him. And my heart set down here on

this stuff, and all I see is this stuff, then I'm going to

fear this stuff. But if our primary focus is on

the Kingdom of God, there's just a different perspective.

So how do we do this? All right, we need help.

Thus a Bible study called help. Look at verse 7 one more time.

For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of love, excuse me, of

power and of love and self-control.

So listen, how do we overcome negative fear?

Well, first of all, this recognize God's grace.

God, we're just going to break this verse down.

God gave. This is a gift right?

This is not something I create. This is why first of all you

need to trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and be a

follower of Christ in order to be able to access this

resourcing. A non Christian can't access

this and so we need to access this by first being saved.

Now we're in the right relationship with God and we can

have the right fellowship with God.

One of these days I'm going to teach a lesson on assurance of

salvation that once saved, always saved concepts.

And I want you to understand the difference between a

relationship with God and fellowship with God.

Let me just illustrate it this way.

I'll say this again later sometime when we're together.

So just, you know, act like you never heard it before.

Make me feel good. But but, but my youngest son's

name is Josiah. Now let's pretend that Josiah

hated me. Now he doesn't.

But let's just pretend that. And in fact, we we were together

this weekend and had some pretty good Mexican food and he's a

great uncle to his sister's kids.

And so Uncle Joe Joe. So let's say Uncle Joe.

Joe grows up and he hates me, and he moves as far away from me

as he can, changes his name, act like he never even know me, just

absolutely writes me off, disowns me, doesn't have

anything to do with me ever again.

Is he still my son? Yeah, because he can't change

the relationship. He was born into that

relationship as my son. Is the fellowship any good?

No. You can understand the

difference between these two things.

See, I know a lot of people who might have a relationship with

God, but their fellowship is the roller coaster, right off and

on, cold, hot, lukewarm, we got to recognize God's grace.

This is a gift from God, and this powerful, this new

powerful, disciplined spirit is only given to us by God.

So I have to spend time with Him.

I have to be focused in my spiritual disciplines.

I got to be in the Word. I got to be in worship.

I got to be in prayer. All these things are there for a

reason. These are the building blocks

that allow me to have this access to resourcing from the

Kingdom and so I need to be exposing myself.

I don't create this. I receive this.

In fact, Romans 8:15 that talks about this relationship.

Romans 8:15

He says, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall

back into fear, but you've received the spirit of adoption

as sons by whom we cry ABBA Father, we're in this unique

relate what a what a privilege. See, becoming a Christian isn't

just getting out of hell and going to heaven whenever you

die. That's a byproduct and a

wonderful long term part of it. It's about who you are right now

here on this place. He's left us here for reasons

and one of them is for us to worship him in the midst of this

nonsense, to serve him in the midst of this junk that we go

through every single day. We're to be a testimony, a

light. So it's pointless for pointless

for us to attempt to to serve and to fear him without the Holy

Spirit really empowering us and guiding us to do that.

We can't handle the fear of this world without his grace.

I mean, evil's rampant, I mean mayhem throughout our culture

today. Yet yet by the supernatural

restraining of the Holy Spirit, it could be even more crazy.

I promise you, he's holding it back, He's restraining it.

God is still in complete control.

He's still calling the shots. And we don't have to fear

because we trust the Providence and the power of God.

We can transcend this place. But that takes discipline and it

takes a closeness, It takes an intimacy with God in order to do

that. So unhealthy fear here, this

here, here. What I'm about to say unhealthy

fear insults God. You got that?

Because what are you saying? It, it denies his grace.

We're basically saying, I don't really believe you can handle

this. I've got to try to handle this

myself. And it's an insult to God.

It it, it's a, it's an insult to the relationship that he's

brought us into a relationship of faith and trust.

We're saved by grace through by grace through faith.

And we're we're maintained that way.

And sometimes we take back control.

We don't let Jesus have the will.

We we like to put it on cruise control ourselves.

And so we, we often fear because we want to control rather than

trust in him for our future. We fear and and and and that's a

prideful thing. We fear as pride deceives us to

justify ourselves. You tracking with me.

So I am so proud, prideful that I, I can't, I deceive myself

into believe I can't. I can do this.

I can handle this. I'm supposed to.

I'm do this myself. I can do it.

I wait. I can do this.

I don't need you. Then I'm afraid because I can't

do it. Then I'm afraid because I

failed. Then I'm afraid because what?

What, what's everybody going to think about me?

They're going to think I'm weak and I'm puny.

I'm. I'm wrong.

I can't be wrong. I'm never wrong.

Spiraling. Can you hear a snake whispering

in your ear? There's a reason I've been

talking about snakes. Can you hear him whispering in

your ear? Listen, we got to be careful.

Jesus calls the person who fears you of little what he does.

O you of little faith. See when we dwell in negative

fear, we're saying to God, I have no faith in you.

An unhealthy fear calls God a liar.

It's a sin. In fact.

God says I will provide your every need while you're here on

earth. Fear says, I'm not sure he'll

come through. God says when you have problems,

I'll make sure you can cope. I won't give you more temptation

and and and burden than you can handle.

Fear says no way I won't be able to deal with this.

God says, trust me, in the end, all things work together for

your good. Fear says, I don't think any

good will ever come out of this. There's no way God's going to

work in that. And so we recognize and when I

by the way, when I do community assessments like I've done this

huge 10 mile radius from right here study not just of

demographics, but what are called psychographic and

practicing. How do people think what do

people do pretty thorough study. Guess what is a high up on the

list? Fear.

They're afraid of this, they're afraid of that.

They're afraid of another thing. Just list after list after list

after list full of fear. Fear of the future, fear of

commitment, fear of failure, fear of loneliness, fear of

finances, fear of family issues, fear of crime, fear of death,

all these things. So we need to be different.

We need to be a testimony of faith.

We need to be a community that says grace and power rule here

and enough self-control to live it out.

But we also got to be honest. And we have to admit sometimes

we're afraid. Sometimes things pile up on us

and we're afraid. But we also recognize there's a

pathway to faith that'll help us overcome that.

Sometimes we got to go through that fear is the testimony for

others and they need to watch how we handle it.

So if we're more afraid of life than they are, why would we ever

expect them to show up here, right?

We're called to be different. So look at verse eight.

Look at verse 8. Therefore, do not be ashamed of

the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but

share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who

saved us and called us to be holy, called us to a holy

calling, not because of our works, but because of His own

purpose and grace which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the

ages began. So we have to face the reality,

and it's hard for people that we can't control things on our own,

that we can't control the future no matter what, no matter how

hard we try. I can't see the boards, if you

remember that story. I can't see tomorrow.

I don't know what's going to happen 10 seconds from now.

I can't control that. And that can either paralyze me

or it can drive me into the arms of the one who created time and

who sees it all at once. Right.

And this is I can't see the future for my own life.

I can't see it for this church. And the and the Bible promises

me no matter what, no matter what some prosperity gospel is

want us to believe the Bible promises me that I'm going to

have trouble. I'm of trouble in this world.

We're going to have troubles. We're going to have problems.

He promises us that. Don't be surprised when they

come. He promises you they're coming.

He warns you, He told you you're going to struggle in this life.

You're going to struggle in this world.

You've got problems in this world, right?

But you can overcome them by fearing him more than that to

make your faith strong. So faithful contentment.

Shalom is knowing I already have everything I need in my

relationship with Jesus Christ. I have enough to deal with

whatever comes more than enough and and if we're not satisfied

with what you have with him, you're never going to be

satisfied with what you want for tomorrow.

It's just going to cycle and cycle and cycle.

So listen to the word of God. Listen to just what some other

writers say that this will encourage you.

Hebrews 13 verses 5 and 6. Keep your life free from love of

Hebrews 13:5

money and be content with what you have.

For he has said I will never leave you nor forsake you.

So we can confidently say the Lord is my helper.

I will not fear. What can man do to me?

Deuteronomy 31 Six. Be strong and courageous.

Do not fear or be in dread of them.

For it is the Lord your God who goes with you.

He will not leave you or forsake you.

Philippians 419 and my God will supply every need of yours

according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

So this grace of God is not some shallow thing.

Remember I alluded to it a few weeks ago.

Remember the 23rd Psalm, just verse 4.

Even though I walk through the what I will for your right, just

plug that plug in whatever's going on in your life.

Even though I walk through blank, whatever it is, I will

not fear, for you are with me, and that's much deeper than you

may appreciate tonight. Even though I walk through the

Valley of the Blank, doesn't really matter what it is.

I will not fear. If Satan is just hoping, Satan's

counting on Satan's tempting that I would fear him and his

work and what he's throwing in front of me.

But I won't, because you're with me.

Your rod and your staff. They're more powerful than the

snake. They're more power.

They can, they can chop the head off a snake, crush the serpent's

head. You're more powerful right

there. There was a specific Native

American tribe up in the Pacific Northwest that did a rite of

passage when a when a boy reached 13 years old, he was

blindfolded and LED into the woods and left to spend the

night alone. And he couldn't take the

blindfold off all night long. That was part of the test.

He had to leave the blindfold on.

And so his courage, courage would be proven if he could just

sit there and listen to the frightening sounds all around

him without taking that blindfold off.

And then when they felt the warmth of the sun in the

morning, then he could remove the blindfold and and what he

found was his his father was sitting there right by him all

night long protecting him. So he'd been by his side all the

time. There was never really a danger.

Verse 7 Because I want you to get it.

For God gave us a spirit not of what?

What? Not of Phobos, not of fear, but

of power and love and self-control.

So we've got to overcome negative fear by recognizing

it's God's grace. We've also got to overcome

negative fear by embracing God's empowerment.

We can't do this alone. We can't do this by ourselves.

We need God's help only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Remember Acts 1/8, we're waiting, the disciples are

waiting, and when the Holy Spirit comes, you will receive

power again. Dunamis is that Greek word that

some of you might know, but what you may not understand.

And I shared that in the sermon on Acts One.

That first part of that word, duna means able.

I'm capable. Only the Holy Spirit is capable.

Only He is able. He can handle anything.

He can handle everything, and He is able.

And we're going to receive His power upon us, and then we're

going to be able to serve and minister.

So it kind of brings us full circle.

Either the words of Christ are true or not, see.

And at the moment of salvation, we are either in dwelled,

baptized, gifted and called by the Holy Spirit and transformed,

made new. The old things pass away, all

things become new by His power. Or that's not really true.

And it ought to. And then we ought to be used to

transform our world because of that.

And either that indwelling is true in your life or it's not.

And we've got to lean into that. That's the relationship that's

there. The fellowship we get sometimes

off and on, but we recognize we're leaning into this.

So the storms and fears of life, listen, I was out earlier, got a

piece of hell right on top of my head.

I mean, being me right on the skull, I didn't care for that

much. The storms and fears of life

then, can become opportunities for God to display His strength.

The one who tells the sun to rise each morning, I promise

you, is greater than whatever you're afraid of.

The one that causes the waves to come, He's greater than anything

you fear. And so our response cannot just

be avoidance. Our response can't just be

paralysis. We must move through fear with

faith, right? So to overcome negative fear, we

celebrate #3 God's love, true Christian love, energized by the

love of God and the Holy Spirit can enable us to sacrifice for

others and not be afraid to do so.

Listen to what Peter wrote in First Peter 57, casting all your

anxieties on him because he cares for you.

I can release my fears to him because I know He loves me and

and He's got me. And so the love of God assures

us we have nothing to fear. That's why God said in first

John 418 this is important. There is No Fear in love, but

perfect love casts out fear. And you got to understand what

that verse really means. So in the original language you

got to understand there's No Fear in love and, and, and

perfect love casts out the word for love.

There is agape and that agape love because there's more than

one word for love. But agape love is a willful

decision by God to love you no matter what.

You don't get to decide whether God loves you.

You don't have that. You don't get to do that.

That's not a luxury you possess. You don't have the power to

decide that God unconditionally loves you.

It's not about what you've done. It's not about what you haven't

done. It's about who you are as His

creation. He loves you.

So if there is perfect agape telios, the word means complete.

All the pieces are there. There's nothing missing.

This is an absolutely perfect, unconditional, willful decision

by God to love you no matter what.

If I believe that there's no room for Phobos, it pushes it

out because I'm so filled with the Holy Spirit.

There's no room for that. There's no room for that because

I do believe that God really does love me that way.

Now, some of you struggle with that.

Maybe not in this room, but somebody listening to me

struggles with that because there are people who absolutely

believe they can't be loved. There are people who believe

they're unlovable, and you're just wrong.

You don't understand the word of God.

You don't understand the nature of God.

He knows more about you and your issues than you do, and He loves

you anyway. Now, that doesn't mean he loves

what you're doing. It doesn't.

That doesn't mean he loves your attitudes.

That doesn't mean he loves your negative fears, but he loves

you. You got to separate yourself

from your actions. Separate yourself from your

attitudes. That's not who you are.

God knows who you are, and he loves you.

And so when we love the wrong things or fear the wrong things

and we're committing this idolatry and we're sinning, we

should feel all fear and all and privilege and blessing, love and

joy, even in the midst of a of a fear of God, right?

So this complete nothing missing, willful decision by God

pushes out the need for the room for the reliance upon trying to

think what else it means. Dependence upon fear.

I don't have to worship that way because of what he has done for

me. I can worship him.

I don't have to let this control me in my life.

So that's not the spirit he gives us.

He gives us a, a spirit of power and love and self-control in

verse 7. So #4 to overcome negative fear,

we have to grow in self-control. Easy thing to say out loud.

It's a weird word. It's the only time it's used in

the New Testament. And this word means a sound

mind. It means a disciplined mind.

There's there's a mental aspect to this.

To where my mind's and my head's in the right, in the right

place, I'm thinking the right way.

And so in Proverbs 17 it says the fear of the Lord is the

beginning of one translation wisdom.

Another would say beginning of knowledge.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

And so to recognize that there is a cognitive aspect of this,

there's, there's a mental intellectual side to this as

well, to where this isn't just a, a spiritual thing.

This is more holistic than that. I actually believe in my mind.

I get it, my mind, I can, I can think in my brain that this is

true of God, that the Spirit of God produces love.

It produces power. It produces a sound disciplined

mind. I can think clearly.

I can make right choices. I don't have to be afraid.

This coming Sunday, Senior Sunday, it's also new member

presentation, by the way. There's going to be a whole slew

of them joining the church on Sunday.

Yeah. And so, and then the seniors, a

bunch of seniors. So we're going to cram all this

into one service. I'm going to preach for about 2

1/2 minutes. But that's not true at all.

We got plenty of time. Things are really mapped out.

Skyler and company, these are pastors.

They do a fantastic job of working through all this.

They really do fantastic. And so but when I'm going to,

I'm going to share and acts from acts about where Peter and John

are are arrested and warned not to share about Jesus anymore by

the Sanhedrin. And one of the things that we're

going to talk about is we're going to talk about the fact

that they didn't have to fear that most powerful body in their

Jewish world because they had faith and belief in Jesus,

right? And so they had a sound mind.

And so sometimes these seniors, by the way, you think about it,

when you go off to college, people go nuts, right?

Christian kids, I mean, there's a huge high percentage.

They're in church their whole life.

They've been church all through the student ministry.

And then they go off to college, they go crazy.

I mean, it's just a high statistic.

Now, none of our kids will do that, will they?

But it's just as this, well, think about they're making bad

choices. They go off and they make bad

choices. Their minds aren't disciplined

enough. They're they're, they're not

equipped to make the right choices.

They need to focus on passages like this.

And so if we're engaged in selfishness and not

self-control, we're going to be led to this wrong fear.

We're going to be LED away. If we're selfish and interested

only and what we're going to get out of life or what life's not

giving me, then we're going to be afraid of losing something

that's not even ours to begin with.

And, and we're going to, we're going to be distorted.

This is what Satan does. He'll he'll distort our

judgement because he's going to make us believe we deserve

something that was never ours in the 1st place.

So he's sneaky. And so it makes our mind and

sound and we make bad decisions. It reminds me of this line.

You're ready. Here we go.

You better not trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.

For you only make your trouble double trouble when you do.

I couldn't even get through it. It's like when you go to the

Mexican place and you get the salsa and the cheese dip.

You always have to have a drip chip for your dip chip so you

don't drip off your off your dip chip.

My kids have that memorized. They say it better than I do.

We trust in God and we trust in his strength.

And so you just don't understand.

I've struggled. This is what people will say to

me. I've struggled with.

I had a church member say this to me one time.

Not here, but another church. I used to understand preacher.

I've struggled with fear my whole life.

My mother did this too. It's in my genes.

I've learned that my whole am. I got a testimony.

You're with me. It's just the way I am now.

Listen, you may have learned ways that are unhealthy to cope

with fear and thus find yourself mimicking unhealthy patterns

you've observed than others maybe your whole life.

But God can help you overcome that and be free.

You can break the generational chain and be better if you trust

in Him. Unhealthy fear is not

inevitable. It's a sin that can be forgiven

and it can be overcome. Yesterday's gone, tomorrow's not

assured, but you have the privilege of right now.

We got to soak it up in joy and love and faith because we got to

redirect our worship. Sometimes we just are putting

ourselves on the throne. And when we do that, you're just

worshiping the mirror and it's not going any further.

And we've got to redirect our worship again.

Psalm 118 says this verse 24, this is the day that the Lord

has made. What is it?

How's it finish? See, there's your there's your

formula 1st, I have to recognize who made the day.

I didn't make the day. I couldn't make the day.

You had to make the day, right? And so we got to move from fear

to faith and trust. I don't know if some of you

guys, military first responders, and then some of you just crazy

enthusiasts have probably repelled before.

I don't mean you're repelling, I mean you repelled off a mountain

or a building on a rope. You all following me, you know,

you, you get on a rope and, and, and you lean way out on that

rope and then you kind of hop down the side of the mountain.

You're with me. Some of your military guys, you

had probably do that in basic. Well, we used to do that for fun

because we're stupid. And so we would go find

mountains, me and some other folks that I knew, and we used

to go repelling a lot. And I don't know if you've ever

done this or not. You'll tie off on a tree or a

rock and you're on a hundred 150 foot Cliff, straight down rocks

below, sometimes highways because we were really not very

smart. And and and you and you and you

lean out. Anybody ever done this?

If you've repelled, raise your hand.

I need to see Tiffsa. Yeah.

You understand how you lay on and and what does that rope do?

It stretches now that rope is strong enough to hold two or

three vans. It's rated for thousands of

pounds. And regardless of how big I've

been in my life, I still didn't make the limit.

But when you first lean out on that rope, it starts to stretch

and you can hear it stretching and you can hear the knot

tighten up. And you got, you know, you got

harnesses on and carabiners and all this equipment you got to,

you got to hold the rope a certain way to create the brake

for yourself. And I was like, but that ropes

and you're there's 100 foot behind you and you're leaning

out there and you just like, when is this going to stop

stretching? So one time his name's Richard.

We were in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri and

we were on the side of a Cliff. And and you got to the way we

had it rigged. You had to hold a break up like

this around you. And that's how you would stop

yourself. You could control your dissent

by doing that. Sorry for the technical stuff.

I'm moving on. Well, Richard freaked out and he

stretched. That rope begins to stretch and

he doesn't think it's going to stop and he gets scared and he

lets go of the break hand. Now we had what's called a

suicide line on it. Sorry for the word, but it was

another little bitty rope that had a Slipknot in it.

And as you went down the rope, you moved it with your hand.

So just in case you lost that this little bitty rope, little

bitty string of a thing would hold you, he's halfway down that

Cliff, dangling from a thread and screaming like he was

afraid. Well, you got two options.

You can try to regather your rope cut, because you're not

going to loosen that knot, cut the safety line and go all the

way down. But he wasn't going to do that.

So guess what we had to do? Somebody else had to get another

rope, had to rig it up. We had to go down on either side

of Richard so we could literally pull his weight up enough to get

him to where he could gather himself up.

And then together we walked down that Cliff, inch by inch to the

bottom. We didn't let Richard do that

again. But I've often thought of that

story, and I thought, there's a lot of lessons there.

First of all, sometimes God's going to let the rope stretch a

little bit. Sometimes life's going to get a

little iffy. Sometimes we're going to face

stuff. Trials, tests, tribulations.

We're going to face some stuff in order to see whether or not

we'll trust the rope. Will we really trust that he's

not going to let it go too far, that he's got us?

It's it's more than capable, thousands of times capable of

supporting us and he's going to make sure that everything's OK.

And then when we don't make the right choice and we let go, we

don't hold on. We don't have faith.

We just let fear consume us and we scream so the whole world can

hear us and we're left dangling. Inglewood Baptist.

That's where we as a church need to step in.

We got to be there for one another.

You know what? We'll just throw down another

rope. We're going to come right down

there beside you. We're going to show you how to

do this. We're going to walk with you

through this. We're going to help you overcome

what you're going through right now.

That's what the church is all about, right?

We're in this together. So one of the things that we

haven't talked about enough because he's talking to one

person, he's talking to Timothy. But what I want to say to you is

don't forget the unity of the body in these kind of situation.

You don't have to deal with your fear by yourself.

Don't try to do that. Not only do you need God's help,

not only do you need God's resourcing to do that, but you

have the body, His body, his bride.

And I pray that you're evolved. This is why this is more than

just an infomercial to get you into some program.

This is why you need to be in a Connect group.

This is why you need to be in a small group that's going to love

you, that knows you. We know they're dangling right

now. They're Dang.

This is what your deacons are helping with too.

They're dangling right now. We need to go sweeping in there.

We going to think he wouldn't throw down a rope.

And we need to get alongside of them and help help lift them up

so they can get their get their footing, they can get their grip

back. And then let's just go down

together. Let's just do this together.

Isn't that something? Now see, that's who, that's who

we got to be. That's who we need to be.

That's what this world desperately needs.

They're scared. This world's scared.

That's why they act out. That's one of the reasons they

act up is they're scared. They don't know about the

future. They don't know what's coming

up. They don't know that God made

the day. They have no concept of

rejoicing in it. They have no concept of being

glad in it. And so they need us to show

them. They need us to come alongside

of them and to help them to grow.

So one final thing, one final story and I'll let you go.

So one year we were in, I was in Malawi, East Africa, and we were

running a hospital. And we'd run these these

hospitals where we would take 4050 people in a medical team

and we would take over an entire school compound and we could see

1000 patients a day, right? So this is a pretty big

operation. We'd have a million plus dollar

pharmacy we took and all this stuff because we knew

pharmaceutical companies. So this is pretty big operation.

So I'm in charge of the management of this whole thing,

and I've shared some of those kinds of stories about those

things before. This one's different.

So one day I'm over there and I hear a commotion over here.

So I run to the commotion because that was my job.

Commotion runner. And I run to the commotion, and

there's a group of about 40 men with machetes getting ready to

kill a man. And I said, no, let's not do

that. And I'll never forget.

I was up on a little platform and they were all down there,

all with machetes, all very angry about this man because he

had cut line and he was trying to steal medicine.

So they just thought, well, we'll just take care of him.

He won't need any more medicine when we're done with him.

And so I'm standing there, a pastor comes alongside him, an

African pastor, and, and I have to stand off 40 men with

machetes, calming them down and helping them to understand that

we're not going to murder a man at my feet today.

Now, tomorrow might be different.

I might be tired, but today we're not going to do this

right? And I'm convincing them that

he's just afraid. I'll never forget this speech.

I'm not smart enough to think this stuff up.

God just helped me not to die that day.

But you, when you're standing off 40 men with machetes, you

need the Holy Spirit. Just remember that next time it

happens to you. When you're standing off 40 men

with machetes, you need the Holy Spirit.

And so I was telling them that this man was just terrified.

So because I was talking to the man and he was just trying to

get medicine for his mother, he just wanted to admit he's afraid

she's going to die. He's afraid if he waited in

line, we were going to run out. He's afraid if we didn't, if he

couldn't get it, she was going to die before she got.

He was just afraid. And I said, now, now and and

then I convinced these guys, what are you making him even

more more afraid? And I said, and it's because

you're afraid. So of course I get to preach the

gospel to 40 men with machetes. It's a great story.

I wish I could say they all dropped their machetes and fell

to their knees. Oh, Sir, what must we do to be

saved? That didn't quite happen that

way, but we did save the man's life.

Sometimes we do things because we're afraid.

My, my last word to you is keep doing that.

Keep doing things because you're afraid.

But make sure your fear has the right object.

Let's do things because we fear him.

I'm more afraid of his displeasure than I am of what a

lost person might think of me. I'm more afraid of failing him

than I am about whether this world appreciates me all the

time or not. I I I want to honor and worship

him. And so let's let fear motivate

us, but let it be the positive fear and not negative fear.

Power, grace, love, self-control.

It's hard, not easy, but we'll keep building on that every

week. Next week we're going to talk

about guiding guilt. Now that may be odd sounding to

you, but there are people who carry around it a toxic guilt,

and they carry it and carry it, and they will not accept the

grace of God and the forgiveness of God in their life.

And then other people should feel guilty and they don't.

We're going to talk about both sides, what conviction means,

what guilt ought to be. Where's the balance of healthy

guilt and unhealthy guilt next week?

So thank you all for coming. Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you so much for your word.

Father, we just thank you that we can just walk through a

couple of verses and there's enough for an hour and a half.

Father, we could stay for hours more and just continue to glean

from your word. Father, the key part of this

whole thing is simple. Though it's difficult, it's

simple to understand. I have to take the focus off of

myself. I have to take the focus of off

of me sitting on the throne. I have to quit looking at the

waves around me, and I have to focus on you.

I have to worship you. I have to fear only you.

So help me, Father, in the moments when I'm gripped by

fear, maybe, maybe I live in a constant state of fearfulness,

that Father, help me to recognize tonight that that's

not the life you want for me. That you want me to live a life

of faith and of joy and of love and of service that transcends,

that overcomes the troubles of this world.

But Father, I can only do that by your strength and power, not

mine. So fill this with your Spirit.

Help us to dwell in your word. Help us to abide closely with

you, to give us the strength and the grace, the power, the

self-control that we need in order to live in healthy fear of

You and to push out, to leave no room for Phobos.

Thank you Father, in Christ's name, Amen.

God bless you all. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening today.

And I also hope that you'll go to

[email protected] as well as our app and find many

other resources that will bless you and your families.

Thank you once again.