Launch Out in Faith | Matthew 14:22-33 | Jonathan Huang | March 8, 2026

Be seated.

Our scripture reading this morning comes from the book of Matthew.

It's Matthew 14, verses 22 through 33.

Matthew 14:22–33

And if you're using one of our black Bibles, it's on page 770.

Please turn with me to Matthew 14, verses 22 to 33.

Matthew 14:22–33

Please stand for the reading of God's holy and inerrant word.

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up in the mount on the mountain by himself to pray.

When evening came, he was there alone.

But the boat by this time was a long way from the land and were beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them.

And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.

But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and they said, It is a ghost, and they cried out in fear.

But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.

And Peter answered him, Lord, if it is you, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.

And he said, Come.

So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.

But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to think, he cried out, Lord, save me.

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, Oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt?

And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased, and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, Truly, you are the Son of God.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks, Peggy.

Let's pray together as we begin.

Father, we thank you, Lord, for the privilege of coming before your word week after week and to come across stories that might be familiar to some of us or to many.

And yet, Lord, we ask that God, you would, by your grace, enable this morning to shed new light on a story like this to reach each of our hearts where we are.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

I got a quote up on the screen for you.

And it says this to be human is to be afraid.

To be human is to be afraid.

I just want to take a moment this morning as we get started to just sit and think and consider how these words are true for all of us today.

And I think about the events that are going on overseas in Iran in the Middle East.

And you get news alert after news alert after news alert reminding you of this big ordeal happening, yeah, far away from us, but over time, more and more and more countries getting drawn in.

I think about a city like Dubai, once known as one of the safest places on the earth, being attacked on its own soil.

I think about the fact that it's just a matter of time before countries run out or at least dangerously low on military equipment to defend themselves against the onslaught of missile after missile after missile, drone after drone after drone.

I think about what happens when one of the world's most important waterways is closed down.

The Strait of Hormuz.

About 20% of the world's natural gas, crude oil flows through to the rest of the world, and it's shut down by a country at war.

And all these things are taking place somewhere, somewhere far, far away from where we live, work, and play.

But you just can't help wonder what's next.

Where's this all going?

Is this gonna affect my life, my family, our world?

To be human is to be afraid.

I think about the news that I keep on reading about AI these days, artificial intelligence.

How more than 80% of those in Gen Z, that's those currently aged 14 to 29, report building real-life emotional relationships with AI.

In fact, my family and I, we just watched this movie last night about this boy being best buddies with this bot, and all these kids are running around in school with their little bots.

One author writes that millions of people, especially those under 30, are talking to their AI tools the way they talk to their closest friends.

They apologize when they close an app.

They thank their chatbots for good answers.

They feel genuinely hurt when a virtual assistant misunderstands them.

I think about all the stories where people make some really dangerously foolish decisions because of AI.

And some of these people have even committed suicide thinking they're gonna be with their AI companion in the afterlife.

To be human is to be afraid.

As crazy as all that sounds, I as a parent wonder what kind of world are my kids gonna grow up in?

Like, where is this future going?

How are they all gonna handle these changes in technology?

How are they gonna fend off the allure of making friends and forming deep bonds with a machine?

How are they gonna maintain emotional health and keep walking with God in a world like this?

To be human is to be afraid.

And then I think about the fact that it's been pointed out the Bible's most frequent command is to not be afraid.

In fact, it shows up in the Bible well over 300 times.

So apparently, to walk with God in this life doesn't mean to deny the fact that we have fears.

Doesn't mean that we need to pretend like everything's okay, like everything's just gonna work out.

Just hold your breath.

Well, walking with God in this world, in a broken world like this, filled with fears all over the place, it actually means to expose them.

To expose our fears.

Facing them head on in light of the power and the presence and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

Because this world is not, the world that we see, it's not all there is.

And in today's passage, a real familiar story to many of us.

We're gonna be looking at a story about a man who sees Jesus miraculously walking on water, and he impulsively asks Jesus to help him do it the same thing.

It's about a man who launches out by faith.

He steps out of the boat onto the water, and then he lets his eyesight see things around him.

He lets things catch onto his sight that cause doubt and fear and uncertainty to overcome him.

And so the question I want us to wrestle with today as we look at this passage is this how do we deal with the kinds of fears that keep us from walking by faith and not by sight in Jesus?

And so with that, I want to invite you to turn with me back to the book of Matthew, chapter 14.

Matthew 14 · chapter mention

We're just going to look at the story from 22 to 33.

Matthew chapter 14, verse 22 to 33.

Matthew 14:22–33

And again, the question is: how do we deal with the kinds of fears that keep us from walking by faith, not by sight, in Jesus, in a world like I have painted for you.

Now, just for some context, the story comes on the heels of a well-known, another well-known miracle that Jesus does.

A lot of what Jesus does in his ministry happens around the Sea of Galilee, and he's by the Sea of Galilee, and he's healing, and he's with the crowd, and evening's coming, and it's about to, it's about to be dinner time.

His disciples want him to send these crowd away, and he says, No, no, no.

You guys stay.

You guys feed this crowd.

And you guys know the story.

The disciples are bewildered by the fact that this is a big crowd.

Over thousands of people are here.

Men, women, and children.

How are you going to feed them?

They have five loaves of bread, two fish, and Jesus feeds them.

He's a miracle.

He feeds over 5,000 men, women, and children.

The Bible tells us they all ate and were satisfied, and they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces left over.

And then in the book of John, we're told that the crowd witnesses this miracle, and immediately they want to take Jesus by force and make him their king.

Which explains why this first part of the story happens in verse 22.

Let's look down there.

Immediately he, meaning Jesus, made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side.

That's the other side of the Galilee, Sea of Galilee, while he dismissed the crowds.

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.

See, one commentator points out that Jesus knew these Jews were following their mindset that the Messiah was going to bring them back to a point in history where Israel was going to be at the top of their political game.

Jesus was going to be that man for them.

And it's possible why Jesus was so eager to get his disciples to the other side of the Galilee was because he wanted to make sure that they weren't joining in with the crowd trying to make him king.

He wasn't there to be a king.

He wasn't there to be a political figurehead for everyone.

He was there for something much deeper.

Not a political revolution, but a spiritual one.

Verse 23.

After he dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.

When evening came, he was there alone.

But the time, this the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them.

And so I want you to picture Jesus still on the shore.

He's back without the disciples.

The disciples have gotten on a boat.

They're on their way on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of a storm.

The waves are crashing hard against the boat.

The boat's rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

The winds are blowing ferociously against them.

They're in the middle of a windstorm.

And they're having prog difficulty making progress across the water.

Verse 25.

And in the fourth watch of the night, he, meaning Jesus, came to them walking on the sea.

I just want us to just stop here and think a little bit about this moment.

And think about the fact that the fourth watch of the night is sometime between 3 a.m.

and 6 a.m.

And it just makes you want to think, what on earth was Jesus doing walking on water between the hours of 3 a.m.

and 6 a.m.

And it just blows my mind.

Of course, he's praying on the mountain.

He's praying on the mountain, praying on the mountain, and at some point he comes down and joins his disciples.

I was studying this story with my boys a while back.

They go to a Christian school, and so their Bible, uh Joseph's Bible teacher has this assignment question, and it was a really good one.

It was, was this miracle really just a self-serving one?

Like, what's the point of Jesus just almost like he's showing off?

Like he's just showing off walking on water.

Like no one can walk on water.

It defies the laws of gravity.

I was looking this up, Khan Academy, and like it has to do with surface area and humans being too heavy, and it just it doesn't work.

You don't you don't float on water, you sink.

And it's almost like Jesus is cluing us in, like pulling the curtain back just a little bit in this moment, saying, Yeah, I am no ordinary man.

But you know, I don't I don't think that Jesus walking on water like this was simply self-serving.

He wasn't just trying to show off.

And I think that because of what happens next.

Look down at verse 26.

Verse 26, when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified.

And they said, It's a ghost.

They cried out in fear.

And I think it's really interesting that these disciples, they weren't really afraid of the boat like sinking on them.

They weren't afraid on the winds and the waves like mashing up against their boat.

They probably have been through many of these storms.

The Sea of Galilee was known to have a lot of windstorms because of the way that the climate works around that area.

They weren't afraid of that.

No, the Bible tells us they were terrified.

They cry out in fear because they see what they've never seen before.

And they think a ghost is coming after them.

That's what they were afraid of.

Now, one commentator explains here that these disciples were actually being superstitious.

They're being superstitious here, thinking that a disembodied spirit can appear where no physical body could.

Where a physical body would sink.

You know, and so that's why they thought they were seeing a disembodied spirit.

There was also a popular belief around this time that evil spirits lived in the sea, or that those who had drowned previously were haunting the waters.

That's what they may have been thinking when they said, It's a ghost.

And so Jesus comes and he quickly dispels these myths and he calms their fears, and he says in verse 27, look down there with me.

Immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, Take heart.

It is I, do not be afraid.

There's those words again, do not be afraid.

And the moment these disciples hear this familiar voice, they know they're in the presence of a friend and not a foe.

Verse 28, Peter answered him, Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water.

He said, Come.

So Peter got out of the boat, walked on the water, and came to Jesus.

And when he saw the wind, though, he was afraid.

And beginning to sink, he cries out, Lord, save me.

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to you, Oh, you have little faith.

Why did you doubt?

And as we're reading the story, what I want you to see here is that Jesus is testing Peter's faith.

He's testing it.

When Peter sees Jesus walking on the water, he recognizes him, a friend, not a foe, a real human, not a ghost.

He recognizes his voice.

And then he impulsively, he rashly makes this request.

Hey, Jesus, let me come out with you.

I want to do what you're doing.

And it begs the question: why in the world would Jesus actually entertain Peter and his requests?

Like Jesus could have really easily just said, no, no, no, Peter, just stay in the boat.

It's okay.

Not this time.

But he doesn't.

No, Jesus invites Peter to come out of the boat with him on the water.

And in a test of faith, Peter passes with flying colors.

Like there's not even a hint that Peter's afraid of getting on the waters.

You think about that.

And so in this moment, Jesus gives Peter an opportunity of a lifetime to defy the laws of gravity with him.

And by doing so, Peter gets the chance to experience something he's never ever experienced before.

He's never imagined he'd be able to do something like this.

It was amazing.

For a minute.

And then he looks around.

What he sees gets the best of him.

He lets his sense of sight do something to him.

He sees his feet.

He sees the waters coming up, the waves hitting his legs.

He sees his boat that he just left.

He sees the situation, the storm.

Everything he sees.

He just lets the reality of what he's seeing sink into what he's doing.

And he realizes, wow, this is crazy.

And the Bible tells us that Peter literally and physically begins to sink into the water.

Now the word for sink here in the original Greek actually has a sense of drowning.

So it'd be actually helpful to read this as like Peter was starting to drown.

So Peter makes it all the way on the water to close enough for Jesus before he starts to drown.

And I know he's close enough to Jesus because Jesus is close enough to him to pick him back up.

And what I want you to see here is that Peter, what he's doing here, he's allowing what he sees with his own eyes, the winds, the waves, the water beneath him, to so fill his heart with fear that whatever faith he started out with when he stepped out on the boat was gone.

Not in the way that he has no faith at all, maybe more in the sense that his faith was just still too weak, and that this test was showing something about Peter's faith in the moment.

And what I think we can learn here from Peter in this moment is that even for those of us who've boldly stepped out of the boat, so to speak, in faith to follow Jesus, if we want to keep walking by faith, not by sight, then we need to be honest about the kinds of fears that we see around us that pose a crucial threat to our faith.

Each time we confront those fears, we need to see them as an opportunity to repent.

To repent.

What I mean by that.

Well, Pastor Deepak Redu.

He defines anxiety as the experience of worry or fear about some perceived danger.

He explains that even though we sometimes think of fear and anxiety as the exact same thing, they're actually a little different.

Fear is really more of you can think of it as the root and anxiety the fruit.

That makes sense.

For example, you might have a fear of heights or spiders or the opinions of another person.

But then the fear of that thing or that object or that person gets tangibly expressed in anxiety or worry or stress or panic or just feeling overwhelmed.

That makes sense?

You got an underlying fear, but then the expression of that fear becomes anxiety.

And then Pastor Deepak goes out to point out that anxiety exposes fear, and then fear exposes worship.

Anxiety exposes fear, and then fear exposes worship.

And I like what he says.

He says he calls anxiety a spiritual x-ray.

Like when you're in, when you don't know if you've broken your ankle because you just twisted it and you're like, I don't know what I don't know what to do.

Really, the best thing to do is to go to the ER and get an X-ray if you if you really might want to consider a fracture, right?

And so whenever you think of anxiety, think of that as a spiritual x-ray into your heart.

What he means is that any experience of anxiety gives us an opportunity to slow down and to spiritually diagnose what exactly our hearts have started to worship instead of God.

Does it make sense?

I'm going to say that again.

What he means is that any experience of anxiety that we feel, it's a spiritual x-ray for us because it gives us an opportunity to slow down and consider what our hearts have started to worship instead of God.

And so the first step to dealing with the kinds of fears that keep us from walking by faith in Jesus and not by sight, is to turn every fear of ours into an opportunity to repent.

As I was thinking about the story these past couple of weeks, I started asking myself, where do I still have fear, the emotion of fear in my heart?

And the thing that came to mind, if I were totally being totally honest, is that even though we've reached the two-year mark of our church, I'm not sure how our church is going to survive long term, knowing like how small our congregation is and how our financial needs are.

I don't know how we're going to survive beyond these next several years.

And that causes fear.

Many of you know that I've been fundraising again, uh fundraising for our church, and just to make sure we have a long enough runway so that our congregation has more time to grow, that we have more opportunity and time to grow the internal giving of our church so that we can one day sustain ourselves financially.

And so stepping out of the boat for me was like starting to fundraise again.

I was not expecting to have to do that as a pastor.

I did that before the church started, but I was not expecting to have to fundraise again after the church started.

That was me kind of stepping out of the boat in faith.

And guys, I have I've seen God provide.

Walking on the waters for me has been like seeing how the Lord has provided in just about six months, about 70% of my fundraising goal through individuals, super generous individuals, through very generous churches, I'm at about 70% fundraise in six months.

And still in the back of my mind, there's this lingering anxiety like, how are we going to survive?

And so if we use this analogy of anxiety being like an x-ray, and then I just use this anxiety to x-ray into the depths of my soul, I think what you would find is a diagnosis of a huge case of the fear of failure.

The fear of failure.

Like someone looking into my life and saying, wow, this guy risked a lot.

He put his career on the line, he left a promising career to start this really cool thing, but it just didn't pan out.

Now what?

There's this huge fear of failure.

And I think if I were to dig a little deeper, remember, anxiety exposes fear, fear exposes worship.

So if I were to dig a little deeper, what this fear of failure exposes is that I struggle with a a worship, not of God, a worship of ministry success, of achievement, of being thought of as someone who took big risks and did something big for the Lord.

Yeah, even if it was for the Lord, you can start worshiping something other than the Lord.

I think there's also, if you were to look closely, a worship of people's opinions of me, people who know my story and wanting to look really awesome and thought well of by people who know what I'm doing and you know who are rooting for me and for this church.

I want to be thought well of by them.

I I don't want to be thought of as a failure.

See, you catch what I'm trying to get at.

Anxiety exposes fear.

Fear exposes worship.

And what I'm trying to say is we need to turn every fear into an opportunity to repent.

And so, oh, how I need to repent of my pride.

Wanting to make all this about myself.

Need to repent of not being willing to serve Jesus worry-free.

No matter what happens to the church.

Guys, Jesus doesn't promise that our church is going to survive beyond five years or ten years or even fifty years.

Yes, he's promised to build his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

But local churches come and go, as they have in the past.

And that's okay.

What I think Jesus simply wants me to be is in a place where I'm willing to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and to go wherever he wants.

I think he wants me to be willing to walk by faith, not by sight, even if the future of our church is unclear.

Even if the path ahead is uncertain.

So, what about you?

Where do you find yourself worrying about?

Where is the emotion of fear bubbling up in your own soul these days?

I've got these questions on the slide from a biblical counselor named Ed Welch, and these are really helpful questions.

Just start to kind of uh think about these things.

So, what fears do you have regarding those people who you love?

Fears and worries arise when we could lose something important to us, something we love.

What are you afraid you could lose?

What fears do you have about your own death and possible physical disability?

Do you have any specific fears?

Examples he gives are the dark.

Some of you might be afraid of the dark.

It's not just something for kids, adults maybe too.

Airplanes, water, disease, being confined, germs, like this one, clowns.

I don't know if you needles, animals, heights, crowds, whatever it might be.

What specific fears do you have?

I want you to think about what you typically get anxious about these days, and and then let that be a guide.

A spiritual x-ray, right?

A spiritual x-ray to diagnose what the most dominant fears or fears or fears, fear or fears you might be having.

So things you get anxious about, and let that be an x-ray to diagnose what you fear.

We're just we're at that point.

Fear expos uh uh anxiety exposing fears.

So I just want to give you a moment to think about that.

What are you most anxious about these days?

What does that expose about what you fear?

And now, with that one fear in mind, if you have one, why don't you ask yourself, what does that fear expose about what you worship?

What you're worshiping instead of God?

Maybe it's the worship of comfort or of physical safety and security.

Maybe it's the worship of money and financial security.

Maybe it's the worship of another person's opinion of you or success or doing something big in life.

Maybe it's the worship of your body image or your family or relationship, whatever it is, if the Holy Spirit is allowing you to make some connections between your anxieties, with your fears, with your worship, would you just take a moment to confess that to the Lord?

Just use this moment to repent and ask God to forgive you.

At the same time, I want to encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to empower you afresh to walk by faith and not by sight.

That you don't just stay there in that fear.

Turn every fear into an opportunity to repent.

And think about the moment that Jesus first starts walking on water.

I want to show you how the presence of Jesus in our lives makes all the difference when it comes to dealing with fear.

Because remember, to be human is to be afraid.

That doesn't mean we have to stay afraid.

Right?

One of my seminary professors, Dr.

Ben Glad, he talks about how this image of Jesus walking on water actually points back to the Old Testament in two specific ways.

First, he points out in the book of Job, it's Yahweh.

Remember, Yahweh is God's personal name in the Old Testament.

It's Yahweh and Yahweh alone who stretches out the heavens and tramples the waves of the sea.

This whole idea of trampling the waves or treading on water is clearly then a divine act.

And so Dr.

Glad makes this point.

Yahweh treads on the water.

Jesus treads on the water.

Therefore, Jesus is Yahweh.

Second point, he points to the book of Mark.

And in Mark's retelling of this whole story, it's very interesting.

He adds one specific detail that I don't want you to miss.

And I think I have it on the slides here.

Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

He writes this.

And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea.

He meant to pass by them.

Jesus meant to pass by them.

But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out.

Now at first glance, this doesn't make much sense, right?

Because why would Jesus see his disciples struggling in a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, in the middle of a windstorm, and then just like plan on passing them by?

Doesn't make any sense.

But Dr.

Glad makes this point that back in the book of Exodus, you'll remember that Moses at the Mount at Mount Sinai, he says this to God.

Please show me your glory.

And God responds, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord.

And I will be gracious to whom I'll be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I'll show mercy, but you cannot see my face.

For man shall not see me and live.

And the Lord said, Behold, there's a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.

When the disciples, when actually this is Jesus and Peter, when they got back in the boat, the wind ceased.

And those in the boat, those are the disciples, they worshiped him.

They worshiped Jesus, saying, Truly you are the Son of God.

Listen, when fear turns into worship, that's how we can put every worldly fear to death.

When fear turns into worship, that's how we can turn every worldly fear to death.

And it's not just a one-time thing.

I love how one pastor puts it quote, there is no switch in the Christian life.

It's not a pill you take, and it's all poof, you have no more anxiety.

He says this is a process over time of looking to the Lord, looking to the Lord, looking away from what we fear and back to him.

And it's by looking to him that we are changed.

So we're training our hearts to look to him to trust.

So just think for a moment about what all that could have looked like for Peter on the waters.

Like what would it have looked like if he continued to walk by faith, not by sight, and made it to Jesus and was just, it was all good.

I think what continued faith would have looked like for Peter would have been to just keep looking to Jesus, looking to Jesus, looking to the Lord, looking away from what he feared, the sea, the fact that he was walking in water, that he was a could have sink at any time, looking away from the waves that caused and the wind and the storm, looking away from all that that he feared and back to Jesus.

It would have meant that even with the water splashing against his legs, even with the potential of sinking down and drowning, even with the storm raging all around him and the fear lurking inside his mind, walking by faith would have led Peter all the way to Jesus without doubt.

Without doubt.

And trusting that Jesus would protect him.

Protect him.

And so what I want you to see here is that not only should we turn every fear into an opportunity to repent, but we should also turn every fear into an opportunity to trust.

We should turn every fear into an opportunity to trust.

And I think about our very own John Joe.

Most of you know him.

And the life of faith that he's been living out before our very eyes these past few years.

You see, ever since he took a course on world missions back when he was in medical school, he has really tried hard to merge his medical world, his training as a doctor with Jesus' call to make disciples of all nations.

He's just really tried hard to figure out how all this was going to work out in his life.

And that's led him to start businesses that give him platforms and opportunities to build relationships in countries like India, where now he's partnering with this church, where they have health coaches, and they're using this his company, John's company's disease management platform.

And through that, this is one of the ways, but at least one of the ways, this church in India is reaching their community and preaching the gospel.

And I still remember many of you were there too in our prayer meetings over the years, a number of times where John would share with our church that his company was close to not having enough money to pay his employees.

Not to mention that for the past few years he's stopped taking his salary so that his company would have more margin to pay other people.

And I'm sure he could tell you of all the ups and downs he faced emotionally going through all this, which makes all of what's happening to his life right now so encouraging.

Amen.

Because doors have opened now, where he's working with the government of the Philippines to bring health care to over 50 million underserved Filipinos.

And I bring all this up because, like the Apostle Peter, John could very easily, at different points along the way, looked at all the circumstances in his life and just given up what he felt like the Lord was leading him to do.

He could have.

Maybe he had fears of failure.

Maybe he had fears of everything he's built up just not panning out.

What's he gonna do next?

But what continuing to walk by faith, not by sight, has meant for John is to keep looking to the Lord, looking to the Lord, looking away from his fears and back to Jesus.

And I want to speak for a moment to those of you here who aren't yet Christians.

When you think about the kinds of things that you worry about, realize this is all very relevant to you, whether you're a Christian or not.

Because again, to be human is to be afraid.

You don't have to be a Christian or to experience that.

Of course you don't.

And you see, whatever anxieties you deal with actually expose your underlying fears, and whatever you fear tells you what you worship besides God.

Because we humans are naturally worshipers, and our hearts naturally gravitate towards things or people.

And yet the Bible tells us that the God who created everything in this world created you and me at the end of the day to have Him as the rightful recipient of your heart's worship.

But because our hearts have worshiped everything and everyone else besides Him, that's ultimately landed us in a place where our relationship with Him is broken, unfixable by you or I.

The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and that the wages of sin is death, not just in this life, but in the life to come in a place called hell.

And that's the bad news.

And I like to say we need to know the bad news, so the good news actually feels like good news.

And so, what's the good news?

The good news is that God Himself came up with a rescue plan.

And that rescue plan involved him sending his son Jesus Christ into our very own world to live the life we should have lived, to die the death we should have died in our place for our sins on the cross, so that on the third day he would be raised back to life and offered to the world, to anyone and everyone who would return away from a life of sin, of worshiping everyone and everything else besides him, turn away.

From that life and turn to Jesus to be Lord and Savior of their lives, an opportunity to be forgiven of all their sins, past, present, and future, and to have the gift of eternal life.

And so, if that's something you want to learn more about or talk more about with someone, bring that up with someone who brought you today.

Or come find me after service.

I'd love to talk more.

Now, for those of you who've already trusted in Christ and have made a conscious decision to step out of the boat in faith, here's what I want to say to you.

And I want to speak to the parents first of all in the room.

Parents, know that you have a priceless opportunity while your kids are still growing up in your homes to model what it looks like to turn fear into trust through prayer.

It's as simple as letting your kids in on what you're worried about most in the moment and asking them to pray.

So how that shows up in my home often is on Saturday and I'm freaking out about my sermon and I don't have it ready yet, and I'm anxious and I'm fretful.

And I just asked one of my boys to pray for me because Daddy's worried.

I need words, help.

And I and I asked the boy to pray for me.

By doing this, I'm letting my kids in on what's going on inside my heart, asking for their help and praying for daddy to keep his eyes on Jesus.

On your drive to the soccer game or to a swim meet or to a school competition, you can ask your child how he or she is feeling.

And if they're worried about something, you can pray right there and then for them in the moment.

And by doing so, you show your children in a tangible way that God can be trusted in the here and now.

I think a more general way to apply this to any Christian here in the room would just be to ask yourself this one question.

Is there anything you think the Lord is leading you to do right now, but you're paralyzed from doing it because of fear?

Is there anything you think the Lord is leading you to do right now, but you're paralyzed because of fear?

And if there's something that comes to mind, see this as an opportunity not only to repent of the things that are beneath those anxieties and fears and the worship of something else besides God, but see this as an opportunity to look to the Lord.

To look to the Lord, to look away from what you're fearing and look back to Him.

And you know that could simply look like taking every anxious thought captive and turning that into an opportunity to trust God more.

So do you struggle with anxiety?

Does anyone here struggle with worrying?

You know, I like to say the biggest worriers in this room can become the biggest prayer warriors in this room.

Why?

Because if you're really good at worrying, you can become really good at praying.

And you do that by making sure that every time a worry comes into your mind, instead of moling on it and letting it eat away at you all day, you take that thought captive and bring it to the Lord.

And you pray God's word over it.

Like Psalm 56, 10 through 11.

When I'm afraid, I put my trust in you, in God whose word I praise, in God I trust and am not afraid.

What can mortal mere mere mortals do to me?

Or Psalm 217:1, the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?

Or Isaiah 41, verse 10, fear not, for I am with you.

Isaiah 41:10

Be not dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

The biggest warriors in this room can be the biggest prayer warriors in this room.

Amen.

One last thing, Ethnos, as I think about what we're taking part in and awake in Houston this month.

Max Stiles points out in his book on evangelism that the fear of man is the biggest reason we struggle to share the gospel with other people.

The fear of man.

It's not that we don't have time.

It's not that we don't have opportunities.

We've got plenty of them.

It's a heart posture of fear.

We fear what people are going to think of us when we bring up conversations about God, about spiritual things, about faith.

We get intimidated.

And so the solution that Mack offers is simple but profound.

Trust God and take more risks.

Trust God and take more risks.

And so, in our evangelism, what I think walking by faith and not by sight looks like is to keep taking risks, to connect with people in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, anywhere that God has placed you to work, live, or play.

Keep looking for ways to take more risks in your conversations with people.

Be curious about their lives.

Be interested in how they were, how they've grown up and their religious background and where they stand now spiritually.

Take more risks and looking for people who are interested in having those kinds of conversations with you and invite them to learn about Christianity with you, studying the book of Mark or going through Christianity explained.

And then when the fear of man rises up within you, keep looking to Jesus.

Keep looking to Jesus.

Look away from your fear and look back to Him.

The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts at the Lord is safe.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you, Lord, for the privilege of walking with you in a world like this, full of fear, full of anxieties.

We have no idea the tremendous grace we have in knowing you.

So we pray, Lord, would you help us experience more of you, O God?

In our anxieties, in our fears, may we experience more of you.

That we might turn every opportunity of every fear into an opportunity to repent, every fear into an opportunity to trust you more.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Here at Athnos, we have a practice of taking the Lord's Supper every single week.

It's a it's an opportunity to remind us of.