Today we are going to begin a brief two week preaching series on the idea of living fearlessly with God. Some decisions we make today can have long lasting effects or if made poorly long lasting consequences. That thought in and of itself can cause significant amounts of fear within each and every one of us. Today we are going to look at that fear and how Christ offers us a way out of that.
“Fear Made Me Do It!”
A little boy was playing ball in the house. This was strictly against the rules, and he accidentally broke a vase in the living room. "Oh, no, my mom''s gonna kill me!" he thought desperately. So he frantically tried to fix it, any way he could. But tape, glue, even Superglue wouldn't hold all the shards of broken porcelain together. So he finally left the pieces in a pile on the table and went to hide in his room. Soon his mother came home and he heard her calling him. "Johnny, do you know who broke my vase? It''s in here all in pieces!" Johnny tried to drum up his courage, but at the last minute, he found himself answering, "No, Mom, I don''t know." He cringed waiting for her answer. "That''s funny," she said, appearing at his door. "I wanted to thank whoever it was. I've hated that thing for years."
There are many different kinds of fear. There is the fear that can cause us to say and do things that we know run contrary to what God calls us to do. The fear that makes us say things we would not normally say, do things we would not normally do, act in a way that we would not normally act. There is also the fear for bad things that might happen to us, physically or emotionally. We are fearful of getting in trouble, of people losing respect for us, of our image being tainted, of losing control, or begin hurt. And I think most, if not all of us, would love to live a life completely without fear of any kind. We have all felt it, we have all experienced it, and we all felt for someone else who has experienced it.
But the kind of fear I want us to focus on today are the fears that aren’t really justified – the fears that live deep and hidden inside us – the ones that drive our behavior and keep us from saying “Yes!” to all God has in store for us. Dag Hammerskjold, a former UN Secretary General once wrote in his diary, “For all that has been – thanks. For all that shall be – Yes!”
Can you give God an unconditional yes right now – trusting him for “all that shall be”? If you can, then I invite you to tune me out for the rest of the morning. But if not, I invite you to join me on a journey towards living fearlessly. And that begins by telling the truth. What do I mean by “telling the truth?” I mean two things really – acknowledging our fears and admitting them to God. Let’s deal with us first.
Are ya Scurred?
I know a thing or two about fear. I am what you might call a recovering control freak and a perfectionist. While I am no where near as bad as I used to be, I still struggle with those tendencies from time to time. Now part of my candidacy process for the ministry involved me talking with a Christian counselor about these things. And from those conversations I learned that what underlies everyone’s desire for control and for perfection is fear. Fear is a natural human emotion, one of the most basic and primal we possess. Being in control makes us think that we are safe. But it’s never really worked or made me happy or brought me true peace. It always leaves me wanting more.
So let us look at what some of the basic fears that keep us from really living in relationship with God.
1. If we say yes to God, He’ll make us do something we don’t want to do.
a. Example: being a foreign missionary
2. If we say yes to God, we’ll never get what we want or have planned.
a. We all have our own plans - What do God and control freaks have in common? They both love you and have a wonderful plan for your life.
b. But God has a plan for each one of us – Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
3. If we say yes to God, He might take away something or someone that we love.
a. We think like a child, that God snoops around to see if anyone is enjoying themselves and if so then God will try to stop it. We also think that if things are going too well God’s will throw a wrench in the works at any given moment
We literally work ourselves into a frenzy and create fear where there is none, where there is never going to be any, where this is no justification for fear to exist. We forget what Christ tells us from our second Scripture lesson, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” That sounds like the exact opposite of fear to me. Christ says come to me, do not run from me. Christ asks are you tired and weary? And then Christ tells us, “Come to me and I will give you rest. I will take care of you because I am gentle.” There is no malice there, no fear. Just grace, mercy, and love.
Will You Fess Up?
I know this sweet lady, Miss Frances. And Miss Frances had a life motto that she lived by, “if you think something you might as well say it because God knows what you are thinking and if you tell him something different it’s a lie and you have to confess that too!” Folks when we hide from God, try to disguise the truth, and create fear in our lives we are only hurting ourselves. God already knows all of this. God knew it before we did.
If you hear nothing else today please hear this. God is big enough to handle our questions and fears. It doesn’t matter if we come railing in anger or pouring out our confusion on our knees in tears – God can take it.
Some people say we shouldn’t really express our questions and confusion to God – but to that I say, look at the Bible…look at David. Here we have a man who was said to be “a man after God’s own heart.” And if you read through the Psalms, you see David pouring out all of his fears and questions and confusion before God. “I'm wasting away to nothing, I'm burning up with fever. I'm a ghost of my former self, half-consumed already by terminal illness. My jaws ache from gritting my teeth; I'm nothing but skin and bones. I'm like a buzzard in the desert, a crow perched on the rubble. Insomniac, I twitter away, mournful as a sparrow in the gutter (Psalm 102:4-7, The Message). He just lays them out there. And we don’t see God condemning him for that. Rather what do we see – we see that while half of the psalms are an expression of these fears, the other half are expressions of peace, that peace which passes all understanding that we can only experience when we empty ourselves of our fears and allow ourselves to be filled up with God. “Write this down for the next generation so people not yet born will praise God: "God looked out from his high holy place; from heaven he surveyed the earth. He listened to the groans of the doomed, he opened the doors of their death cells" (Psalm 102:18-20, The Message).
Conclusion
God is not like the people we come into contact with in this world, but we don’t know anything else and so we have pasted the pain of our own experiences with other people onto God. That’s why so much fear stands between us and God – because humans relate to one another to see what they can get for themselves – but that’s not how God relates.
I wonder what God thinks of us trying to work free of our fears on our own? Must be a little like a bird that gets stuck in a birdhouse. When someone tries to help it, it plucks at their hands in terror, even though they are trying to help it – it just doesn’t understand that if it would relax and let them help it, they would have been able to free it much more easily.
Christ promises us rest, "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly" (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message). Are you tired of struggling and living with fear? The first step towards living fearlessly is telling the truth – learning to acknowledge our fears and admit them to our Father, so that we can find that peace that passes all understanding, that peace the comes not from this world, but from the One that loves you more than anyone else.
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