Dealing With Fear

Mr. Seifert, good afternoon to all of you. I was asked to make one additional announcement. I suspect Mr. Hopkins might have read the first part of one of the announcements and skipped the last. I believe next week Cambridge will have services at 10, and we're at our normal time. So if anybody's heart skipped a beat, we're going to address that later on. And actually, I want to do something similar. Alan referred back a month to our coming back from the feast. I want to refer back just about half that time. A couple weeks ago, we were in the middle of what is often called the season of fright. Scary things, demons and witches were everywhere, and ghosts and goblins. And that was just the lawn decorations out in my neighborhood. Leading up to that time, watching television, I would occasionally see commercials for Cedar Point.

I guess what they do is after the main summer season, they stay open in the fall just on weekends, and they do what they call Halloween weekends. And it seems to feature monsters and all kinds of ugly-looking things. The commercials didn't inspire me to want to go there a lot, but I picked up on their slogan. It said, All You Fear is Here. I wonder what I want to go there then if all I fear is there.

And look, it made me think there are a lot of other common catchphrases and quotes that focus on the subject of fear. College basketball season just started, and if you've watched the University of Maryland, they've got a phrase. They tell people this time of year, Fear of the Turtle. Franklin Roosevelt is famous for having said, We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

There was a tagline for a movie that came out in the late 80s called The Fly that said, Be afraid. Be very afraid. And my favorite, the motto of one of my all-time favorite cartoon characters would swoop in and say, There is no need to fear. Underdog is here. It seems we could learn quite a bit about the subject of fear from popular culture if we wanted to. But of course, we don't look to pop culture for direction in our life. Instead, we look to the Bible. And that might bring the question up, then. Does the Bible have anything to tell us about the subject of fear? Well, you're probably thinking, You must know the answer to that. Of course it does. It says lots and lots about fear. I did a word study in preparing for this, and I discovered it was more times than I even wanted to count where the Bible tells us to fear God or live in the fear of the Lord. I thought I might turn to some of them, but it's so abundant, it's not worth it. But if you want to jot a note, in Leviticus 25, it has that same phrase three different times in the one chapter. Yet, there are also literally dozens of times, and I counted to make sure there are at least 24, times where the Bible tells us, Fear not or do not be afraid. I do want to turn to one of those that I particularly like. Actually, and that's in Exodus 14 verse 13. I thought this was an especially good example, and fortunately for me, it happens to be one that Alan didn't just read. That's okay. I don't mind him using several of my scriptures, because I think hopefully our messages will blend together very well. I was inspired by that message. I wanted to... I wish there were some steep cliffs I could scale to get up here. Just the steps were enough. Anyway, it's 14 verse 13. Moses said to the people... this is after they'd left Egypt, and they were gone into the wilderness, and they were backed up against the Red Sea, and lo and behold Pharaoh's army is coming after them. But Moses tells them, Do not be afraid. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. That's something. Don't be afraid. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Now, you might think there's an apparent contradiction if all the time it's saying, Don't be afraid, but then it also says, Live in the fear of the Lord. That's not very much of a contradiction, actually. We'll address that a little later, but there is a more important element. How do we do this? If we're not to live in fear... Now, the Bible has a lot of information that tells us how to live, but does it explain to us how to do that? Well, I think there is some information we can use, but maybe before we get into that, it's worth asking the question. What are you afraid of? What do you fear? Human fears, when we look at it, can be very wide-ranging. Some of them are logical and make perfect sense. Some are rather bizarre. Some people are afraid of heights. Others are afraid of enclosed places. We know that commonly of claustrophobia. While others fear wide-open spaces, which is agoraphobia. People are afraid of spiders, cats, clowns, public speaking. I read an article not long ago that... I'm trying to remember where it was. I read it online in an online magazine, but it discussed how a recent survey had revealed that more than half of young men in the United States have a real deep-seated fear of commitment.

That didn't surprise me a whole lot, but it surprised me that a very large number of young women also have this fear of commitment. I don't want to make light of those. Those are real legitimate fears. As well-informed Christians studying our Bible, we've got some other things that might be more important. Last week, Mr. Stiver spent some time reading 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 1.

I'll just refer to that, but that's a place we know it famously says, in the last days there will be perilous times. But let's do turn to the book of Luke chapter 21. What do we need to be afraid of or what might strike fear? This passage will describe some of it. Luke 21, I'm going to begin in verse 22. This is referring, of course, to the end times. Verse 22, it says, And just to round it out, although this comes earlier, if you look across the page to verse 12, it says, And all these things they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, Delivering you up to the synagogues in prison, She will be brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake.

Rather than turn to what I've got a lot of scriptures I want to look at later, you might note, though, there's also a reference where Jesus was speaking about the same time in the book of John chapter 16 verse 2. He adds on the comment that it's going to be so bad that whoever kills you will think they're doing God a service. So there we might stop in considering those things and considering the progress of prophecy and what's happening in the world and say, We live in scary times, times where we might begin to feel some fear.

I think how can a Christian understand the meaning of these prophecies, and how can we read the newspapers or listen to what world events and see what's happening to our nation, and not fear some fear? Feel some fear. I didn't expect it to be that hard to say, but you know what I'm getting at? It's easy to feel some fear at these things that are happening and what we understand. But God does tell us not to be afraid. So is there a contradiction in that? Should we not even feel the fear?

Well, in my study, I learned that fear is a fairly natural thing. If you will, turn to Genesis chapter 9. I'm going to explain a little bit later some of how I got into this. One of the earliest mentions in the Bible of fear is in Genesis 9 and verse 2. I found this revealing somewhat as to why fear does exist. God could have made us to not feel it at all.

Here it's not necessarily speaking of us as human beings or people or Christians, but it shows one of the purposes for which He created it. Genesis 9 verse 2, this is after Noah and his family come out of the ark. God is explaining to them that some things are different in the world now.

He says, And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea, the air given into your hands. For me, in one way, I saw that as encouraging. I thought, well, God made fear, but that's for animals. But no, wait a minute.

Why is it in animals, and is there a similar reason it might be in me? I thought for animals, there's two reasons. One is God putting that fear of us and the animals protects us quite a bit. There's a lot of animals that have built-in weapons that can be rather dangerous to us, and they're much larger than us.

So there's a protection for us by Him putting the fear in the animals. But also, of course, there's a great protection for them. When they see us coming and they run the other way, that keeps them alive. Which, sad to say, for those of you who are deer hunters, you're well aware of that fear and that they run the other way when we're coming. But I've also read in other places, any man that never feels fear, well, he's one of two things.

He's either insane or he's woefully ignorant. Now, we're going to have fear, and I think God put it in us similarly to the way He put it in the animals. The trick is that it's got to be controlled. A controlled fear can do great things for us. If you have a fear of heights and it's controlled, it can assure that you're going to take proper precautions if you're going up a ladder or if you're washing the windows or things like that.

If you have a proper fear of disease, it's going to make sure that you cook your food properly, that you practice good hygiene. But an uncontrolled fear, now, that's something that can be a real problem. That's going to be bad. That can prevent us from taking actions that we need to or from having proper thoughts. I want to revisit one of the quotes that I quoted in the beginning of the sermon. There's another word for that. Anyways, we've all heard President Roosevelt's quote, We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

I heard that multiple times as a kid growing up, and I thought, eventually I reached a point where I said, Well, what does that mean? If you stop right there, it doesn't mean much at all. It's just some empty platitude. The reason it doesn't mean so much on its own is that Roosevelt didn't stop there. This was actually part of the speech he gave during his first inaugural address when the country was in our worst economic crisis ever, and we were in serious difficulties.

You know, there were people thinking the Constitution had been outdated and maybe it needed to be pitched. Maybe we ought to look across the ocean and see what the Italians and Germans were doing. They were taking action that helped their economy temporarily but obviously caused some other problems. But let's listen to the full quote, or at least the end of that sentence. Roosevelt was talking to a lot of people who saw that there were problems in the country, and he said, We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes, needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. And that was the key. He said, We have to fear the fear that can paralyze the efforts that we need to take, because there are needed efforts, things we have to do.

We can't let fear paralyze us. When fear paralyzes a person, it can stop them from doing the right things, from overcoming problems, from overcoming and growing. And that's why I think an uncontrolled fear can literally preempt a developing character, which God wants us to do. Now, this is the point in the story where I thought, I've got to have some good examples.

And I thought I'd tell one of myself first. As I was preparing this, I thought, Okay, Frank, you've been afraid of some things. I don't have one of those foveas where just the sight of something scares me. But, you know, like any of you, I've been pretty scared at the time or two in my life. And I thought, What's the time that was the most scary?

And then I realized, I think it was once I was on my way back from Texas. I was down there, you know, going to college, and I would come back up here and visit whenever I could. And as you know, it's a pretty long trip. And I got in the habit, and I'm not sure why, looking back at it, I guess because I was young and kind of foolish, but I would usually leave in the evening to come home and just drive overnight.

For some reason, when I went back, I would leave in the morning and have the long drive with daylight. But this is one of those times I'd left overnight and I was riding my motorcycle.

And this wasn't because, well, I loved my motorcycle, but it was partly because I was just too poor to have the car or pour gas for it. So I was in this long stretch, and the longest, emptiest stretch of the trip is on I-40 between Memphis and Nashville. And here I am, it's two or three in the morning, and boy, it's dark, and I'm tired, and I start feeling myself getting a little, you know, a little out of it. I'm starting to fade, and then suddenly I hear a horn blowing. You know, I start awake, and right next to me there's a police car, and he's blowing on his horn to wake me up. I realized what I was doing, I was starting to nod and wobble. And when I realized that, boy, the shot of adrenaline, I was more awake than I'd been in a long time and deathly afraid. And I thought, I could have died. I was this close. And I look back now, what would have been a paralyzing fear from that? If I had said, I'm never getting on that bike again, you know, that would have been a bad thing because I didn't have a lot of choice back then because I was poor. Or I could have said, I'm never going to ride after dark, and that would have limited me quite a bit. Now, to use the fear, though, constructively, I'd say, okay, I'm not going to be making these overnight trips on a motorcycle anymore. Now I see there is, there's needed action is to control the trip. You know, if you're going to have to go overnight, take the car so that you can pull over and climb in the backseat and take a nap. So, in this case, you know, I felt plenty of fear, but I channeled it in a good way. Let me tell you another story. This is one of my favorite stories, and this is not my own history, but way, way back. Matter of fact, I want to take you all the way back to 1755. It's the first time that Britain sent a full-size army to the American colony. I want to say, not the United States, because we weren't the United States yet. They'd sent a large army to America to move into the interior of the country, approaching what is called the Forks of the Ohio River, where the Allegheny and the Nongahila come together to form the Ohio. There had been a bit of a disagreement between the colony of Virginia and the French colony of Canada as to who owned that particular piece of real estate. And there was somewhat of a race going on to get there first and establish a fortress. Well, as it turns out, the French were a little faster. They had started building a fortress. And there's an interesting story before that that I don't have time for, but now we get to the summer of 1755, General George Braddock, no, General Edward Braddock, is leading an army of nearly 2,000 redcoats through the wilderness of Pennsylvania, approaching this spot. Now, they're traveling fairly slowly because they have what they call pioneers out front cutting down trees and leveling grades, building a road so they can make regular progress. They also have with them a number of Virginia volunteers, these front tierismen who are used to the outdoors in handy with a rifle and trapping. Now, as you might guess, because they're only making two to three, maybe five miles in a day, there's a lot of nights where they set up camp. And you can imagine in the thick forest, they build their campfires, have their food, and as soldiers are wont to do, they sit around telling stories. And these British soldiers, British in quite a few highland stops with the kilts and all, they're very intrigued by these wild men that they've heard live in America, these American Indians.

And the Virginians are just happy to be able to tell them every kind of story they can. Oh, yes, we've met these Indians. They run around mostly naked and they paint themselves wild colors. They can run all day through the forest without stopping to eat or drink. In battle, they're as strong as a bear and they can leap hundreds of feet. And their archmanship is fantastic. If you get into battle with them, you're in severe danger. And you don't want to be captured. They capture their enemies and they tie them up and tie them to a post and build large fires nearby.

And they take brands out of the fire and start poking them and rubbing them on the skin. And they delight in seeing men scream. They'll slowly start cutting off little body parts at a time. And I'm not making all this up, actually. I'm going to leave there because some of the stories they're told get quite gruesome. But you might guess that there's a building fear in these British soldiers of these American Indians that they mostly haven't seen yet.

And sure enough, as they approach the force of the Ohio, only a few miles from their goal, what they've been working for all this time, a small number of French officers with a large band of Indians spring the ambush. The trees alongside of the road and the valley, and suddenly they start shooting and whooping. And how do the British soldiers react? The fear paralyzes them. They run into a crowd in the middle. They trample on those who fall.

When they do get their guns out, they shoot each other more than anyone else. The officers who haven't been listening to these tales at night are giving them orders. You know, line up. You've got to, you know, they want to organize their men for appropriate counter-attack. Historians who studied this battle, it's known as Braddock's Defeat because it's turned into a terrible disaster. But historians have looked back and said, if the soldiers had only followed their officers' orders, the British tactics would have worked against the Indians. It wasn't that they were unbeatable, but it's largely the fact that the British soldiers just froze with fear. They let that overwhelm them, and they couldn't react and do what was needed.

And, of course, they suffered terribly from it. About the only good thing that came out of that is George Washington was there as an aide to Camp Braddock, and his reputation swelled the new highs as he organized what was left of the army and led it in a reasonable retreat once they got out of there. So this is an example.

Fear could do some pretty bad things. One of the worst cases I could think of, could it get any worse than that? Well, I say yes, because worse than any of our present consequences that could have come from a paralyzing fear, let's turn near the back of our Bible to Revelation 21. I could say, you know, that example of those British soldiers in that particular battle can start contrast with the British and American and Canadian soldiers 60 years ago who stormed Normandy Beach. They said, inspiring to see what happens when the fear is not present.

But let's look at Revelation 21, verse 8. It says, The cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, saucers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Interesting. Along with sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters are the cowardly. Or the Old Kingdom says simply the fearful. Wow. That's something. The fearful and the unbelieving have a chance of being in the lake of fire, the second death. And remember, we live in scary times.

There's plenty for us to be afraid of. That tells us we need to pay attention to this subject. It's well worth our study. But here's where I want to make a strong disclaimer, and I've got it in bold notes here. I don't believe that it's a sin to feel fear.

As I said, I think God created it, serves His purpose. So it's not that feeling the fear is something that's going to end us up in the lake of fire. As a matter of fact, I had a note here in the book of Hebrews 12. It describes how Moses reacted when God came down to Mount Sinai. And at one point we said, I'm exceedingly afraid. I'm shaking and quaking. So Moses knows what it's like to have been so afraid. And I don't think that some unresolved claustrophobia is going to teach someone from God's kingdom.

But I do think that the reason, the fearful, the cowardly are listed there in Revelation 21a, is just because, as FDR said, if fear paralyzes needed efforts, it can stop a Christian from overcoming. And that's what we have to do. Earlier in Revelation, and the messages to the seven churches in chapters 2 and 3, repeatedly, at the end of each message, it has the last thing it says is, he who overcomes will, in some variation of being God's kingdom, overcome and gets us in God's kingdom. Apparently, not overcoming, being paralyzed by fear, means we're not going to be there at all.

So I thought, I wonder when I was writing this, I thought, if you weren't afraid going in, now I might have made you a little nervous, right? So let's back up a little bit. And, you know, if fear is such a big important topic, what is it exactly? What do we mean? Just what do you mean fear? That could have been a booklet a few years ago. Well, I consulted Webster's dictionary. I found two primary definitions. There are several smaller ones, different ones, but the first one, the noun version, says fear is a feeling of anxiety or an agitation caused by the presence of danger, evil or pain. Or, in the verb form, it's a feeling of anxiety or agitation caused by the presence of danger. Oh, wait, I just read. Sorry. The verb form is to feel a painful apprehension of something that's perceived to be about to happen as of some impending evil. Okay, that's one definition. A second definition that I gave was fear could be a reverence and awe, a respectful dread. Or the verb form is simply to feel reverence, to venerate and have reverential awe. So, obviously, that first definition is the primary form of fear that we want to control. The second, I think, is what the Bible means often when it says that we have to have the fear of God. I also consulted the Bible dictionary. Easton's Bible dictionary, describing the term the fear of the Lord, says, It's a designation of true piety. It is a fear conjoined with love and hope, and is therefore not a slavish dread, but a filial reverence. Although I think it is worth mentioning that while I think that the reverence and awe is important, part of our fear of God does need to be the fact that we would fear to disobey God because we know there are penalties involved. God wants us to fear to be at cross purposes with Him, but He doesn't want us to live in that dread or that terror of Him because we know He's a very loving, giving God. Since we have a proper fear of God, it's going to tend to overwhelm the cause of any other fears. And I found another quote from John Brown. I mentioned in the past I've been studying his life. John Brown, the famous abolitionist of the mid-1800s, once he was writing a description of the traits he wanted and men that would join him in his fight to end slavery. And he said, he wanted men who fear God too much to fear anything human. I like that. That stood out to me. You've got to fear God too much to be afraid of anything human.

Now, I've got in my notes here and I'm going to skip over. I actually looked up to Greek and Hebrew words for fear to look at their definitions. They were pretty much just like our English ones. And the only advantage you have if I tried to discuss them is you get to hear me mispronounce Hebrew and Greek. So to take my word for it, there's not a lot of extra meaning to come from the lexicon. But there are some interesting things the Bible tells us about fear that I think will give us some understanding. So first of all, let's turn...we're in Revelation if you'll turn forward a little bit to 1 John, Chapter 4. 1 John 4.18.

There are a couple of scriptures here that will tell us some things we want to know about fear. And this is one that's very assuring. 1 John 4.18.

I like that. Real love, godly love, will push out fear. And there's a good reason for that. Let's look at another one before I discuss it further, though. Mark Chapter 4, in Verse 40.

Mark 4, Verse 40.

I want to set the stage. This is one of those cases where Jesus had been preaching, teaching the multitudes, and then he and the disciples were moving onward. So they got in a boat, and they're going across a sea of Galilee, and he's tired because he was doing all the teaching. So he goes in the back of the boat and falls asleep, and then a storm whips up. And the other...the waves are crashing, and the disciples, they're feeling fear. They think they're about to die, so they wake him up and say, Lord, we're going to perish! And let's pick a...oh, and of course, he gets up, and he...like in the...my new King James, it says, he says, Peace, be still! I thought it might be similar if he woke up and said, Hey, calm down! Only he's not talking to the disciples, he's talking to the wind and rain, and suddenly it gets still. And he looks at them and says, Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith? Why are you fearful? Why don't you have faith? And he presents in a way, he knew that if they had faith, they wouldn't have the fear. There's a parallel account, if you want to know in Matthew 8, verse 26. I'm not going to go there. But I was reminded of my years in college. Dr. Ward looked at several Scriptures where Jesus would sort of get on the apostles for not having enough faith, and he always pointed out something that they did have. You know, it was often human reasoning, fear, or doubt.

But I thought of the definition of what fear is and what faith is. We know from Hebrews that faith is a substance of things hoped for. It's that substance which you're hoping for that's coming in the future, whereas fear is a painful dread of something that's expected in the future. So they're both what you're having now in expectation of the future. So it seems that they're opposites. You know, the more you have of faith, the less you're going to have of fear. The more you have of fear, the less you're going to have in faith.

So an obvious solution for controlling our fear is if we want to have less fear, we need to increase our faith.

So now we've got to control our fear. There's a question then, well, I still haven't answered, how do you do it?

Sorry, I keep looking up there because the clock is missing.

Luckily, I did bring my watch today.

I was saying earlier, nobody would be real disappointed if I ended early, I think. But they might be disappointed if I went late because I enjoy hearing the sound of my own voice. Anyways, there's a break there. I wanted to talk about preparing this message. I thought, of course, we want to focus on the Scripture. But it's important to also consider what man has learned. You know, we've studied for a long time, and there are a lot of psychologists and therapists out there that make a pretty good living. Teaching people how to handle their fears. And I've done a fair bit of studying of that. Actually, this message dates back years and years ago, so when I was in college, and I was going through one of those fears, you know, looking ahead in my life and sort of unsure and feeling a bit fearful. And I said, you know, like any ambassador student would do, I said, I've got to get in the Bible and see what it tells me. But I also did some studying of various books, you know, getting good counsel of how to handle fear.

And I learned some good principles that I want to share, but I also thought, well, also not then, but in preparing this message in the last few weeks, I said, well, I'd better get myself up to date. Maybe there's been some great breakthroughs since, you know, years and years ago that I don't know about. So, of course, when you need to research, you go to the Internet.

So I typed in handling fear in Google, and I discovered there's not only dozens, but there's hundreds of websites you can go to to get different perspectives on how to handle fear. And they come from every source you can think of. There's pop psychology, there's Zen, Buddhism, karma, traditional Christianity, you know, and lots that I didn't put labels on. I found you can download lesson plans for teaching grade schoolers about dealing with fear. I found articles for dealing with fear in horses, as well as fear of horses.

I never thought horses might be afraid of us, but... And I found a video of Kermit the Frog and the Cookie Monster, teaching children how to handle fear of that first day of school. Actually, I went back and watched that this morning, and I'm no longer afraid of going to school. Sue was resting on the couch at the time. She didn't know what I was doing, but I'm a big fan of Kermit the Frog.

Surprisingly, a lot of these different websites and all these different perspectives have a great deal in common in their advice. There are certain things that they all point to. And also, or maybe surprisingly, maybe not, though, most of those, the basic principles, don't disagree with what we can learn from our Bible. And I thought, this must come from Adam and Eve partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There's a lot of good that mankind has discovered. So this is sort of a lead-in to where I want to say, without me making any claims of being a counselor or a therapist or a psychologist, I want to give you the benefit of what I've learned from studying some of that and show you some steps on the physical level for dealing with fear, leading up to the most important one, which is calling on God and His help.

So as a background, fundamentally, we want to point out psychologists and doctors have done studies where they've learned that fear is an unconscious reaction. And by unconscious, I mean they've done the brain-napping thing where they put electrodes on your head to see what parts of the brain react. And the parts of the brain that light up when you're feeling fear are different from the ones that light up when you're thinking in your conscious thought.

So in other words, fear is this emotion that comes without your consciously thinking of it or wanting it to. Now, that leads into the first step. If we want to control our fears, step one is we have to move that fear from the unconscious to the conscious. So we have to make yourself aware of the fear. I said, we have to make yourself. You have to make yourself aware of the fear. Not just realizing that you're afraid, of course, but determining what is causing the fear. What's really there and where is this coming from? Notice it's not a matter of trying to make yourself not feel the fear.

Because it's coming from a place that you can't really control at first. So you have to explore and ask yourself, what is it I'm afraid of? Now, imagine, say in specific, if you have a fear of public speaking, and that's often tops the list of what people are afraid of. If you're afraid of public speaking and so you don't want to join Spokesman's Club or you don't want to have to give a talk at work in front of a committee, think of yourself, is it that I'm afraid I'm going to forget the words when I stand up?

Let's understand that's a possibility. Are you afraid that people will think poorly of you? Are you afraid that you'll lose your friends and that later on in life, because of that, you'll die friendless and alone? That might be taking you to the extreme, but you seriously want to break it down to specifics. If you have a fear of spiders, when you see that spider, are you afraid that you'll get bit?

I know I am, but then are you afraid that it's going to be this intolerable pain? Are you afraid that the venom will kill you? Are you afraid that you can't escape the spider? What is it that's getting down to it? Now, once you've identified the root or several roots of the fear, you've taken a big step. You started moving that fear from the unconscious into the conscious, where you can start having some control. And that's where you're going to move into the second step.

Step two, I've seen it written in a lot of different ways, but you can sum it up simply as face your fear. Understand where the fear is coming from and then determine that you're going to face it. Consciously, in the present, you're going to first learn to direct your thoughts and then direct your actions, knowing that the fear is there. You're not going to direct your thoughts to do away with the fear, but you're going to take control of yourself so that you're not paralyzed.

Now, part of this comes from, you know, if you're in a fearful situation, you might be examining, you know, what is it I'm feeling fear of, what could this come down to. And then, a lot of times, though, the things that are the extremes are also extremely unlikely to happen. And when you see a spider, you're probably not going to die if it bites you. I said probably. I'll come back to that in a moment.

But what about public speaking? And he said that's a lot of people's top fear. Well, think of it realistically. If it's a meeting at work, are people there going to throw things at you? No. If you're giving a speech in Spokesman's Club, which many of us here have done, you're going to think, okay, you know, I don't think they're going to, you know, walk out. They're not going to call me names. What might happen? Well, and you're not going to lose your friends. They're not going to say, he's terrible.

I never want to see him again. Probably the worst thing that would happen is they'll say, Frank's not a very good speaker. And you might say, well, I already knew that. You know, put your name in. Oh, they might think you're not a very good speaker. Well, you already think you're not a good speaker.

So what have you got to lose? If you can get control of that fear, then you can start taking action to where you become a better speaker. And in the case of the spider, you know, as you're up there on top of the table, once the screaming is over with, you start focusing, what is it I'm afraid of?

And you exert conscious control. You realize, you remind yourself, spiders can't fly. So he's not going to get up here. Okay? And you realize, garden spiders and almost all varieties of spiders that live in Ohio aren't deadly. And spider bites actually don't hurt all that much. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're pleasant because they're not. If you've ever been bitten by fire ants, they'll hurt about as much as that.

Usually not as much as a bee sting, but most of us have lived through bee stings. Okay, so then once you control that, okay, these are the likely things that could happen, you can proceed to directing actions. I'm getting away from my notes, but this is the second part of controlling, you know, taking control and facing the fear. First, you direct your thoughts to that understanding, then move to action. If it's the spider, now, say it is a deadly spider. When I was down in Big Sandy, we often, working for the water plant, it was very common for us to tip over a manhole cover and discover black widows living under them, and we jumped back.

But what we do is you have to control the fear, and I'm not going to say at all, I didn't feel the fear, but you realize, okay, he can't fly. He's right there. I'm going to keep an eye on him, and I'm going to find a weapon. And I consciously remind myself, I'm about 6,000 times bigger than he is, and a lot stronger. So you focus on getting the weapon in hand, keeping in sight, and delivering that death blow. And I said, the fear is there, but you control it.

Well, I was going to say similar for public speaking, except there's no death blow or weapons involved, but for public speaking, you might need to consciously direct yourself to noticing certain things in your notes. If you look up here, I've got a certain box that I draw a line around to draw myself my attention to it, and I use different colors.

And there might be a time where you direct yourself to raise the volume of your voice to make a certain point or to make a certain gesture. And these are actions that you're taking. And the more you think about the actions, or you might stop and take a break for this. But the psychologists say, the more you're focusing on doing, the less you're letting yourself dwell on that emotion of fear, and you put it aside.

Now, this does require advanced preparation. Now, you don't prepare in advance for the spider so much, but you already know how to swat something. But in public speaking, if you know there's going to be a fear, you prepare diligently. You write good notes. You might practice the delivery so that you've had that experience of going through the motions when the time comes.

This is why schools conduct fire drills, of course. You know, fire and smoke can be scary if you don't know what's going on, but the students and the teachers go through the drill often enough so that their muscle memory takes them the word they need to go and they don't let the fear take control.

Now, most of the non-Christian sources I studied for this stop pretty much there. They say, you're going to be okay if you do that. You know, you recognize the fear and identify it, and you take steps to face that fear. But a Christian perspective goes a step further, and I think it's a very good thing that does. Step three for a Christian is to replace your fear with faith. And there are ways to do that. You're going to use your faith to just push that fear out.

And you might say, how does that work? Well, it's sort of like if someone told you you'd better get the air out of a glass. You know, you could design, try to clamp it down and develop some type of vacuum pump to get that air out.

Or you could say, well, just pour some more water in. Now the air is gone. Most of it. There's a little bit. And I'm, well, I could get a lot more in if I keep drinking it. So, I just think that's how faith can work. The more you put faith in your mind, the more it's going to push that fear out. Now, our faith initially comes from God. We know that. He's our source. So, the start of this, stage three, step three, is a simple thing of just asking God. Give us more faith. We need that. But when we know, when you know and you know that you know that nothing in life can separate you from the love of God.

Scripture says so. Neither height nor depth nor anything else can separate you from the love of God. When you have that, that knowledge is going to tend to boost your faith and push out fear. And that's so important because I've been focusing on things like spiders and public speaking. And those can be debilitating fears. But remember, what is it we as Christians have to fear?

We're thinking of tribulation, of the end of this age, of armies of darkness. There's where we absolutely have to have God's help in that faith to overcome those fears. But our understanding of God's plan and our relationship with Him is going to make that so much better. It's going to make us so much able to handle that. If we look beyond any imminent suffering we might have, we realize we're working towards eternal life.

That's our goal. And with God fighting our battles, we simply can't lose. So I want to take it a step further. Of course, initially we asked God to build faith in us. But I was reminded of Romans 10, verse 17, where it simply tells us, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. I thought that was appropriate because, to be honest, years ago when I first started this, I said, I'm going to do a word study.

I figured out how to use a concordance, finally. I said, I'm going to look at every place the Bible says anything about fear. And of course, as I said, it says it a lot, but I wrote down the pertinent ones. And what I noticed, looking at the ones where God tells you not to fear, or fear not, or be not afraid, it often includes the word for, or therefore. Be not afraid for, I am with you.

That word for can almost just as easily be interpreted as because. So what we're getting at is there are a lot of times God will say, don't be afraid, and then He gives you a specific reason not to be afraid. And I think that's a great way to build up faith. So what I want to do is look at a number of those Scriptures, and I conveniently arranged them from the beginning towards the last.

So let's turn to Genesis. Genesis 6, chapter 26, and verse 24. And we're going to go through a few of these, and I think hopefully build up some of our faith to help us with some of the fears that we need to deal with in our daily lives. Genesis 26, verse 24. And I want to insert the word because where it says for. It says, The Eternal appeared to him in the same night and said, I am the God of your father Abraham.

Now, you're speaking to Isaac, by the way. And he says, Do not fear because I am with you. Don't fear I'm with you. I'll bless you and multiply your descendants for my servant Abraham's sake. Another reason I wanted to read this one is, I like that God was telling Isaac, you don't have to be afraid I'm going to be with you and do these things for you. And it has nothing to do with what you do or how deserving you are. I'm doing it for Abraham's sake. But doesn't that apply to us in a lot of cases?

God keeps blessing upon blessing on us, not because of anything we've done, but because he made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So we don't have to be afraid. Those blessings are there for us, for those reasons. Deuteronomy chapter 3.

Deuteronomy 3 and verse 22. This Scripture was so similar to the one that Alan was reading earlier. I double-checked to make sure I wasn't reading the same one, but it says almost the same thing, which is good. It's worth hearing more than once. Deuteronomy 3.22. You must not fear them because the eternal your God himself fights for you. Don't be afraid of anybody out there or anything. If there's a fight, you know, be it a spiritual fight or a physical one, God is fighting for you. And he usually wins. Actually, I think he always wins. 1 Chronicles chapter 28. 1 Chronicles 28 and verse 20. It amazes me how much more quickly I find these Scriptures when I'm sitting down there and standing up here. 1 Chronicles 28 verse 20. Here David is giving instructions to Solomon. David's on his deathbed, and he's letting Solomon know he needs to carry on and build the temple. And David said to his son Solomon, Be strong and have a good courage and do it. Do not fear nor be dismayed because the eternal your God, my God, will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you until you've finished all the work of the service in the house of the Lord. And don't be afraid because my God is with you. The God is with you, and he's not going to leave. He's not just with you now. He's not going to forsake you. He's with you all the way through. The next one I have is Psalm 23. This is easily the most famous verse in this split sermon. I'm going to say almost the most famous in the Bible because it's quoted so often. But I think it's worth looking at. Psalm 23 verse 4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because you are with me. You, God, are with me. So I don't have to be afraid no matter where I'm going, even if it's the valley of the shadow of death. You're with me, and your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The rod and the staff, they symbolize God's power and what he can do. And just like a shepherd with a staff can use that staff to ward off wolves or other bad creatures. Or he also carries a rod off and with a hook on it. And sheep have a way of getting down to the place they couldn't, and the shepherd can grab him with that hook and pull him back out. And that's where you say, God, he's with us, and he's got that rod and staff to save us. So we don't have to be afraid.

Isaiah 41.

Isaiah 41 and verse 10.

Now notice I'm skipping ahead. I'm not going to read all of them.

But these are mostly the ones that I like the best. They really say something to me.

And hopefully they'll say something to you next time you're in a fearful situation.

Isaiah 41 verse 10.

Now this is, I thought, very poetic, but it's not just poetry. Just think when you're in a situation where the fear comes up in the emotion, and then you might be going through the steps. Okay, I'm going to analyze it. I'm going to find out what it is I'm afraid of. And then I'm going to direct my actions.

But then you also put in the equation knowing that God is with you.

That can give you that strength to take the action that fear would blot out.

Because it's a lot more than getting up and speaking in a public situation or killing a spider.

Think of the things we as Christians sometimes have to do.

Say you're working on an important project at work, and it's Friday afternoon.

And you know the deadline's not going to be met.

And the boss is going to say, hey, we need to go off to here and get this done.

Isn't it a scary thing to have to say, no, I have to leave? I'm going to be out of here by sundown.

Where do you get the courage to overcome the fear for that?

Or the economic times are tough. You're looking at your finances, writing bills. You get some money in, and you know you need to write a tithe check.

But if there's not enough money to take care of everything, that's a scary thing.

You need the faith to overcome that fear.

That's where, as it says here, God will strengthen you. He says, I'll help you. I won't forsake you. I'll uphold you.

Let's turn to Isaiah 43, verse 1. Just a few pages over. 43, verse 1. But now, thus says the Eternal, who created you, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel, fear not, because I have redeemed you.

I have called you by your name, your mind.

Now think how that applies to each one of us.

Every one of us has been redeemed by Christ's sacrifice. His blood redeems us. So this scripture applies.

He calls you by name. When Christ said, no one can come to Him except the Father draw him, the Father draws. He calls you by name at some point.

And then you belong to Him. So what could be better for overcoming fears than to know God has called my name.

I belong to Him, as John Brown said. That fear of God is going to make me overwhelm any fear that I might have of anything else.

And let's get to the New Testament, Romans chapter 8 and verse 15.

Romans 8. Now these aren't some because scriptures, but they're very important things. And these are scriptures we've heard many times, and we want to hear them again today.

Romans 8.15. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by which we cry out, Abba, Father.

We don't need fear. God has called us to be His children. He's making us sons and daughters of God.

Second Timothy chapter 1 and verse 7.

Second Timothy.

Second Timothy 1 verse 7. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound line. Remember, the love and the fear won't abide together.

But it's also important to know that in both of the scriptures it points out it's by God's Holy Spirit. It's not our own strength.

We might want to go through those two steps of thinking about our fear and taking control, but there's something more to it.

There's a strength and a power that's far beyond anything we can do on our own. It's the power of God's Spirit.

Now, we're getting near the back. Revelation chapter 2. Revelation 2 and verse 10.

I specifically wanted to look at this one, and actually this is the one Alan did read, and I want to go look at it again because of the important things that it does say.

This is the message to the church of Smyrna, but I think as with all of the eras or seven churches, there are lessons here that apply to us.

2 verse 10 it says, One of the reasons I especially wanted to read that is it says, You are about to suffer.

And later on it says, You will have tribulation. The word if isn't in there anywhere.

It doesn't say, if you suffer or if you might have tribulation, but God is saying, you're going to suffer. You're going to have tribulation.

We read in Luke where it says, you're going to be called before leaders and you're going to be persecuted.

People will think they're doing God a service by killing you.

But what's beyond that? A crown of life.

In verse 11, That should bolster our faith. When we go through these things where we know we're going to suffer, there's something on the other side.

The faith can push out the fear. Sometimes God will deliver it so we don't suffer.

Perhaps sometimes we will, but we still can control the fear in any case.

Because, as I said, brethren, we live in some scary times.

Knowing all these scriptures, even if we commit them to memory, it's not going to change that.

There's still going to be plenty of opportunities to feel fear.

For that matter, you might feel that charge of emotion next time you see a spider in the bathroom.

I would feel that fear.

Or when you're confronted with a roller coaster or darkness when you don't expect it.

It's natural to fear that you didn't expect it to be so hard to get the difference between feel and fear.

It's natural to have fear. God created it.

But He created it for us to control properly and to use it for our good.

And with discipline and effort, we can do that.

We can learn to take steps to control our fear than to face it and act in spite of it.

And above all, we can ask God to give us a face.

To put His perfect love in us that will push out fear.

I want to close with one last scripture that I think is very short and eloquent and sums this all up.

If you'll turn to Luke 12 and verse 32.

Jesus Christ's assurance to His disciples then and to us now. Luke 12, 32 simply says, Do not fear, little flock, because it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

And with that we know we have no fear. The kingdom of God is ahead.