Are you afraid of the dark

Are you afraid of the dark?

2 Timothy 1:7

THE POINT: When Christ is the center of your life, you have nothing to fear.

Story

When I was a kid growing up I was so afraid of my basement. I mean, I was convinced that the place was haunted! I know many of you have nice finished basements, with carpet, and fun stuff… and ceilings. Well my basement was old, and just had concrete floors and wood joist ceilings—the kind where spiders like to make webs. It was dark, but we had these pull chain lights, you know, the kind you see in horror movies!Now it didn't help that I had a sister, who insisted we make haunted houses down there for our neighbor friends. We would set up a little path for them to walk through and have some things jump out at them and make scary noises. We would tie string around baby dolls necks and hang them from the joists. I know, it’s amazing I turned out so normal!With one such haunted house we made, my job was to make a strobe light out of a desk lamp we had. I had the brilliant idea to quickly plug it in and unplug it rapidly, causing, in theory, a strobe light. But see it was pitch dark where I was hiding, ready to start the effect as my neighbor friend came downstairs, and I couldn't find the outlet. So my brilliant idea was to hold the plug by the ends, and use my fingers to guide the prongs into the outlet socket. I got it right to the point, ready to push it in, and then ZAP! I electrocuted myself! All the muscles in my arm went completely tense. Who knew that the main attraction at this haunted house would be the guy in the electric chair!

Continued

Fear is a big business these days. You pay good money to “get scared”, and I don't see the excitement dying down any day soon. How much does it cost to go to a good haunted house these days? $20? $50? Wow! But we look for fear in all sorts of other places too—scary movies are wildly popular, as are gory shows like the Walking Dead, and even video games. Has anyone played “Five Nights at Freddy’s” or “Slenderman” games? I was just made aware by my brother of the new category of games called “Jump Scare” games.Fear is such a strong emotion. Sure, many of us grow out of our childhood fears, but tonight I want to talk about real fear, stuff you may never grow out of. Let’s pray, and ask God to focus our attention on Him tonight.

Pray

Scripture

We are going to look at a few passages of Scripture tonight, but the one I want to really focus on comes from 2 Timothy 1:7 (NLT)For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

Application

You see, right away, I want you to understand that fear is not from God. God is not some cosmic tyrant, toying with us, making us walk this haunted house called earth, poking at us, making us afraid. I know that may sound completely absurd to you, but there are people who think that since we experience fear, and terror, and bad dreams and more, that God must be the cause. But He is not!Instead, the Bible tells us straight away that God gives us the power to overcome fear!

Comedy

Now with that said, there are some healthy fears in life that really protect us from danger.It is important to have a healthy fear of drowning. Otherwise you may just walk out into the water thinking you could swim across the ocean!It is good to have a healthy fear of spiders, otherwise you may see a tarantula and think it looks fuzzy so you want to pet it and play fetch with it!Think about life if you didn’t have a healthy fear of heights! You may just play on the top of a skyscraper because you think it is fun!And of course it’s always good to be afraid to be the first to fall asleep at a sleepover! You know what people do to that person!You see, there are some healthy fears. Sometimes fear is there to protect us. Let me identify 3 things, though, that you don’t have to fear.

1. You don’t have to fear evil.

The spiritual realm, what you and I cannot see, can be intriguing and even cause us to fear ghosts, demons, and evil, but we don’t have to live in that fear.Movies, TV, games, books, and more have all glorified this genre. Vampires, supernatural shows, angels and demons, zombies, things we can’t explain are all hits.Let me say this: the spiritual realm is very real, and very powerful. I believe it is more powerful than you or I could even understand. But God is the real power. God has power over sin and darkness.

Supporting Scripture

Let me read to you a fantastic promise we have, found in Romans 8:31; 38-39 (NLT)31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I know the spiritual realm can be intriguing, but it has no power over you! Quite honestly, I don’t think we will ever be able to fully grasp everything about it—we are only human! But one thing we can grasp, is that nothing—NOTHING—can separate us from God. With that hope, another thing you don’t have to fear:

Application 2

2. You don’t have to fear living.

You are probably thinking, “Uhm… what? I’m not afraid to live!” That is good, but sometimes we call this fear of living “worry.” Now does it make sense?I know what it is like to live day to day with constant worry. I struggle with questions like, Will I have enough money to make life work? Or, will I be safe driving in the snow? Or, every time it rains I worry that my basement is going to get flooded. But there is also worry like, “Will my friends like me?” or “Will I be accepted?”I get it. I struggle with it. Some of you maybe deal with this a little more than others—worry about your parents, worry about your next day at school, worry about life. It can really wear you down. But God wants you to know that He understands your worry, and He is in control. All throughout the Bible, God is reminding us that He’s got this.Look at the stories of the Old Testament. He takes care of the Israelites while they are wandering in the desert with no food and no water. He protects His followers from fire furnaces, lion’s dens, prison, and more! In the New Testament, Jesus even teaches about worry. He said in Matthew 6:31-33 (NIV):31 “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.Check this out God never says life will be easy. But He does promise to take care of us. You may have some hard times in life, but God is still in control. Make depending on God your priority and He will never let you down.

3. You don’t have to fear death

Growing up, this was a huge fear of mine. Not just for my own death but for those that I loved. I’m not really sure where that fear came from, or maybe it is just natural to fear death, but I was always afraid that I might die.In the back of my mind, I knew that if I died I would go to heaven, but there was still this fear that maybe I didn’t say the prayer the right way, or maybe the last sin I just committed would disqualify me at the last minute. I can’t tell you how many times I said “the prayer” just to make sure I did it right!If you don’t know what prayer I am talking about… You see, I was taught, that we respond to God’s salvation by praying to Him and asking Him to fill our lives. We say something simple like “God I admit that I need you. I believe in your son Jesus, and I want to commit my life to follow you.”

Those aren’t magic words or some formula you say to make God seal your life with eternal salvation,

If you have faith in Christ you are saved! You don't have to worry about praying a specific “special magic prayer.”

The promise God makes to us, though, is an Old Testament promise from the book of Joel, that all who truly call on the LORD will be saved. I don’t believe that God will disqualify us if we used the wrong words or conjugated the verbs in our prayers properly. It is all about our heart. Do we truly believe in Christ?God gives us all sorts of promises in the Bible, that we don’t have to fear death. In Philippians 1:21 the author says that life is for bringing glory to Jesus, and death means to be in His presence! In 1 Corinthians 15:53-57 the author recalls the Old Testament statements “O Death where is your victory? O Death where is your sting?” and gives us the hope that we have victory over death!Sure, we will all face death at some point, someone we love will die, and even each of us will die eventually. But if you have your trust based in Christ, He will provide victory over eternal death. Instead we will get to spend eternity with Him in heaven.

Conclusion

Remember what we said at the very beginning? Fear does not come from God — instead God is victorious over our fears. I would challenge you tonight, or sometime soon when you get some alone time, to talk to God. Pray and ask Him to help you rest in His victory over your fears. Only you know what fears you really struggle with, so ask God to help you overcome those fears.Take the Bible verses from tonight home and read them over again. Ask God to help the words sink in. That is what we call meditating on God’s Word. It is allowing His voice to speak to us, and His peace to comfort us through His word. It won’t be some supernatural audible voice, that would freak you out, but rather God will bring peace and focus to your thoughts through the scripture.

In closing, I want you to hear this one more time: if you live your life for yourself, putting your trust in you alone, then fear will be a real struggle and rightfully so. Without God there is no hope, no power over fear. But when Christ is the center of your life, you have nothing to fear.