Praying through our fear

Introduction

Vision

From the first Sunday we believed that the Church of Christ exists in the world to make disciples and plant churches.

We have tried to bring more clarity to that phrase by saying that we exist as a local church in Roseville to submit all of our life to our King and to bring the hope of Jesus Christ to our neighborhoods and the nations.

When we have conversations about ministries, structures, goals, and sermons we go back to that statement and say, “How does this connect to that?”

How is a sermon in the Psalms going to help us make disciples and plant churches? How is this sermon going to help us submit all of our life to our King and bring the hope of Jesus to our neighbor?

Well, as the people of God who are disciples in the making, we believe that the our whole self belongs to God. But, do we believe this?

We don’t have time to go through our multi-faceted person and gauge whether we believe this or not, but what the Psalms teach us is that even our emotions belong to God and...

They reveal the importance of emotions in our prayer life

Last year we devoted the month of November to Treasuring Christ through the Psalms and we’re going to continue that for the next few weeks.

Last year we devoted the month of November to Treasuring Christ through the Psalms and we’re going to continue that for the next few weeks.

The Psalms are a collection of poems of lament and thanksgiving, confessions and prayers, and songs. There were several saints that contributed to the Psalm collective, King David wrote about 70 of these poems, prayers, and songs throughout the mountains and valleys of his own life.

We don’t have time to go through our multi-faceted person and gauge whether we believe this or not, but what the Psalms teach us is that even our emotions belong to God.

Last year we devoted the month of November to Treasuring Christ through the Psalms and we’re going to continue that for the next few weeks.

The Psalms are a collection of poems of lament and thanksgiving, confessions and prayers, and songs. There were several saints that contributed to the Psalm collective, King David wrote about 70 of these poems, prayers, and songs throughout the mountains and valleys of his own life.

Now, I have learned that a lot of us don’t even like the word emotions. And if you’re in that camp, prepare for a really uncomfortable sermon.

The Psalms do lots of things, but one is that they reveal the importance of emotions in our prayer life

I said this last week, and I probably say it all the time, but some of us are afraid of discussing let alone displaying emotions because we have seen churches exchange objective truth for subjective experience.

But emotions are a part of our person. Emotions are a part of God’s character. God is an emotional being. So emotions are not to be held up against truth, they should work in tandem, not in competition.

Two ways to deal with emotions:

Shove them into the closet

When we’re angry, happy, doubtful, cynical, sad we do our best to make sure that nobody knows because displaying emotions reveals vulnerability and if there is one thing that we affluent, proud, 21st century suburban Christians are NOT is vulnerable. So some of you shove them in the closet and you’re repulsed by the display of emotions that those who give full vent to their emotions. So on the other end of the spectrum you have those who...

Give full vent to your emotions

You deal with your emotions by just letting them all hang out. When there is an issue, you’re locked and loaded and ready to deal with it and then make up. But you also say things or do things that you regret. You are bothered when people are so unmoved by life. You want to shake folks by the shoulders and tell them to wake up!

Which way do you lean? Now, neither of these options reflect a fully Christian perspective, so what should we do?

The Psalms teach us to pray through our emotions in the presence of God

is a prime example of a saint Praying through their fear

Fear is one of our most primal emotions

Fear is probably the first emotion we experience

From the womb to the world

Fear doesn’t go away

Fear of death

Fear of failure

Fear of scarcity

Fear of exposure

What are you afraid of this morning?

And what does that lead you to do? Measure. Now measuring is not always a bad thing. But what are you measuring? I think that if we were honest we would base the success of our prayer life by the outcome.

For instance, if you prayed often and fervently for something to happen (new job, healing, acceptance to a college, etc) and it didn’t happen, how would you grade your prayer life? My prayer life is good because God answers my prayers. My prayer life is bad because God is not answering my prayers.

And then you stew, did I not pray enough? Did I not believe God could answer it enough?

The Psalms are a raw view into the prayer life of several people. They became the prayer book for the people of God. Martin Luther organized the prayers by how they reflected the Lord’s Prayer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer organized them similarly, believing that the prayers in Scripture are the prayers of Jesus.

The big idea this morning is that - praying through our fears biblically should lead us to have confidence in the care of our Father.

How does David go from, “I’m freaking out that everyone wants to kill me” to “I will not be afraid of many thousands of people, I’m going to bed?”

Identify the Source of Your Fear (1-2)

What is causing him to be afraid?

Many, many, many people after him (physical attack - = 12,000 foot soldiers)

Many are saying, God is through with David (attack on David’s identity)

What is David’s history? Humble to hero > Shepherd to King > Pride to sin

What are they saying about David? God isn’t on David’s side anymore

Who is David now? He’s a sinner, he’s a bad king, he’s a bad husband, he’s a bad dad, he’s running, LOL

David has wrapped his identity in who he was as a hero, king, great dad, etc…, but all that is gone

Two types of fear:

Positive fear - adrenaline (feeling of power and energy)

Negative fear - anxiety (feeling of dread and weakness)

David is running for fear not only of his assailants; David is afraid that what is being said about he and God is true.

Once David has identified the source of his fear (both physical and spiritual) he then is able to recognize that the dreadful spirit that came over him is going to paralyze him. So he knows he must turn somewhere, where does David turn his attention?

Turn Your Attention to the Character of God (3)

How does David describe God’s character? Three metaphors

You are my shield - the image of God as shield is easy enough to understand = protection, prevents harm from over taking you.

But when a soldier puts on a shield, what is the expectation? Nothing bad will ever happen to him, right? Cause I have a shield…

He knows that things are not good and may not get better soon. So what David is reminding himself of through prayers is that YHWH is present in the moment and protecting David from being utterly destroyed because God is a shield AROUND HIM.

Sometimes we assume that God’s role in our life is to keep us from bad stuff. Some will even assume that when bad things come into our lives that it means God is NOT there.

What part does David need protection for? Why doesn’t David just say, you are my helmet? A shield protects the most significant organs on the body. The following two metaphors reveal what David’s hangups were.

You are my glory - kavod - heavy and weightiness; significant and important

Eglon was heavy

David was returned to kavod

All of David’s glory was being crushed; his kingship, his fatherhood, his moral integrity… all of it gone.

Much of what we fear in life is our status, it’s our significance, our identity being lost

Examples:

Who am I if I am not a ______? mother with well-behaved kids, wife with a romantic marriage, manager with a low producing staff, a pastor, successful, strong, respected, loved, accepted, thin...

David recognizes that he has misplaced glory; or as we say so often, misplaced worship. He has worshiped the idol of his titles. But in the moment when literally everything in his life is in shambles he prays through that fear of being a loser by saying… YHWH, YOU are my glory, you are my identity, you are my significance

A second area David identifies his need of by praying that:

You are the lifter of my head - you are the one who holds my head high

Confidence - even though I am looking like an utter failure

Again, just a quick study of King David’s history would show us that he’s not new to this whole battle thing. He’s been chased by his father in law before, he’s been chased by the Philistine army before, so in one sense, this isn’t a new thing for David.

But if you were to base David’s wartime savvy to what he’s written here, it’s pretty unimpressive.

This sounds like a man who has been broken. A man who has all but given up, and surprisingly enough, this is where God meets him.

Family, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

REPENT - David is modeling what repentance looks like. He is turning his eyes off of himself, his abilities, even his problems and he’s beholding God’s unshakeable, unchanging, unrelenting character...

And when we get to this posture where our value is in God’s love, our spirit becomes awakened to something that was there all along

and he answered me from his holy hill (mountain) - what is that?

David is referring to the city of Jerusalem (the city he built)

What was on the highest hill of David’s city? The tabernacle, the temple would be built here

I know you’re answering me from the temple. How did he know this? What did he see? Or hear? Or smell?

What happened on a regular basis from the temple that would give David any sort of confidence that God is answering David, the one who is very aware of the failure and sin of his life?

The sacrifice - daily, weekly, yearly sacrifices would be made for the sin of the people. David is looking towards the substitute and he sees God’s gracious response as the smoke from the sacrifice floats towards the sky...

Now, it’s difficult for us to see a direct correlation to David here because we don’t get the visual of the smoke ascending towards the heavens reminding us that the substitute has covered our sin.

But that’s because we have a better and more effective substitute, Church!

Hebrews 9:24–28 ESV

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Hebrews

When we’re aware of our failure and our sinfulness and we’re tempted to believe the whispers of the evil one that God is done with us, it is then that we can look to the Holy Hill of Calvary where the blood of the spotless lamb ran down the tree and there we see that God is not going to let me be utterly destroyed, Jesus is my eternal significance, Jesus is my eternal confidence.

Jesus was the ultimate substitute, Jesus absorbed in himself what we deserved, and those who turn towards him receive the forgiveness and newness of life that his death and resurrection provide.

This is why Jesus established the sacrament of communion and this is why we observe it every week. This is our visual reminder that our sin has not only been covered like it was by the blood of a sheep, goat, or bull, but has been completely and totally erased from the record.

You may have walked in here afraid of any number of things that are going on in your life right now, but you can walk out of here in confidence knowing that while our circumstances may not completely change, our confidence for dealing with those circumstances absolutely can.

And since we’re here, we may as well see what else

And when you’re not relying on your status or identity to be your glory, when you’re encouraged that God will be your fence then you can rest.

Anxious fear creates a restlessness in us all, but confident hope gives us peace.

We Rest in God’s Care for Us (5-6)

David is so confident that he can get a good night’s sleep. He has no fear because he knows that even if a spear were to plunge through his chest and he were to die, he’d be cared for by the loving God.

Don’t you want that confidence? This is the confidence that the Church must live in the world with. We cannot fear what the next terrorist is going to do if we are to be truly effective as God’s ambassadors in the world. How will we care for the immigrant, the orphan, the widow, the weak and the needy if we’re truly afraid that they’re all going to kill us?

They’re not our enemies, but we live in a world where we value safety and shun risk. When we pray through our fears, and rest in God’s care for us, we can boldly live a life that looks like the life of Christ (as Paul did, and Steven, and Peter, and Martin Luther, and thousands of men and women throughout Church history.)

Pray for Justice to be done (7)

Remember how we talked about working through and dealing with our emotions in a way that neither frustrates them by tucking them away or exploding because of them. David is rightly praying that God would stop his enemies.

There are plenty of things happening in the world that cause us to pray that God would break some teeth, and smack some cheeks. The difference is that here David is not doing this vindictively, like some of us do on Facebook, wishing that all people who do not think like we do would be destroyed, but justly.

And David brings this prayer to God, he doesn’t post it on the public cork board. And how does God respond? Well, David doesn’t shoot an arrow or throw a spear, his son gets his locks caught up in a tree and is taken out by one of David’s men.

God is not afraid of your anger. Don’t let it take you over and don’t stuff it away.

Application: Where are you finding your glory? What is your confidence? Who is your shield? What are you anxious about? Why?

When we pray through our fear biblically we will rest confidently in the loving care of the Father.