Sermon Tone Analysis

From fear to faith

Let’s wrap up this message by looking at four principles that will move us from fear to faith.

1. Faith focuses on God, not on your problems.

A woman told me that she had changed her phone number and left it unlisted because she is gripped with fear as she thinks about certain people and what they might do to her.

As we talked together, I finally said, “It’s time to move from fear to faith.

Are you ready to move with me?”

She smiled hesitantly and then said yes.

We prayed, claiming God’s promises of protection.

When I saw her the next day she said that she had slept much better that night because she wasn’t focusing on her fears.

Think of Abraham.

The past argued against his ever having a child.

So did the present.

His only hope lay in the promises of God for the future.

As long as he looked back, he would never have faith to believe God.

His only hope was to step out into the future, trusting that somehow, someway God would keep his promises.

2. Faith trusts in God’s timing, not your own.

So many of our struggles with fear start right here.

Deep down, we fear that God has somehow made a mistake in his dealings with us.

Like Abraham, we have waited and waited-sometimes for years on end.

Even though we may have seen many remarkable answers to prayer, the one thing that means the most to us has not been granted.

As I write these words I am thinking of certain people I know who pray faithfully week after week for their loved ones to be saved.

Some of them write notes each week asking prayer for an unsaved husband or wife.

Week in and week out the requests come in and the staff prays for them faithfully.

One husband has been praying for his wife for many years with no real change in sight.

Another wife faithfully requests prayer for her husband.

Sometimes he seems interested in spiritual things, and then his interest suddenly seems to disappear.

Where is God?

Why doesn’t he answer the fervent, heartfelt prayers of his people?

Of the many answers that might be given to that question, one answer must be that God’s timing and ours are often quite different.

Sometimes it seems like we live in one time zone and God lives in another.

3. Faith grows by believing God in spite of your circumstances.

Sometimes our circumstances make it easy to believe in God; other times we have to struggle.

As I write these words I have a friend who is entering the final stages of his battle with cancer.

After long and difficult treatments, there is nothing else the doctors can do.

He is one of the finest men I know; a man whose gentle spirit endears him to others.

No one knows how much time he has left, but it seems to be a matter of a few days.

The last time I talked with him, he spoke about the goodness of God.

He added that he and his wife had had a long and happy life together and they knew that God would take care of them.

His wife said simply, “No matter what happens we are trusting in the Lord.”

That’s biblical faith rising above circumstances to lay hold of the eternal promises of God.

4. Faith obeys God one step at a time.

This principle is often overlooked by those seeking to do God’s will.

God promised a child and Abraham desperately wanted to see the fulfillment of that promise.

So what does God tell him to do? Round up the animals for a sacrifice (see ).

How do you get from there to the nursery?

Abraham doesn’t have a clue and God doesn’t tell him a thing.

But Abraham now has a choice.

He can choose to obey God, round up the animals, and get ready for a sacrifice, even though it doesn’t seem to connect with the son of his dreams.

Or he can argue with God or decide to take matters in his own hands.

God weaves an unseen pattern that one day will lead us in a new direction.

How often we stumble over this.

We slight the near in favor of the far, shirking the duties of today because we are dreaming about some distant tomorrow.

But until we have done what God has called us to do today, we will never be prepared for what he wants us to do tomorrow.

In the end 99 percent of life turns out to be humdrum, ordinary routine.

It’s the same old thing day after day.Yet out of the humdrum God is weaving an unseen pattern that will one day lead us in a new direction.

Faith take the next step- whatever it is-and walking with God wherever he leads us.

Sometimes it will make sense, other times it won’t.

But we still have to take that step if we are going to do God’s will.

Can God be trusted?

Everything I’ve been trying to say comes down to one simple question: Can God be trusted to do what is right?

If the answer is yes, then we can face the worst that life has to offer.

If the answer is no, then we’re no better off than the people who have no faith at all.

In fact, if the answer is no or if we’re not sure, then we really don’t have any faith anyway.

I have chosen to believe because I must believe.

One writer tells When my father died 38 years ago, I came face to face with the ultimate unanswerable question of life.

I didn’t know then why such a good man would have to die at the age of fifty-six or why he would leave my mother and her four sons without a husband and a father.

I had no clue about what God was doing.

In the years since then I have learned many things about life, but I confess that I still don’t understand why my father died.

It doesn’t make any more sense to me now than it did then.

I am older and wiser, but in the one question that really matters I have no answers.

But I have learned since then that faith is a choice you make.

Sometimes you choose to believe because of what you see; often you believe in spite of what you can see.

As I look to the world around me, many things remain mysterious and unanswerable.

But if there is no God, and if he is not good, then nothing at all makes sense.

I have chosen to believe because I must believe.

I truly have no other choice.

"But I can trust"

Pioneer missionary J. Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission in 1865.

During the terrible days of the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901), when missionaries were being captured and killed, he went through such agony of soul that he could not pray.

Writing in his journal, he summarized his spiritual condition this way: “I can’t read.

I can’t think.

I can’t pray.

But I can trust.”

There will be times when we can’t read the Bible.

Sometimes we won’t be able to focus our thoughts on God at all.

Often we will not even be able to pray.

But in those moments when we can’t do anything else, we can still trust in the loving purposes of our heavenly Father.

Fear not, child of God.

No one knows what a day may bring.

Who knows if we will all make it through this week?

But our God is faithful to keep every one of his promises.

Nothing can happen to us except it first passes through the hands of God.

If your way is dark, keep on believing.

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he cares for you.

Overcoming Fear

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is , the devil; 15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

​ KJV 190014 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

It is the fear of death that makes men subject to bondage.

Through the suffering of death Jesus delivered those who were subject to its bondage all their lifetime.

We have been delivered from the fear of death by the promise of eternal life.