Sermon Tone Analysis
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Seeing is Believing
Dothan was the place where Joseph’s brothers sold him to a caravan of Ishmaelites (Gn 37).
A millennium later the city was surrounded by Syrian forces in an attempt to capture Elisha, who lived there and who was thought to be betraying the Syrian plans to the Israelite king (2 Kgs 6:8–14).
Trouble in the world:
Have you ever had a time in your life, when you felt so afraid that you screamed inside of yourself, “I just can’t do it!”
Are you there now?
God knows that there will be times when you will feel afraid to move forward or do something that is totally out of your comfort zone.
He knows that sometimes fear will try to paralyze you from doing that very thing that you know you should do.
Yet, in spite of the apprehension, that’s when He encourages you and me by saying, “Be strong and courageous.”
Grace in the text:
Notice how regularly the miracles of Elisha were preceded by his prayers.
“Elisha prayed, and then . .
.” is an often-repeated formula just before the prophet performs some great super natural act.
Russell Dilday and Lloyd J. Ogilvie, 1, 2 Kings, vol.
9, The Preacher’s Commentary Series (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc, 1987), 298.
Grace in the world::
And these words are not cliché words.
No, no, no.
They are taken straight from the Bible my sister.
tells us, “Be strong and courageous.
Do not be terrified: do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
So if you were to break this Scripture down into bite-size pieces and meditate on each line, you will become stronger and stronger in your faith.
It’s powerful!
Have you heard, “If God is for us, then who can be against us?”
Well, it’s true as well.
It’s found in .
When we keep our focus on Him and trust in His word, there is safety in Him.
We have to always keep in mind that our Father has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind as .
And the word also reassures us that, “You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!” ().
He’s got us, sis.
So let’s be strong and courageous!
I will say here that being courageous doesn’t mean that you won’t be afraid.
That wouldn’t be realistic.
Instead, it means to press through the fear when you feel afraid.
In fact, sometimes your knees will shake or your anxiety will rise.
Your mind may even start racing away with all kinds of “what if” thoughts.
But when this happens, that’s when you have to kick into overdrive and let the word of God take over.
That’s when you have to plunge through your fear and trust in Him.
You have to trust God beyond your fears.
Trust me.
I know this is far from easy.
I have been there too many times to know that this can be tough.
Personally, when things have looked dark, scary, or intimidating in my life, I’ve had to trust God beyond my fears.
And it hasn’t been easy.
However, that’s when the Lord would remind me, “Be strong and courageous, Courtnaye.
I am with you.”
And I would have to repeat those words over and over again, and then walk in His strength and courage.
God Calls Us to Live into His Strength, Not Ours
I've come to learn that God is always calling us to do things we don't believe we can accomplish.
That’s because without Him, we can’t.
He calls us to do things like have impossible strength and courage because, at the end of the day, we have to realize that those were never things we were going to be able to accomplish on our own.
He calls us to step out into faith obediently, and trust that He is going to be there to put a firm path under our feet.
We start, but He is the one who accomplishes the mighty, powerful work in our life.
"He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand." -
Facing Your Deepest Fears
Fear and I have definitely gone round for round over the last two years of my life.
I can say that I am a victor over fear, but it took me being afraid and having to be placed in situations to face and reject it.
I met fear the day my daughter was born.
We had to have an emergency c-section, which was never part of the plan for me and Christopher.
We had planned for a natural birth at a birth center, not a surgical one in a hospital.
I hated hospitals because it reminded me of sickness and death.
Even though I intellectually knew that people get healed and live there, the reputation hospitals had in my mind wasn't a good one.
I will say that I wasn't ready to die on that operating table.
But I felt like it.
I mean, to be honest, up until that point, my pregnancy was healthy and extremely low-risk.
I didn't even understand how we got there.
So, if being in the hospital could happen to someone like me, surely death could happen too, right?
And it wasn’t just my life that I feared for.
It was my daughter’s life, too.
Her heart rate dropped with every contraction I had.
The contractions that were supposed to bring her alive into the world were instead hurting her.
I was afraid.
The city was surrounded by Syrian forces in am attempt to capture Elisha.
Dothan is the place where Joseph was sold by his brothers to a caravan of Ishmaelites in .
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