Few things are as common to all mankind as the battle against fears. Here are four ways the Lord has helped me learn to defeat this darkness that stalks us all. The audio for this message is at http://www.john10-10.org/john10-10/Sermon_Audios/Entries/2013/5/19_Freedom_From_Fear.html

1. There seems to be three types of fear we have to deal with on
earth. The Bible mentions two types of fear.
The first type is beneficial and is to be encouraged. This is the
fear of the Lord. It is a reverential awe of God; a reverence for
His power and glory. However, it is also a proper respect for His
wrath and anger. In other words, the fear of the Lord is a total
acknowledgement of all that God is. The Bible says that this
fear leads to wisdom, life and blessings.
(http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-fear.html)
The second kind is fear based on truth: we can fall off cliff if we
are not careful when climbing a mountain; we should avoid
charging, hungry lions and children playing in busy street are not
safe. Not to feel some fear in such situations is not wise or
normal.
The third kind of fear the Bible speaks of is not from God.
This is the “spirit of fear” mentioned in 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God
has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of
a sound mind” . A spirit of fearfulness, anxiety, worry and timidity
does not come from God and when such feelings cause us to not
trust God and/or obey God, that is a sinful spirit of fear.
My Victories Over Fear
Fear is no stranger to me. Neither is victory over fear. Let my victories encourage you
and train you to have your own victories over the fears that stalk your life.
Fear was my constant companion growing up: fear of people, fear of rejection, fear
of abandonment, fear of failure, fear of loneliness, fear of being wrongly accused, fear of
shame, fear of physical punishment, fear of embarrassment if my friends found out, fear
of being blindsided by angry grandparents.
I fought thousands of battles in my mind for decades with this shadowy
adversary. He was everywhere in my life--even as a young pastor, except when I
prayed or was absorbed in just having a good time playing basketball, playing at the
beach or reading.
Victory Over Fear

2. Millions of kids grow up with this same battle because their parents are not
emotionally well or not physically there at home. We kids got used to not knowing what
would happen when we got home from school.
We just knew it would not be nice.
When would the yelling begin?
Who would get hit today by an angry adult--me or my brother?
We knew we could never be good enough to please them.
As long as we did our chores and didn’t bother them or talk to them, things were usually
safer but home was definitely not a safe place emotionally or physically.
The good news is that when you grow up with those kind of challenges, you have to
find a way to feel safe, to find love and to find out what life is really all about.
Surprised by Love
Without ever expecting it, or even hearing that it was possible, I met God as my
Heavenly Father when I was about 8.
I was walking home from St. Gabriel’s School in S. Philadelphia one day with some of
the kind nuns who taught there. I happened to tell them that I missed the love of a
father not that my parents had divorced and both were gone while I and my brother,
Jim, were left with grandparents.
One nun said a simple sentence that changed my life forever. She turned to me, her
entire face framed by the familiar black & white head-covering the nuns always wore
and said, “Don’t you know that God is a Father.”
Actually, I didn’t. I was stunned into silence by what she said.
The idea that the invisible, all-powerful, all wise, all-knowing God of the universe could
be a real father was like a fantasy story to me. It seemed too good to possible be true.
I do not know how it happened. I do not remember saying any particular prayer to know
God as Father. I know the Bible says you can only come to the Father through Jesus
and I certainly prayed to Him everyday. I was desperate for love and that desperation
drove me like a sailing ship in a storm right into the arms of God say after day.
What I do remember was soon after that having the most remarkable, secret
relationship with God as my Father.
I talked to Him as I walked to and from school and I felt His love. I experienced a
response of love that I cannot describe but I knew it felt real.
Victory Over Fear

3. One day, when I was about 8, as I trudged along Sears St. heading for school, I looked
up to the sky and said with a smile, “Father, you love me so much it feels like you
have adopted me.”
I had never heard of the biblical truth that God adopts all His kids.
I did not hear of that truth until about 12 years later when I first read it in the Bible.
When I read in Romans 8:15 that God gives us a spirit of adoption as sons I was
stunned and thrilled to learn that what I had experienced as a small boy was in the
Bible. Here is what I read in Romans 8:15-17:
15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to
fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption
as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16 The
Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are
children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of
God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with
Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
This revelation of the Father’s love is the
foundation of my life.
God wants every person to have this same
foundation of being adopted by the Father!
Jesus came to show us the love of the Father, to point us
to the Father, to be the Way to the Father and to do the
Father’s will in saving us from sin. (1 Peter 3:18)
Jesus is the Way but the Father is our destination.
It is the Father’s love that created the universe so that
He could create us so He could adopt and enjoy us as
His children forever. In a nutshell, that is the meaning
of life.
Victory Over Fear

4. If you do not have a close, intimate relationship
with the Father, you are missing a great victory
over fear and many other things.
Human beings were created to be loved by His
Father love.
You know this verse: Such love has no fear, because
perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of
punishment, and this shows that we have not fully
experienced his perfect love. ( 1 John 4:18)
The “perfect love” that John is writing about here is the Father’s
love. The more we experience the love of the Father, the less we
are vulnerable to fear. The Father’s perfect love expels, dispels,
destroys fear.
Ask Jesus to reveal the Father’s love to you. Jesus loves
nothing more than to honor the Father and lead people to the
Father.
Mediate on and watch the Father’s Love Letter. It expresses
the heart of the Father for each of us. Fear flees when we we
experience His perfect love.
So, experiencing the Father’s Love was victory # 1 over my
fears.
Victory # 2
My second major victory came as God allowed me to go
through a series of deep trials. He took me through the
valleys of death several times so that I could learn how sufficient
He was even in my most desperate moments.
Victory Over Fear

5. I was the pastor of a church that ended up in a “Church War”
where half the church was for me and half against me. Fears of
rejection and being unloveable were my greatest fears.
This war took me through 18 months of the deepest emotional
pain I had ever known as church members rejected and scorned
me. I was clinically depressed for almost 2 years. My kids
probably thought I was not interested in them as much but I was
struggling to not fall apart emotionally.
God saw me through all that. In fact, He had warned me about
it years earlier. He told me I’d be at that church 6 years and that
the first 3 would be heaven and the last three would be hell. I
was there 6 years almost to the day.
Three ladies in Apocka, Fl prophesied over me during that time
and said that “This pruning was of the Lord, to purify the word
that I would speak.” The Lord has already told me that it was a
John 15 pruning experience.
God had allowed the pain of rejection to be intensified in me so
that He could prove to me that in my weakest times, He is strong
and sufficient. I believe that people who have suffered deeply
know the Lord’s love and power in a way that others cannot.
You really do not know what you believe until you have to.
We all know what Psalm 23 says: “Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with
me, Thy rod and staff they comfort me.”
People who have walked with God through the valley of the
shadow of death can come to know God’s total sufficiency much
better than those how have not suffered much.
As CS Lewis wrote in his book called The Problem with Pain,
“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our
Victory Over Fear

6. pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains.
It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Pain + God can lead to astounding spiritual growth--if we
choose to grow closer to Him. Pain can make us better or bitter.
The choice is ours. In my pain in that church, I had no way to
cope with deepest rejection pain of my life unless I turned to God
in an extremely intense way. I sang my way to safety. I prayed a
lot. I fell apart at the feet of the Father a lot. I confessed to
others that I was a wreck. I came to the end of myself and saw
God come to my rescue. He proved that when I was at my
weakest, His grace was sufficient. I did not die. His love
protected me. He proved to me that my fears of rejection
and abandonment were lies. That set me free in a major way.
I was exhausted but much more free.
I left there in honor and went to another church where we were
greatly loved and honored. God was in my corner big-time
despite what many people thought. here’s one example:
While I was applying to serve another church in another city, One
elder from the church in war even called the the senior pastor of
the new church to warn him that I was too pro-life, hoping to
prevent me from getting that job. It backfired. The senior pastor
later told me that call helped convince him that I was the
right choice for assistant pastor. He wanted someone with
that conviction.
I have seen God repeat this pattern of intensification of my
fears in several areas of my life over the years. He did it
with finances several times. We once had two mortgage
payments to pay and four kids at home.
Later, I was living on about 1/4 to 1/3 of my income for
five years as I tried to do a new ministry. We almost lost our
home. It was so hard, so depressing to be unemployed, so
embarrassing to seen as a failure by my peers but God got us
Victory Over Fear

7. through and proved to us that He really is with us and for us even
when all seems lost.
Beth also had a great victory over her fears during those
tumultuous years from 1995 to 2000. Her worst nightmare was
coming true. She was going blind. Listen to her story.
So that is victory # 2: God demonstrates that our fears are not
true by taking us through an intensification of the fears. We could
avoid dealing with these fears when they came during a mild trial.
Ina mild trial, we could fake it and get past it in our own
strength.
But in the midst of a great trial we had to focus on dealing
with them. In those times, we knew we could not survive if God
did not help us--and He did.
These experiences made it harder for us to believe those
old fears because we have seen God prove our fears untrue
even in the worst of times. When we went through the valley of
the shadow of death, we saw in tangible ways that He was with
us, His rod and staff protected us---despite our fears.
Lastly, Victory # 3: Spiritual Disciplines & The Scriptures
Becoming more like Jesus is called the process of sanctification.
It takes years for most people to crucify the flesh, change bad
habits, develop good habits, deal with old lies and renew our
minds with God’s truth.
Ask God for scriptures to memorize that will defeat the lies you
fight that would lead you to fear what God says you need not
fear. Here is a song God gave me to a few lines from Psalm 56
Psalm 56:
Victory Over Fear

8. When I am afraid, I will trust in Thee
My God whose word I praise
In You I will trust and I will not be afraid,
What can a mere man do to me?
For You, My God, are a Victorious Warrior
My God Whose word I praise
and You will deliver from soul from death
and my feet from stumbling
And so I’ll walk before My God
My God whose Word I praise (3x)
This is a very daily process. There are no shortcuts to Christian
maturity. Getting victory over fear is also a daily discipline to
choose God’s word over the lies that lead us to fear.
If our heads are empty of scripture, the devil will make
sure our heads are filled with his thoughts. The best
defense is a good offense. Fill your mind and heart with godly
thoughts by spending time with God in prayer, mediate on parts
of the Bible, sing to God throughout the day, avoid watching or
listening to things that honor sinful ideas or sinful people.
GIGO: our minds are the battleground. We become what we we
focus on. As a man think,s so is he, the Bible says.
Victory # 4: Ask God to Target Your Lies and Give You
Truth to Replace Those Lies
Victory Over Fear

9. TPM: great ministry of the Spirit to set people free from
lies!
( Give them paper and pens)
Exercise:
1. What lies are we believing about God that make us fearful?
a. What is the truth?
2. What lies are we believing about ourselves that make us
fearful?
b. What is the truth?
3. What lies are we believing about others that make us fearful?
c. What is the truth?
Ministry Time: up front, in small groups, with Lord alone.
Victory Over Fear