“the Fear That Grips!” Series

Two gas company service men, a senior training Supervisor and a young trainee were out checking meters and parked their truck at the end of the alley and worked there way to the other end. At the last house a woman looking out her kitchen window watched the two

men as they checked her gas meter. As they finished the meter check the older supervisor challenged his younger co-worker to a foot race down the alley back to the truck.

As they came running up to the truck, they realized that the lady from the last house was huffing and puffing right behind them. They stopped and asked her what was wrong. Gasping for breath she said, "When I see two gas men running full speed away from my house, I figured I had better run too."

1. We are DELIVERED!

a. Zacharias was FILLED with the HOLY SPIRIT and PROPHESIED

i. He was proclaiming the WORD OF THE LORD

ii. Prophecy is NOT an OPINION

iii. He was saying, this is what GOD SAID to SAY

On the slope of Longs Peak in Colorado lie the ruins of a huge tree. Naturalists say that it stood for over 400 years. It had weathered thousands of storms and had been hit with lighting 14 times. At the end, an army of beetles attacked the tree and leveled it to the ground. This tremendous giant, that age had not withered, that lightning had not blasted, that storms had not subdued fell at last before beetles so small that a man could crush them between his forefinger and thumb.

Many people survive rare storms and lightning blasts somehow but allow the beetles of worry, fear, stress, and tension to destroy their happiness and effectiveness.

2. We are DELIVERED to SERVE without FEAR

a. We must not fear BECAUSE we are DELIVERED from our ENEMIES!

b. We are DELIVERED from those things that GRIP US!

i. DOUBT

ii. INABILITY

iii. LACK OF CONFIDENCE

iv. INSECURITY

v. FEAR ITSELF

vi. THE GREAT UNKNOWN

I like the story about a professor who sat at his desk one evening working on the next day’s lectures. His housekeeper had laid that days mail and papers at his desk and he began to shuffle through them discarding most to the wastebasket. He then noticed a magazine, which was not even addressed to him but delivered to his office by mistake. It fell open to an article titled "The Needs of the Congo Mission".

Casually he began to read when he was suddenly consumed by these words: "The need is great here. We have no one to work the northern province of Gabon in the central Congo. And it is my prayer as I write this article that God will lay His hand on one - one on whom, already, the Master’s eyes have been cast - that he or she shall be called to this place to help us."

Professor Albert Schweitzer closed the magazine and wrote in his diary: "My search is over." He gave himself to the Congo.

That little article, hidden in a periodical intended for someone else, was placed by accident in Schweitzer’s mailbox. By chance he noticed the title. It leaped out at him. Chance? Nope. It was one of God’s surprises.

3. We are DELIVERED to SERVE without FEAR in HOLINESS and RIGHTEOUSNESS

a. HOLINESS means GOD-LIKENESS

b. RIGHTEOUSNESS means the RIGHT ACTIVITY of GOD

When Hudson Taylor went to China, he made the voyage on a sailing vessel. As it neared the channel between the southern Malay Peninsula and the island of Sumatra, the missionary heard an urgent knock on his stateroom door.

He opened it, and there stood the captain of the ship. "Mr. Taylor," he said, "we have no wind. We are drifting toward an island where the people are heathen, and I fear they are cannibals." "What can I do?" asked Taylor. "I understand that you believe in God. I want you to pray for wind."

"All right, Captain, I will, but you must set the sail." "Why that’s ridiculous! There’s not even the slightest breeze. Besides, the sailors will think I’m crazy." But finally, because of Taylor’s insistence, he agreed.

Forty- five minutes later he returned and found the missionary still on his knees. "You can stop praying now," said the captain. "We’ve got more wind than we know what to do with!"

c. ALL the days of our LIVES

In the dense rain-forests of Ecuador, on the Pacific side of the Andes Mountains, lives a tribe of Indians.

-They simply call themselves the “people” but their neighbor’s call them “savages”

-For many generations they have been completely isolated from the outside world, disposed to kill any stranger on sight, and feared even by their head-hunting neighbors, the Jivaro tribe.