Let Go Of Fear Series

Fear will be your enemy. And that statement seems to set the tone very early in the movie. If there seems to be one overriding emotion in the movie “Frozen” it is fear. The King and Queen are fearful for their daughters and so the girls are separated and grow up alone. Elsa is afraid of what she might inadvertently do with her power and so she puts up barriers between her and those she loves. Anna fears being alone and so she ends up engaged to a man she had just met. Hans being the youngest of 13 brothers fears insignificance and is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure he had a place in the world. Kristoff fears for his business, who wants to buy ice when it always cold? . And the villagers? Well like villagers everywhere it seemed that they feared everything. It seemed that the only characters in the story who weren’t afraid of something was Sven the Reindeer and Olaf the snow man.

This is week two of our “Let it Go” series and we are looking into the passage that was read for us earlier, in particular looking at the seventh verse that says 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

Fear isn’t just the overriding theme of the movie Frozen, sometimes it seems that fear is the overriding theme of life.

So let’s begin by looking at fear what it is and how it affects our lives.

The words fear and afraid are mentioned close to five hundred times in the Bible and in the New Testament there are actually several different words used to convey the idea of fear. The first word simply means to be in awe of, or to revere or respect something. This is a natural fear. In the Bible it is used of the fear of God, or fear of death. This is the type of fear that keeps us from doing silly things, like stepping off tall buildings.

Another word that could have been used means exceedingly afraid or terror. It’s where we get our word Phobia. And it is natural fear taken to the extreme. If the first type of fear keeps us living, the second type keeps us from living. The website www.phobialist.com actually lists over 500 different fears, things like Acousticophobia- Fear of noise or Alektorophobia- Fear of chickens., Cometophobia- Fear of comets, Didaskaleinophobia- Fear of going to school. And finally Homilophobia- Fear of sermons, there would appear to be a lot of people who are suffering from that in our country today.

But it isn’t either of those words that Paul used when he wrote to Timothy. The word he used means, timid or fearful and its root word in the original language means faithless.

And the context of this word is being afraid to do things or for that matter even to try things, because you are afraid that you might fail.

And so let’s begin back where we started, 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity. . . And so we begin with Paul's instruction to Timothy to Let Go of Your Fear

This is the fear that makes us live mediocre ordinary lives, never taking chances, never trying to change anything, content to simply drift along. This is the spirit of average, and it keeps you in a rut, and you know what a rut is right? A rut is a grave with both ends kicked out.

And Paul tells us that this fear has not been given to us by God. The question is, if God hasn’t given it to us then where does it come from? let’s listen to what this theologian had to say about the origins of fear. (clip from “The Phantom Menace where Yoda tells young Anikan that fear comes from the dark side)

That’s right, fear comes from the dark side, and the devil wants you to be afraid to do anything great for God, to say anything for God or to try anything for God. And we can’t let that happen.

The spirit of fear robs you of what God wants for you. When you are governed by fear there are things that you will never do because of your fear of things that may never happen. And so you are presented with an opportunity to try something new and you don’t because you project your fears into the situation. I have mentioned before that I am terrified of heights, not just a little scared, really scared. And that could have kept me from learning how to fly when I was in college but it didn’t. And in 1988 I was looking at one of the big roller coasters in Florida telling myself that I would never go on it when I realized that I had preached the week before on overcoming our fears, and so it was that day that I discovered that you can be afraid of heights and love monster roller coasters. And Deborah and I have ridden some of the best in Florida. But I would never have discovered that if I had of let myself be governed by fear.