Dealing with Difficult Emotions Series:
Part One: Fear (Awakening the Warrior Spirit)
This morning, I’m starting a new series where we are going to look at what God teaches about dealing with difficult emotions, emotions like sadness, anger, jealousy, and several others.
And this morning I want to talk about dealing with fear.
But before we can do that, I need to show you a very important principal that is going to be foundational to this series of messages and foundational to you and I being able to deal with difficult emotions successfully. If you and I don’t learn this principal and apply it to our emotions we will never be truly successful in dealing with them.
Because maybe you are hear, and you have a hard time dealing with difficult emotions, and what you have been told is to just stop feeling, stop being scared, stop being angry, and you try and you try, but just stopping it doesn’t work.
Harrison, my son, when he was younger had this toy where there were several knobs on the top of it, and what you would do was you would take a hammer, and you would hit the knob in, and as soon as you did that, another knob would pop out, so with his toy, you could never get all the knobs down. And I guess that’s what made it fun.
But I can tell you what isn’t fun, and that is when we try to apply the same method to dealing with our emotions. Cause the same thing happens when we simply try to stop our emotions (hammer them down), you may be able stop it or subdue in one situation, but then it pops out in another, often in worse ways. And so it really hasn’t been dealt with.
That’s why when a person says to just stop being angry or just stop worrying it doesn’t work. You maybe able to control that emotion for one moment but then it pops back up the next. Sweeping emotions under the carpet, pretending they don’t exist, trying to get around them doesn’t work. So there has got to be a better way of dealing with difficult emotions, one that is successful and really works.
Take a look at this…
Ephesians 4:28 He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.
What part of the body do you steal with? You hands… so the solution to stealing isn’t just to stop stealing, no, it’s to stop stealing, and the replace stealing with doing something better with your hands.
Romans 12:21b “…overcome evil with good
In part, the solution to overcoming evil is no to just stop evil, but then to replace it with good.
See, there is a huge principal at work here… overcoming anything, whether it be evil, stealing or anything, it isn’t just in stopping that behavior, but stopping that thing and replacing it with something better.
Think about when you go to a dentist and they find a cavity. Well, the dentists doesn’t just go in a and clean out the cavity, and leave it wide open, no he replaces it with a filling, cause he knows, if he just cleans it out without replacing it with a filling, the tooth will actually get worse.
And see the same is true when it comes to dealing with difficult emotions. The way you deal with difficult emotion isn’t just to stop them, it actually gets worse, cause all you are doing is burying them, going underground with your emotions, no, the solution is to stop them and then to replace them with something better.
As a matter of fact check this out:
Romans 5:3-4 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings (and you can imagine that suffering entails a lot of difficult emotions), because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Every difficult emotion can actually become a catalyst to calling out, producing the very best in us, to developing us, awakening in us something better. See usually, difficult emotions call out the worst in us, but they can actually call out the best in us, awaken us to greater things in our life.
See, difficult emotions aren’t something to avoid, they are something that can actually be harnessed if we handle them in the right way.
So in this series, we are going to talk about dealing with difficult emotions, and what greater thing that emotion can call out of us, so that we can replace the emotion with a solution instead of band aid.
So let’s talk about fear.
Because some fear is good, it’s what keeps you from walking out in front of cars.
When I was young I saw my two oldest sisters destroy their lives with drugs, and it scared the pants off of me, but that fear was what kept me from even trying the stuff, so some fear is good.
But when fear keeps you and I from becoming and doing things that God wants in your life, when it becomes a chain that holds you back and imprisons you in your life instead of a catalyst that moves you forward and calls out the best in you, then there is a problem.
See, for so many of us, there are so many things that we aren’t doing and becoming in our life, simply because of our fears. There is no other reason then we are simply afraid, and that’s a problem.
So often fear brings out the wimp in us that in the face of fear wants to curl up in the fetal position, but I want to show you how fear can call out the warrior spirit in us. I want to show you how to deal with fear in such a way that you awaken the warrior spirit in you instead of awakening the wimp, the courageous in you instead of the coward.
Now how do you and I do that…
When dealing with fear…
o.o1 Imagine the best not the worst
See, when it comes to our fears, we often make things to be bigger then they really are.
And see that’s why one of the first tasks of dealing with fear is to subdue our imaginations and find out and replace them with what reality is, and if we can’t find out what reality is or the reality we find is difficult, we need imagine the best not the worst.
See fear causes us to fill in all the blanks of our lives with the worst possible scenario or outcome. And the problem becomes when our actions and our attitudes, our thought lives follow those imaginations, they become ruled by our negative imaginations.
See, in our lives, our actions always follow our imaginations. So if we are imagining the worst, we will act in the worst ways.
So what happens? Fear starts to rule our lives, fear causes us to not deal with our problems because we imagine that our problems are too big to deal with. We don’t get on that plane because all we do is imagine it crashing, we don’t take that risk, because all we do is imagine ourselves failing, we don’t face that giant, because all we can imagine is giant defeat. Our fears bring out in us the wimp, instead of the warrior.
1 Samuel 17:8-11 Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, "Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us." Then the Philistine said, "This day I defy the ranks of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other." On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.
Why were they dismayed? Because all they could do was imagine the worst, defeat.
Were they faced with a tough reality? Absolutely, but instead of imagining the best, they imagined the worst.
See, that’s why, when it comes to our fears, we need to believe reality is our friend, not or enemy, cause more so then not, the reality of what is, is much better than what we imagine things to be.
Was the reality they faced difficult, was Goliath a big bad dude, absolutely! But they let their fears become a reason to conclude defeat, instead of catalysts to believing in the best. They became wimps instead of warriors.
And see that was the difference between all these people and David, the fear of the moment awakened in them the wimp within, in David, it awakened the warrior within, David saw the same reality they did, he saw the same thing they did, a big giant dude, but he imagined the best, he imagined victory, not defeat, he imagine overcoming, not being overcome, his self talk was positive, was hopeful, was optimistic, if you read the story, you will see all their talk is negative.
See, you and I are defeated in our imaginations before you are ever defeated in your life.
And fear loves to get you and I away from reality and imagining the worst, and it loves to take our difficult realities and causes us to imagine the worst outcomes, so we will do what… give up, settle, get all depressed and discouraged, defeated before we ever even get into the battle.
We all have giants in our life that cause us fear, but what is it going to call out of you, the wimp or the warrior? And whether you imagine the best or the worst makes all the difference.
If you and I are going to deal successfully with our fears, we need to replace imagining the worst with imagining the best, we need to replace seeing reality as our enemy to seeing reality as our friend.
We need to say, “Hey, I don’t know what the tests results are going to be, I don’t know if this relationship is going to get better, I don’t know how we are gong to make it financially, but I am going to imagine the best. And where I can find out what reality is, I am going to do that, I am going to go to that doctor and have that checked out, instead of leaving up to my own imagination, I am going to look at my bank statement, instead of thinking it will be impossible to turn thing around financially, I am, going to go to that counselor to deal with that issue in my life or relationship, because I am a warrior not a wimp, I am imagining myself getting better not staying the same or getting worse.”
And where my realities are challenging, I am going to imagine the best outcome, not the worst, I am going to imagine overcoming, instead of being overcome.
Next we need to…
o.o2 Choose action instead of retreat
See, one of the things fear wants to do in your life is to intimidate you, get you to shrink back, and give up, get you off your game, to give up on your dreams, to not fulfill you commitments, to lower your standards, snuff your hope. That’s what intimidation does, it try gets you to retreat, to handcuff you in fear, and get you to turn back.
And that was one of the tactics Goliath used, and all the giants in your life are going to use.
See, up until this point, David sees the same thing (a huge giant) and imagines the best, not the worst. And now he hears the same thing, he hears the intimidation of Goliath, but instead of retreating, giving up, turning back, he is moved into action. Check it out…
1 Samuel 17:22-24 David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines and greeted his brothers. As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. When the Israelites saw the man, they all ran from him in great fear.
See, the difference between the wimp and the warrior is that when faced with intimidation, the wimp runs away from the battle, the warrior runs toward the battle. The warrior in us says “I am not going to be intimidated, I am not going to shrink back from what God is doing in my life and what God wants me to do with my life. Greater is in me, in Christ Jesus, then in the world!” “I’m not giving up or shrink back, I am moving forward.”
And you know something, intimidation can come in all kinds of forms can’t it? I mean just the physical presence of some people can be intimidating. The complexity or size of a task can be intimidating. For Nehemiah, the project was so big.
Insinuation can be intimidating… this will never work, you can’t do that, your not old enough, you are not young enough, you aren’t smart enough, it didn’t work before it won’t work this time, you’ll never have another man, you’ll never have another women. Saul told David, you can’t face him, your just a boy. Intimidation often begins with two words, “Your just…”
And if David had given into the intimidation, he we would have shrinked back and done nothing at all, excepting defeat before ever getting into the battle, that’s what intimidation does it tries to get you to accept defeat before you ever get into the battle, to give up before you ever give it a try.
But for David, fear awakened the warrior not the wimp, because when faced with intimidation, David replaced retreat with action, he replaced playing the victim, to taking responsibility to doing something about the situation, see wimps conclude they are powerless, warriors discover they are empowered.
If you are faced with the giant of single mother hood…you got to determine today, that you are not going to run in retreat, and wallow in your challenge, but you are gong to get into the battle, you are going to be the kind of person that when given lemon, you make lemonade. You are going to see single motherhood as a calling not a catastrophe. You are going to take your stand, you aren’t go to run away from it. You are going to be the best single mother you can be. You are going to take your stand.
The Bible speaks of that when you face evil, your need to take your stand. Some of you here today, are so close to giving u because of intimidation in your life, well today you gotta take your stand
If you are faced with the giant of some kind of failure in your life, maybe a relationship, maybe a bad decision you made. Whatever it may be, you have to determine today that you are going to face it, and you are not going to let that failure determine your destiny, you are not going to let that failure dictate your future, you are going to learn from your mistakes instead of repeating it and you are going to let the past be the past, you are going to take risks, instead of being frozen by failure.
If you are faced with the giant of cancer, or some other physical challenge, determine today, you are not going be in intimidated, that you are not going to retreat, isolate yourself, lock yourself in your house, close all the drapes and give up on your life, wallow in problems. But you are going to keep on living, you are going to fight, you are going to run into the battle, you aren’t going to let that giant in your life have the last word. You are going to live until you die, and then when you die, you are going to live some more.
And if that giant, whatever it is, seems to be winning the battle or overcoming you, you are going to determine today to go out fighting instead of going out fearing.
You are going to face your fears, you are going to get into the battle instead of giving up before you ever gave God a chance.
You have to determine today, that you are going to get into that battle and you are not going to settle for defeat or shrink back from what God is doing and can do with your life.
As when you do that…
o.o3 Focus on the supernatural instead of the natural.
Focus on what you can’t see, instead of what you can. Focus on the power of God that is with you instead of the problem that is in front of you.
When we face the giants of life, we tend to focus on what we can see, the problems in front of us, the challenges, the odds stacked against, the time running out, and if you focus on only what you can see, you will miss the possibilities that God brings to the table through His supernatural power that you can’t see.
See in this story, so far David, in the face of fear, is replacing imagining the worst with imagining the best, and he’s replacing retreating with taking action, getting into the battle, and now the battle is before him face to face, it’s go time, and David has a choice to make, either he can focus on what he can see, or what he can’t, he can focus on the natural (which is right in front of him) or draw upon the supernatural power of God (which is right with him) he can go at this with his own resources alone, or he can go after this tapping into God’s resources. One could have led to defeat, one led to victory
Take a look at couple passages from story.
1 Samuel 17:38-40 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. "I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
And take a look at this
1 Samuel 17:45- David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands."
See, in both these passages, David is focusing and tapping into the supernatural power of God instead focusing on the natural, he’ s setting his eyes away from what he can see, and focusing on what he can’t.
Part of the problem David had with putting on Saul’s armor was it would cause David to put his faith in the physical instead of the supernatural power of God. It would have been a distraction that would have caused David to focus on what he could see, instead of depending on a God He couldn’t.
Until this point, nobody but David could see how he was ever going to win this battle, but David always saw it, because he was focused on the supernatural power of God that was with him, not the circumstance that was before him.
What overcomes the giants in our life is our faithfulness combined with God’s supernatural power. David did his part, but depended on God to do his. You can’t solve spiritual problems with secular solution, and the big learning of the day is that every problem, at the heart is a spiritual issue. The problems with your marriage is spiritual issue, the problem with your finances is a spiritual issue, the problem with your insecurities.
So don’t be surprised when all swords and spears of pop psychology, do it yourself approaches don’t go very far in killing your problems, nothing ever gets really solved until a spiritual remedy is applied.
Because let me tell you something, a few stones combined with the supernatural power of God, are a lot more powerful than any giant with swords and spears, but no supernatural power of God. A few small stones of your courage, your faith, your action, your determination combined with God supernatural power will defeat any and every giant in your life.
See, Saul saw David as just a little boy, David saw himself as a little boy with a big God. And that is what made all the difference, to overcome our fears we have to focus on the supernatural power of God that is with us instead of the circumstance in front of us
The Bible says it another way… greater is he that is in you than the one that is in the world. 1 John 4:4
That means if you have Christ, you have the supernatural power of God within you to face the giants of life that are around you and win.
Greater is in you than is in the world. Great is in you than is in front of you. Say that with me.
Stop focusing on the problem you can see, and start focusing open the supernatural power of God that you can’t.
I love the story of Elisha in the Bible, who was facing a giant of his own in the form of an army of people sent by a king to capture, Elisha had servant with him, but check out the difference between how Elisha sees the situation and how the servant sees it.
2 Kings 6:13-17 "Go, find out where he is," the king ordered, "so I can send men and capture him." The report came back: "He is in Dothan." Then he sent horses and chariots and a strong force there. They went by night and surrounded the city. When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" the servant asked. "Don’t be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
For the servant, it brought out a spirit of wimpiness as he focused on what he could see, the army that surrounded the city to capture them, but Elisha focused and what they couldn’t see, the army of God that was with them, that was greater than the army of men that was surrounding them.
So, what is fear going to bring out of you? The wimp or the warrior? To bring out the warrior, imagine the best not the worst, choose action instead of retreat, and focus on the supernatural instead of the natural.
