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.
-Nate Saint was 32 years old (born 1923), and devoted to flying.
-With his wife, Marjorie Farris, he established a base at Shell Mera and flew short hops to keep missionaries supplied with medicines, mail, etc.
-There were 3 other families there and another family joined later.
- These were men and woman that love God and felt his call and answered.
-Nate and Ed found a settlement from the air.
-They would fly over the village and drop gifts as a means of making contact and establishing a friendly relationship.
-Eventually they would try for closer contact. Nate had discovered that, if he lowered a bucket on a line from the plane, and flew in tight circles, the bucket remained almost stationary, and could be used to lower objects to the ground. He had devised a mechanism to release the bucket when it touched down.
-Soon the Huaorani were responding with gifts of their own tied to the line: a woven headband, carved wooden combs, two live parrots, cooked fish, parcels of peanuts, a piece of smoked monkey tail....
-After three months of air-to-ground contact, during which they made far more progress than they had hoped, the missionaries decided that it was time for ground contact.
-They located a beach that would serve as a landing strip, about four miles from the village.
-After some discussion, they decided to carry guns, having heard that the Huaorani never attacked anyone who was carrying a gun, and having resolved that they would, as a last resort, fire the guns into the air to ward off an attack, but would shoot no one, even to save their own lives.
-On Tuesday they flew in and made camp, then flew over the village to invite the Huaorani to visit them. The first visitors showed up on Friday: a man, a woman, and a teen-aged girl. -They stayed for several hours in apparent friendliness, then left abruptly. On Saturday, no one showed, and when the plane flew over the village, the Huaorani seemed frightened at first, but lost their fright when presents were dropped.
-On Sunday afternoon at about 3 PM, all five missionaries were speared to death at their camp.
What in the world could their brutal deaths so far away from home in the service of their God could have accomplished in the jungles of some foreign land?
-Because of their deaths the efforts were intensified not abandoned.
---->More than twenty fliers from the United States promptly applied to take Nate’s (the pilot) place.
---->More than 1000 college students volunteered for foreign missions in direct response to the story of these Martyrs.
---->In Ecuador, Indian attendance at mission schools and church services reached record levels, and the number of conversions skyrocketed.
----->A native undertook to go at once to another tribe that had been at war with his own tribe for years, bearing the Christian message, and his visit brought peace between the two tribes.
In less than three years, Rachel Saint (sister of Nate Saint) and Elisabeth Elliot (widow of Jim Elliot) had not only renewed contact but had established permanent residence in a tribe of these same natives, where they practiced basic medicine and began the process of developing a written form of the language.
----->Nine years after the murder of the five missionaries, two of those who had killed Nate Saint and his companions baptized two of Nate’s children, Kathy and Stephen Saint.
APPLICATION: We need to SERVE the Lord like we have ALREADY BEEN DELIVERED! SERVING the Lord at the very ESSENCE of our BEING!
OUTLINE:
“The Fear That Grips!”
Luke 1:67-75
1. We are D______________________!
a. Zacharias was F_________ with the H______ S_______ and P_______________
i. He was proclaiming the W_________ of the L_________
ii. Prophecy is N_____ an O_____________
iii. He was saying, this is what G_____ S_______ to S_________
iv.
2. We are D______________ to S_________ without F__________
a. We must not fear B____________ we are D______________ from our E_____________!
b. We are D_____________ from those things that G____________ U_____!
i. D_____________
ii. I______________
iii. L_______ OF C________________
iv. I_____________________
v. F________ I_______________
vi. T_____ G________ U_____________
vii. The D_________-W_________-T______
3. We are D______________ to S__________ without F_________ in H_____________ and R_________________
a. H____________ means G_____-L__________
b. R________________ means the R_______ A_____________ of G_________
c. A______ the days of our L____________
APPLICATION:
We need to live like we have A____________ B____________ D______________! S_______________ the Lord at the very E_______________ of our B__________!
