Scary Movie: Fear Of Shame #1 Series

What is the one or two things you would do right now to serve the Lord if money, family, talent, friends or time weren’t an issue?

We all have a really scary movie playing in the theater of our minds. An unredeemed imagination which unmonitored will take us into all kinds of darkness and despair.

We all experience fear but how we handle it actually tells us a lot about our faith. We cannot claim to trust in the Lord and walk in fear. Fear and faith are opposites. But thankfully there is a bridge on which we can walk across to freedom. The bridge is called courage and it’s built on experiences of faith, God’s promises and our willingness. Courage is defined as the awareness of fear and the decision to act anyway. It creates an experience like very few others in bringing God close and making him real.

In a movie from 2011 called We Bought a Zoo. The story was based on the true story of a British man named Benjamin Mee. In 2006 Mee and his family purchased and moved into a 30-acre zoo. In his book with the same title, Mee says that his new "neighbors" included "five Siberian tigers, three African lions, nine wolves, three big brown European bears, four Asian short-clawed otters, two flamingos, a Brazilian tapir called Ronnie, some large boa constrictors, and a tarantula." The zoo was dangerously rundown. Mee was faced with a series of challenges, including dealing with a rat infestation, and finding enough money to feed the animals. On the fourth day of their new lives, the jaguar escaped, endangering the neighborhood. Despite the difficulties, Mee and his family restored the zoo into a place of beauty and safety that provided healing for themselves and for their surrounding community. But it wasn't easy. Mee admitted, "There were lots of times when I thought, What have I done?" So why did he buy and remodel the zoo? In the film version, Mee (played by Matt Damon), says, "Sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it." - (Mark Batterson – preaching today)

With this in mind, this week on my Facebook page I asked what are you afraid of or what is your biggest fear? The answers were as varied as the people around you now. People said,

? My biggest fear is my children getting seriously ill or hurt (or worse)

? I have the fear of the paranormal. I don't want to see faces where there shouldn't be faces or hear sounds that come from nothing.

? fear of financial insecurity

? Thunderstorms, Snakes, Spiders, basements and flying.

? Losing my memory and hearing

? Failure and what people will think

? I fear the church hurting me again

Fear is defined as an anxious feeling, caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience. It is also described as False Evidence Appearing Real. Fears are lies.

Psychology tells us there are 5 basic fears.

1. Extinction. Fear of death.

2. Mutilation or loss of bodily structure, losing the integrity of our body, mind, natural function. Fear of bugs, spiders & generally creepy things.

3. Loss of autonomy: fear of being immobilized, paralyzed, entrapped, imprisoned, smothered, or controlled.

4. Separation: fear of abandonment, rejection, loss of connectedness, someone giving us the 'silent treatment.'

5. Ego-death: the Fear of humiliation, shame, or any mechanism of profound self-disapproval.

Over the next 4 weeks, we will briefly touch on each Psychologies top five as a point of awareness so that fear would no longer keep us from what God has created us for. Scripture says: For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. – 2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)

Of the fab 5 of fear, I think the fear of humiliation, shame or disapproval keeps more people from achieving God’s objective for their lives than any other. So what is the one area of your life you have been holding back on because of the fear that you might make a fool of yourself or embarrass your self?

The facts are clear that those who achieve greatness for God run toward the discomfort because they have learned that’s where the relationship with God expands.

Even non-Christians understand this. Wolfgang Von Goethe, the 18th century politician and famous non-Christian writer said,

“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is an elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That the moment, one definitively commits oneself, there providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would have never had otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issues from this decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man can here dreamed would come his way. Whatever, you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has a genius, power and magic in it. Begin it.”