The Cage Of Fear Series

Ultimate Cage Fighting

The Cage of Fear

I. Introduction

Cage fighting. 2 go in and only 1 exits as victor. A test of will, a test of strength and dexterity and ultimately one must exert authority and impose His will on the other. There are two ways to think about cages. We can either see a cage as containment, a prison or a trap or we can view the cage as a battlefield or an arena. I want us to enter into Ultimate Cage Fighting over the next 4 weeks and view the 4 things we are going to talk about as opponents and the cage they try to place us in as an arena for mortal combat!

What locks us down? What fences us in? Whether you call the resistance we all experience walls, barriers, obstacles or, in the case of our subject matter for the next few weeks, cages the truth is that we all have cages that we must fight our way out of if we desire to be all that God want us to be. Our path to fulfillment and maturity will be marked by cage fighting.

Stop just a moment and ask yourself this question, “Do you think God created you or anyone else to be average? Or do you believe that we are created to do great things?” Granted we weren’t all created to discover the cure for Aids or Cancer or to invent some culture changing gadget. But in our field of interest and in our sphere of influence I believe we were all created to be great. However, I have to suggest that as we go through life and look around most of the people we meet are average at best. They live an average life, do an average job, and accomplish average things. Why? I would wager that most everyone we know wants to live life to fullest. I don’t know anyone that starts out wanting to live ½ a life or an unfulfilling life. We want to achieve the extraordinary. We want to amount to something. This truth is slammed home in the commercial that I am sure you have seen where young kids begin to make statements like, “I want to grow up to be an addict. I want to grow up to be a drug dealer. I want to drop out and live on welfare.” By using sarcasm, the commercial reminds us that no one starts out that way. We all grow up wanting to change the world. Yet, it seems that we are held back from destiny and greatness. Somewhere during the journey something changes until one writer has come to this conclusion:

There’s more competition to become mediocre than to become remarkable. Almost everyone is vying for the same spots to be average. Far fewer people actually go for the big dreams, which makes them easier to attain. For example, it’s easier to raise $1,000,000 than $10,000 because more people are trying to raise $10,000.

That brings us to the first opponent that most of us will have to square off against in life is fear. All of us at some time will have to face and fight our way out of the cage of fear. Fear can be paralyzing and debilitating to our souls and to our lives.

Did you know that there are 2000 classified fears? We are familiar with the common phobias such as Arachnophobia which is the fear of spiders or Claustrophobia the fear of small or confined spaces.

But did you know there are fears like:

Fear of riding in a Car or vehicle - Amaxophobia.

Fear of church – Ecclesiphobia

Mother-in-law- Pentheraphobi

Bullets- Ballistophobia

OUphobia – the fear that Taurrie has of NC having to play OU in football!

Or the one I made up – handdanglingphobia. That is the fear I had as a little boy. I was afraid to allow my hand to dangle over the side of my bed because the boogey man that was certainly under there would grab it.

And the list goes on and on.

With over 2000 classified fears I would say that we live in a fear filled society and world. Fear everywhere! Fear saturated and fear perpetuating. And yet, according to scientists we are only born with 2 innate fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. In other words, all of the other fears are learned fears. This means the “you can’t do that’s” and the “don’t do that’s” have imbedded fear into our lives.

Ann Landers gets 10,000 letters a day and fear is the most common thing she is asked about.

The most commonly confessed fear is public speaking.

We are a fearful people. We are afraid of everything and we allow those fears to keep us from accomplishing great things and in some cases even simple mundane things.