The Spirit Of Fear

This morning I want to talk about one of the most commonly shared emotions in this building today. It is fear. If there's anything that I think that this pandemic has created and spread more than the disease itself, it is fear. Life is scary. The world is scary

Fear will cause us to be beaten down,

defeated,

have drooping shoulders,

shuffling feet,

unsmiling,

critical,

distrusting kind of people.

How do you know if you are living with the toxin of fear? Maybe these questions will help… (Taken from an unknown source)

First question is this. Are you rattled? You are rattled when things don’t go as you expected.

Another question is this, “Do you often worry about things that are beyond your control?”

Next thing is this. “Do you lose sleep over pressing issues?” Be honest. You are awake at night. Some of you are saying, “Sleep? What is that? I’m up worried all the time.”

Fourth question is this, “Is it hard to turn off your mind?

A fifth thing is this, “Does the unknown intimidate you? The unknown intimates you.

Final one is this, “Do you often imagine the worse case scenario? What is going to happen? It could be bad.”

We are talking about toxic fear. And we live in a culture of it.

Let me tie this into Scripture for a moment.

Paul had a young man named Timothy that he was mentoring and training. He had left him in a certain place to organize and build up the churches that Paul had started on his missionary journeys. But it was obvious that Timothy was having a crisis of faith. Self-doubt had moved in. He was young and he was dealing with some powerful personalities. And there were other pressures upon him. He was shutting down and fear had seized him.

So Paul boldly takes Timothy by the shoulders and begins to shake him and he writes these words... 2 Timothy 1:7 ...for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

Paul is telling Timothy, “you are called of God, you have been placed in this role by God, don’t get timid now! Shake off the inadequacy that you feel. Stop being intimidated.”

A spirit of fear. Paul's not talking about a moment of being afraid.

He's not talking about a fearful thought.

He’s not talking about a bad dream.

He's talking about living with a spirit of fear.

A constant companion of worry and dread.

A constant state of churning and anxiety that freezes faith and paralyzes the heart.

A relentless sense of uneasiness.

Constant apprehension.

A spirit of fear that so grips a person’s life that they change the way they walk, the way they talk, their outlook on life, and their view of God.

A spirit of fear can be overwhelming. It clutches the mind and doesn’t let go. It twists the heart.

Fear has always been with us but this pandemic has put fear into overdrive. We are surrounded by the toxic atmosphere of fear being spewed out everywhere. And what do we fear? Here’s just a few of the things I hear constantly…

- That the bubble is going to burst on the stock market

- crime is getting worse

- the vaccination won’t work

- we are afraid of the unvaccinated

- we are scared of new variants of the virus

- we are scared that the Chinese are taking over

- we are scared of failure

- we are scared to lose our job

- we are scared of rejection

- we are scared of the unknown

- we are scared of what is happening in local schools

- we are scared of clowns, spiders and zombies and gluten

- we are scared that we will run out of money

- we are scared that we will end up alone

- we are scared of Isis, the Taliban and terrorism

- we are scared that our kids will move away – or move back.

- We are scared of marrying the wrong person, or never finding a person, or raising kids in this day and age.

- We are scared of the Democrats. We are scared of the Republicans.

- We are scared of being scared!

And suddenly, before we know it, we have breathed in the toxic fumes of fear into our lives and we are talking conspiracy theories, what if’s, what then’s, and we just have this gut feeling that something bad is about to happen and that we are somehow in danger.

It is a spirit of fear. And for some people their solution is buying a private island or more ammo or taking another pill or going off the grid and unfortunately for some people it’s suicide.