If you have been to church even a little, you probably know that fear and worry is a sin. You have heard a teacher or preacher tell you that the most often repeated command in the Bible is “Do not fear!” “In fact,” they said, “it’s in there at least 365 times, one for every day of the year!” How clever.
Knowing truth is one thing. Living truth is another.
If you struggle with fear and worry, 2020 is certainly not your year. 2020 is to the worrier what a cheap liquor store must be to an alcoholic. There are temptations on every shelf and it’s so easy to pick up and consume! But at least Johnny Alchy can avoid going into the liquor store! The worrier knows that he/she doesn’t have to seek out reasons to worry, they are lurking around every social media corner!
Let’s have a little self intervention, shall we? Let’s take a moment to throw all our empty bottles of despair and over-thinking on the living room floor to see just how big the problem has gotten. (We need some honest shock here.) But more than that, lets’ do the hard work of asking why. If we KNOW we shouldn’t fear, but we fear anyway, what are we doing that makes this temptation so hard to fight? What life patterns need to change so we’ll quit sipping on that bottle? As we sober up a bit and take that hard look, I think a few common factors will emerge.
The Gospel GAP
No addict conquered his addiction while in denial. Unless we admit to our problem, we’ll remain living in fear. For all of us, there is, as Paul Tripp puts it, a GOSPEL GAP; a chasm between what we PROFESS to know and how we actually FUNCTION in life. Tripp says, “Most of us understand how to gospel impacts our past and our future. Few of us connect how the gospel affects us today. That is the “gospel gap.””
This is the source of our problem. This is also the answer. When we see the latest headline and we allow ourselves to take that step onto the slippery slope of fear, we are forgetting some vital truths. Truths like, “the world is a sin cursed place and that’s why Jesus came.” Truths like, “Jesus died so that the world through Him might be saved.” Truths like, “He is going to reconcile the world back to Himself (See Colossians 1) and no matter how BAD it gets today, Jesus wins in the end. Period. And since, through faith, I am HIS, that means I win too.”
In order to start the recovery process, let’s all admit the problem is our gap; our forgetfulness. Jesus has already taken care of my biggest and scariest problem; my own sin! And nothing will stop Him from caring for me now.
Lingering doubt.
When I was in high-school, I had a bad acne problem. This was not the run-of-the mill, you-wrecked-my-class-picture acne most kids faced. My version was the deep, cystic acne that, judging from the ways girls treated me, is somehow linked to the leprosy of Bible times. From the 9th grade all the way through graduation, these deep red blotches wrecked my face and it wasn’t until after I graduated from Army basic training that manhood finally conquered adolescence and all but destroyed the enemy of my love-life. The more time as passed, the more that ailment fades into nothing but memory. But not entirely. From time to time, zits still show up in my life. Though nothing like they were, the problem still lingers, at least at some level.
Doubt is the acne of the soul. As pimples wreck a teenagers attraction levels, doubt wrecks our moving toward God. As we grow and learn more about His love and sovereign care, the problems lessens. But doubt seems to refuse to die entirely. And in times like ones we are facing now, we may feel like that pimple-ridden, splotchy-faced teenager again.
So how DO you kill doubt? It takes two simply ingredients: God’s word and time.
“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
-Rom. 10:17
God’s answer for doubt is to hear Him speak. Faith COMES from hearing and what we need to be listening to is the WORD. You knew it was coming; the same “Sunday School” answer you’ve heard all your life. You need to read your Bible more! As familiar as this advice is, there’s simply no getting around the need for it. It IS the answer to doubt. But the lessons of God do not saturate the soul over night. It takes time for them to sink into your bones. So, let’s be patient with our selves, but let’s make a simple commitment; before we open FaceBook, let’s open the Bible. Everyday. For a long time. Faith will grow and doubt will keep dying.Which brings us to another life change for our worry-addiction problem…
Bad diet
It’s clear what we need to consume MORE, but let’s talk a bit more about what we need to consume LESS. The old saying goes, “You are what you eat” and the meal our world is offering us today is one PACKED with fear. Every headline, every click-bait title, every tweet on tweeter seems to give us another reason we need to be afraid. I am left with little doubt that the very intention of the world’s media is to induce fear. So, let’s stop eating that garbage. Like a middle-aged man trying to fight the battle of the bulge (trust, I know) let’s skip the garbage for a bit and only eat what is good and healthy.
I’m currently trying to lose some fat again (I hate the roller coaster of the middle aged spare tire, to be honest with you). Once again, I’m counting my calories, so every bite that passes my lips get recorded in the My Fitness Pal app. Getting stared on this practice again, I am a bit surprised at just how many calories I can put in my body on any given day. Drink one Mt. Dew and that’s like a gazzillion of them! That’s why recording them is vital. When we aren’t paying attention, we consume too much of the bad stuff. What if we did the same thing with our social media consumption? Try it for a day. Recored every time you open it up and scroll through it. Record how LONG you spend scrolling. More than likely you will be SHOCKED on the amount of fear calories you are ingesting. And we will all probably agree, it’s time a diet from fear.
The End
I’m going to vote. Someone is going to win the election, and I care about the outcome. But six months from now, no matter WHO is president of the US, I am going to settle my heart on this truth; JESUS IS KING. So, keep your bottle of intoxicating anxiety, world. I’m going to chose to live right here right now as a child of King Jesus, and that means I can trust Him NO MATTER WHAT.
Pastor Hart 