This is Pastor Steven's newest sermon. I watched online this morning and will definitely be downloading the podcast, I loved it!
Room 101: Fear's Greatest Hit
Link to the sermon: http://www.elevationchurch.org/sermons/room101/part3
Bible Verses:
1 Samuel 17
Matthew 25: 24- 30 (1 Talent)
Daniel 3: 15- 18
Notes:
- The perfect love of God, turns fear out of doors
- FEARS SONG: What If (depressing, discouraging)
- Fear takes over when I give more weight to my what if's than to what God says and who he is.
- Fear is misplaced faith (have faith in the wrong thing)
- Fears never go away, but you learn how to wade past your what ifs
- Did you know you are only born with two fears? Fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other fears are acquired which means they can be unlearned.
- You don't try to get "what ifs" to go away. You play it out to the very end and when you do that, you learn something about God's character and purpose for you that actually takes the initial fear you felt and converts it into stronger faith than you've ever had.
- PAINS SONG: That Would (be the hardest thing I ever went through)
- You don't need to wade into your what ifs casually and stay there anymore. Instead, He wants us to learn how to dive down to the bottom of our what if and find that at the bottom there us a God who would still be beneath it all even on the worst day of your life.
- My darkest day has a light
- PROMISE SONG: God Is
- We have the promises of who God is (sustainer, comforter, mender of broken hearts...)
- There's other stuff God wants to do in your life, but you never went down to the bottom and found out that God was there. That he would bring you back to the top stronger than you were before you ever went into your fear to begin with.
- God doesn't judge your life based on what you did. He judges it based on what you did in comparison to what he called you to do.
- If I let fear imprison me at some point, I missed an opportunity to be used by God.
- If you have the wrong view of the Master, you are going to do the wrong thing with what he gave you.
- The Devil always gets us to focu on what if i do what God is calling me to do and it fails, backfires, or it's hard or challenging or it's uncomfortable. But, you have to look at the flip side as well.
- We always look at the cost of stepping out in faith, but when's the last time you calculated the cost of staying locked in fear?
- You are going to take this test of the next thing God calls you to do.
- You are hiding the instruction God gave you because it would cost you so much to step out. I'll suggest that it would be cost you much more if you don't.
- It's better to step out in faith and fail. In some of the failures that I've had that I really got familiar with the track called God is.
- A life of faith isn't staying at the surface never trusting God never pressing forawrd. It's actually diving so deep to what God has called you to do that you don't know if you'll ever get up for air in time. But, you get to the bottom and say God's still down there. You know what, he's still good down there, he's still loving. I have found him to be even more compassionate when I lost the thing I thought I couldn't live without. I found out he's still loving, still good, and still strong.
- Put more faith in who God is than your what if.
- 1 author said, "Faith is believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse."
- Play it backwards
- When I look at my own life, I realize the times when I felt the greatest fear, but stepped forward with God in faith, when I went down to the bottom of my own uncertainty, when I went down to the bottom of the even if scenarios- those were some og the times when God's faithfulness in my life resounded the most. That's some of the times when who he was came clear to me more than ever before. That's when his voice became so strong to me. You see, that's when you are going to hear him clearly so play it backwards.
- All that time there was a promise while you were stuck on what if.
