Slide 1
Deborah Scaling Kiley – October 1982

Slide 2
For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. 2 Timothy 1:7

Slide 3
If fear is the main voice in our decision-making, it’s not coming from God.

Slide 4
We can’t defeat what we won’t define.

Slide 5
– Fear of failure
– Fear of rejection
– Fear of financial instability
– Fear of not being enough
– Fear of change
– Fear of conflict
– Fear for our children’s future
– Fear of losing control

Slide 6
And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. And his shield-bearer went before him. He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.” And the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.” When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. 1 Samuel 17:4–11

Slide 7
Fear came from what they saw (the giant) and what they heard (the insults).

Slide 8
Three responses in the text:
– Hide: Saul retreats from the frontlines.
– Freeze: Soldiers stand in fear for 40 days.
– Face: David steps forward.

Slide 9
The Science of Fear:
Amygdala: The brain’s alarm system; triggers fight, flight, or freeze.
Prefrontal cortex: Your reasoning center – fear shuts it down, making you reactive instead of reflective. (Arnsten, 2009)
Affect labeling: Naming your fear reduces amygdala activity and restores clear thinking (Lieberman, 2007).

Slide 10
Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand.” 1 Samuel 17:45-47

Slide 11
Fear is fed by what fills our eyes and ears, but faith is fed by who fills our heart.

Slide 12
– John 14:27  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
– Matthew 14:27 “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”
– Luke 12:32  “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Slide 13
Jesus never denied fear exists. He simply commanded that it would not rule our hearts.

Slide 14
– Fear thrives in the dark.
– Naming your shark is the first step to defeating it.

Good morning and welcome to I Love My Church Sunday. Now, now I, I want to clarify a few things about I love My Church Sunday. Let me start by saying what this doesn’t mean. Well, when we say I love my church, it does not mean that we think we are a perfect church because I can assure you we are not a perfect church mainly because we have a lot of imperfect, not perfect, broken people in our church. So that that’s not what we’re saying when we say, I love my church. We’re not saying that we have a perfect pastor because we don’t, I can, I can testify to that, I promise you. And so it’s not about a person either, that really when we say I love my church, that the heart behind it is first and foremost, the Capital C Church, that God gave us lots of gifts.

But one of the gifts that he gives us that Jesus before he leaves, gives us the church. And the church is meant to be a place where we can come together to lift high the name of Jesus to worship God together, but also to be in community together as messy and challenging and difficult as that is a place that we can have relationship, where we together are pursuing a relationship with Jesus. And you are helping me, and I am helping you. And also as much as I love the Big Sea Church, I also love Cherry Hills Community Church. I I love all those going all the way back to 1982 that have come before us, that have put blood, sweat, and tears into this place. I love what God is doing right now in this place. I love the potential of what can be in the next 12 months and in the next 12 years.

And one of the things that we would love to do in order to help all of us get better connected to the church is something that behind the scenes our staff teams have been working on for really almost an entire year. So I’m gonna ask you to do something that is the opposite of what we typically ask you to do, and that is to pull out your cell phone. So normally we say put those away, silence some. Right now I’m gonna ask you to go ahead and pull out your cell phone. And if you have the Cherry Hills mobile app, just click update. And if you update it, you’ll get the new relaunched app that that just launched this week. If you don’t have the Cherry Hills mobile app, if you go to the App Store, all you have to do is search for Cherry Hills.

If you search for Cherry Hills, we are the first thing that pops up. And the new app, the heart of the new app is to help us connect. It’s to help it make it easier for you to connect to the church and find out all the things that the church has going on for you. Now, in order to do that, it’s a more personalized experience. So you gotta log in. I get it. I know that everybody’s wanting you to get an app and to log into an app, and, and I know at some point you’re like, oh gosh, I feel like I got too many. I’m just asking for you to give it a shot. And so log into the app, it’s gonna ask for your cell phone number. If you’re already in our system, then they’ll send you back a code and then you can log in.

If you don’t, if you’ve never registered in our system, then it’s gonna ask you to register in our system. Then what’s gonna happen once you log in is it’s gonna give you a personalized dashboard so everybody in the room won’t see the same thing when they see the app. You’ll have a dashboard that is specifically for you, just like I have one that is specifically for me. And the reason behind this is it gives us a chance to show you things that are coming up that are for you and for your family. And so I’m gonna see things that are for me and my demographic. I’m gonna see things programs and activities that are happening for my age kids. I won’t necessarily see everything. And so I know that you can sometimes get lost in all the things that we got going on at the church, which is a good thing that we have a lot of things going on that this helps personalize it to each and every one of us.

You can update your information, which is a huge help because every time we send a mailer or an email, there’s always people that your emails change, your cell phones change so you can update your information. And then lastly, you’re gonna get to a place that it’s gonna have badges. Each one of us are gonna have these, these icons up top, we call ’em badges, that it’s gonna give you an opportunity to better connect with the church and us to better connect with you. And it’ll tell you what the next step is for you to help light up that badge. So we’ll be talking about the app for the next six to eight weeks, just in little bite-sized chunks, but I would encourage you to download it, get it updated. I, I really think what is possible inside that app in terms of connecting and relationship is gonna be a beautiful thing.

Let’s pray before we go to God’s word together. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for today. I God, we pray that as we kick off this sermon series, God, we pray that it’ll be real in each one of our hearts and lives. God, I pray for anyone in the room right now that is struggling with fear, even if they don’t realize it, if there are things in their life that they’re afraid of, it’s affecting their life. God, I pray that today as we kick off this sermon series, as we read through your word, God, that you could start doing a work in each and every one of our lives. It’s the name of Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. I grew up in Houston, Texas. And so when we would go to the beach when I was a kid, we went to a beach called Galveston, and I didn’t know any better.

I loved Galveston. We went all the time. And it wasn’t until I was an adult and I went to a different beach that I realized that Galveston was Galveston. And I, I remember this week, someone asked, they said, Hey, we’re going on a trip to Houston. Do you recommend while we’re there, us going to Galveston? And I said, Nope, probably not because Galveston, it’s amazing. I loved it until I knew what was wrong with it. And that primarily is that it’s just everything about it looks wrong. Like if you go to a regular beach, it’s beautiful, clear water. You go to Galveston and the water’s not clear. You know, like it’s, it’s a surprise every time you get in that water. And so if you go out a little ways, and if the water line is here and you put your hand under the water, I mean that far, you cannot see your hand like it’s gone. And what that does is it brings about a, a special sense of anxiety when you’re swimming in that ocean because you can’t see anything and you’re out there swimming and all of a sudden you start to feel something go past your leg. Now, most likely that’s a fish, or maybe it’s a piece of seaweed, or maybe it’s, it’s your kid that’s swimming around in the ocean. But your mind, the way that at least my brain works is my mind immediately thinks it’s one thing that just swim past my leg. And that is a shark. Instantly. It’s like, oh God, there’s a shark right there. And the reason that our brain works that way its because we’ve heard the stories. We’ve watched shark Week on Discovery Channel. Well, we’ve seen all the videos where sharks are terrifying. And it reminds me of this story that there’s a, a great book called Deep Survival. Deep Survival tells all kinds of different stories of people that survived against all odds. So it’s story after story where, where people were really put into a circumstance where they shouldn’t have made it, and yet somehow they made it. One of the stories that the author talks about is the story of Debbie Scale In October of 1982.

Debbie Scale was 24 years old. She loved the beach, she loved the ocean. She loved to go sailing. And so she got hired onto a crew, and she was working on a yacht. It was a 58 foot yacht. They were sailing off the coast of North Carolina. And when I say off the coast, I mean, they were sailing way out off the coast, miles into the ocean. There’s only five people on board. And it was a multi-Day long sailing expedition. And when they were out there in the middle of the night, Debbie was asleep in her bed when a storm hits. A storm that turned into a tropical depression, they were facing 40, 50 foot waves. Their yacht gets capsized, dumps over splits in half. Frantically in the middle of the night. Everybody’s waking up, everybody’s moving around. They fill up the inflatable life raft and they all pile in. Now, unfortunately, one of the women that was on the boat while she was piling into the life, the the lifeboat because of the, just the chaos of the ship, breaking in half some piece of the ship, cut her in the leg pretty deeply. So she starts bleeding blood pretty profusely, and that the blood goes into the water, it goes onto the side of the, their little inflatable life raft. It goes into the boat. And so as the seas start to calm down, sharks start to surround their lifeboat. They start to swim around them. They, they, they, both of the survivors, they, they talk about their experience, and they say, okay, these big sharks are bumping up against the boat and bumping up against the boat and bumping up against the boat. And a day goes by, two days go by. The sharks don’t leave ’em alone. The sharks know that it’s just a matter of time. And so they are circling and circling. And there’s something that happens in your brain when you have this fear that is right there in front of you. It just paralyzes you and you’re, you got nowhere to go. You’re not sure what to do, unfortunately, because the, the one girl was bleeding, the, the blood was just kind of everywhere. And as a result of that, he was just sending these sharks into a frenzy, the captain of the yacht and the co-captain of the yacht, three days into their expedition, where, where they, they’ve had no water, they’ve had no food, they’ve got the sun beating down on ’em. They, they just get desperate. And in desperation, especially when it’s coupled with dehydration, we do things we shouldn’t probably do. They started drinking the salt water that dehydrates you even worse. It can also cause hallucinations. And so one of them all of a sudden sits up and says, I think I see land. They jump into the water, they start swimming towards what they think is the land they get eaten by the sharks.

Debbie said that this is just this terrifying moment that she will never forget for the rest of her life as she watches as a friend of hers. And there’s this shark frenzy. And then about a few hours later, the second person that had drank the salt water does the same thing with the same results. The woman who had cut her leg, she ends up dying. She bled to death. It wasn’t until five long days later that Debbie and one other guy named Brad a boat, passes them by and rescues them. Now in deep survival, the the author, he, he’s looking at all these different circumstances and he wonders, what is it that’s different about those people who survive versus those people who don’t? And in that book written by Lawrence Gonzalez, he writes this, survival often depends more on mental and emotional resilience than on physical strength, recognizing the reality of the situation, maintaining hope and making deliberate informed decisions are essential traits of survivors.

Here’s one of the most I important patterns that he discovered when he looked at all these different survivors in these crazy circumstances, that each one of them named the threat, that someone who is struggling with hypothermia, that they would stop and they would say, okay, I have hypothermia. And it helped their brain figure out what are the next steps? What do I do from here? As someone who got caught in a rip current, they would say, I am in a rip current. As a result of that, it helped them to identify the threat in order to take the steps to solve the threat. Then the story of Debbie, that Debbie, with crazy circumstances, I mean, you, you would think that she would be the least likely to survive. She was only 24 years old. She, she was the least experienced as some of the other people in the boat were stronger than her. But she did something unique, and that is she named her sharks. And the author said that, that, that in this just crazy moment where these sharks are coming up and, and hitting the boat, and Robbie dump against the boat that she started to name, she said, okay, I’m gonna name that shark and I’m gonna name that shark. And every time they’d swim by, she’d say, oh, that’s, that’s this one. No, that’s that one. She identified the threat and named it. And what he found in all these circumstances is that was the first step for someone if they were going to survive. It’s interesting, when I think about my own life and things that I’ve been going through that oftentimes there are dangers, there are fears

That we have in our life that they go unnamed whenever we try not to think about ’em, and we never name them and point them out. And as a result of that, in the back of our brain, the back of our mind, somewhere, they are disrupting our decision making. Those fears are disrupting our relationships. Often those fears even are affecting our relationship with God. And so I, I want to, to look through scripture over the course of this series and help us to understand that fear is a real thing. It exists. It can be a healthy thing, but it can also be a disruptive thing. Look what Paul says in second Timothy chapter one, verse seven. He says, for God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-control.

Hey, He’s saying, God did not give us a spirit of fear. God does not want to, to live that, to make decisions out of fear. Instead, we should have the spirit of power, of love and of self-control. I to put it differently, that if we look at that verse in context, here’s what it’s trying to say, that if fear is the main voice in our decision making, that means it’s not coming from God. Fear should not be the thing that is driving who I am, what I do or why I do it. But the first step is this, that we can’t defeat what we can’t define. If we don’t define it, we won’t defeat it. So the first step for all of us is to name our shark. Say, this is the fear that I’ve got in my life. And now when we think of fear, we think of phobias, and we think of fear of sharks or fear of the dark or fear of heights. And while those are true fears and real fears, I’m not trying to negate those. I really wanna unpack some fears that they’re more insidious, they’re underneath the surface. They, they are there. And sometimes we don’t realize it fears like this, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of financial instability, fear of not being enough, fear of change, fear of conflict, fear for our children’s future, fear of losing control. There are these fears and and maybe you’re seeing a fear up there and you’re saying, okay, well, well, I do, and I, I’m just for the first time recognizing that may maybe you have a fear that’s a relatively recent fear. Maybe something’s happened. Maybe something happened to someone you love or something happened to you, or it’s health related. For some of us, you, you see a fear up there and you say, well, that, that’s actually o fear that I’ve been dealing with for most of my life, and I don’t know

What to do with it. If you’ve got a

Bible turn with me to First Samuel. We’re gonna be in First Samuel chapter 17. We’re gonna look at one of the most famous stories in all the Bible. It’s a story of David and Goliath. If you grew up in the church, you’ve heard it a hundred times. If you didn’t grow up in the church, you’ve still heard this story. Especially we, we like to talk about Dave and Goliath, anytime a sports team that’s not supposed to win beats a team that they’re not supposed to beat. But I wanna look at it from a subtly different angle and a different perspective and unpack something that is more nuanced in the text. First Samuel chapter 17. Let’s start in verse four. It says, and there came out from the camp of the Philistines, a champion named Goliath of Gath whose height was six cubits and a span. So we don’t measure things in cubits in a span, but a cubit is about 18 inches. A span is half a cubit, it’s about nine inches, which means that he’s somewhere around nine feet, nine inches. Now, how we translate qubits and span, we’ve seen different measurements that mean different things, but womewhere around nine feet to 10 feet tall, that’s how big Goliath is. And big enough where if you were at the grocery store and you were walking past that person, you’d be like, whoa, he is huge or, or big enough where if you’re with a child at the grocery store that child who just says what everybody else is thinking, even though they know that socially they’re not supposed to say those things, like they would go up to that person and say, Why are you so big? You are huge. Like, that’s how big Goliath was. That says he had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of male. And the weight of the coat was 5,000 shekels of bronze. That’s about 125 pounds. And he had bronze armor on his legs and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam. And his spear’s head weighed 600 shekels of iron. So that just the head of the spear was between 15 and 16 pounds. That’s, that’s a really heavy spear to be thrown at somebody. It says his shield bearer went before him. He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine? And you are not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to me. If he’s able to fight me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against you and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us. And the Philistine said, I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together. When Saul and all of Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were, this is the key part, dismayed and greatly afraid. They were dismayed and greatly afraid. Now, if you know anything about the Old Testament, the Philistines and the Israelites are always at war with each other. Israelites, the nation of Israel. This is God’s chosen nation that God has said, I’m going to use you to demonstrate my goodness to the world around you. They were called to live according to God’s ways in order to demonstrate to all the cultures of the world what it looked like to follow God. The Philippine were the arch rivals. They were the nemesis. They were the bad guys of Israel. So over and over and over again, it’s the Philistines who are fighting with Israel. And so they line up, there’s about to be this big battle, but instead of having a battle where both armies fight each other, the Philistines send out their biggest, baddest dude Goliath,

And they say, Hey, instead of us all fighting, why don’t you send your best guy? And I’m our best guy, and we’ll just fight one-on-one. Whoever wins wins for everybody. And here’s what happens. The nation of Israel, the armies,

They look out and they see this huge

Giant, and they’re like, Uhuh, I ain’t touching that. And so, so where does their fear come from? ’cause This is important that their fear came from what they saw. They saw the giant, and from what they heard, they heard the insults. And so as a result of this fear, we see three different responses in the text that we see Saul, who’s the King, he should be on the front lines, he should be leading his men. But instead, what does Saul do? Saul hides, he hides, he runs away and he’s hiding from Goliath. And then you have the army. The army, they’re frozen in fear. The text says that for 40 days, they’re in their tents, that they’re hanging back Goliath for 40 days comes out and every single day issues this challenge. And every single day they’re completely frozen. Not sure what to do. And then you’ve got David who shows up in a little bit in the text. And instead of hiding, instead of freezing, what does he do? He faces the fear, he faces the Goliath. He names it. He steps forward and he fights it. Let’s pause for a moment and, and look at how the brain works. The Science of Fear that, that when you or I are afraid of something, it’s because the amygdala that’s in our brain lights up. The amygdala is in the, the kind of middle of our brain. It’s a small part of our brain. It’s the lower part of our brain. And if they’re doing a brain scan of, of you or me, we get scared of something that that’s the part of the brain that lights up. This is the part of the brain that causes that fight or flight or freeze response. Probably growing up, you heard a lot about fight or flight, but fight or flight isn’t the whole story. There’s also this third category of freeze. Oftentimes freeze is what we do when we are afraid. And when the amygdala starts firing, your, your whole body starts to respond to it, that all of a sudden your pupils dilate so that you can see more clearly in the dark that,that your skin starts to get a little bit sweaty. ‘Cause It’s trying to cool down your body temperature, that the blood moves from your organs towards your heart so that your heart can pump faster. Your heart starts to race so that you can respond to whatever this fear is. And you can’t control it. You’re not choosing to do it. This is just your brain firing. The other thing that happens when the amygdala starts firing is that the, the part of our brain that controls our, our forward thought, the prefrontal cortex, that’s the reasoning center of our brain. That part of the brain shuts down. That seems inconvenient, doesn’t it? You say, okay, I’m, I’m scared of something. And the part of my brain that is forward thinking, that is involved in decision making, it just shuts off. It’s not sure what to do. So instead of being reflective, meaning I’m pausing and I’m thinking through, okay, what’s my next step? I’m reactive. I’m just doing something. Now, there’s a part of this that, that God designed it that way for a purpose.

If you’re in the middle of the woods and all of a sudden there’s a bear or there’s a mountain lion, like you don’t wanna be reflective in that moment, you be like, ah, let me pause and think about what’s my next right step. I know you need to react. You, your life is on the line. You need to do something with it. But, but here’s the challenge. Oftentimes, especially in 2025, well, it’s not that we have fear because there’s some danger right in front of us, but instead that amygdala is firing for the wrong reasons all the time, that we’re just constantly fearful. But here’s what modern science has discovered, there is a way to give power back to that prefrontal cortex. It’s called effect labeling. Simply put, it’s naming your fear. If you say, this is that thing that I’m afraid of, it reduces the amygdala activity and it restores the prefrontal cortex to start thinking clearly again.

What does that mean? It means that if we are fearful, if we’re scared of something, if we are afraid, the first step is to name the thing that we are afraid of, to name our fear in order to start rationally thinking about it again. But what’s interesting is that’s exactly what David does. Look what it says in First Samuel chapter 17 verse 45. Now we’re skipping a little bit, but basically to sum it up, here’s what happens is David shows up and he’s like, Hey, what’s happening? He sees Goliath out in the middle. He’s like, how come nobody’s going out there to fight this guy? And they’re all looking at him and like, Hey, you’re just a little kid. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And David’s like, well, I’ll go fight him. And you can see how desperate they were. ’cause Instead of being like, Hey, no, you’re not even in the army. You can’t fight him. They were like, I mean, looks kinda strong for, for a little kid. Go for it. I, I mean, better you than me. And so he gets all the way to the king and Saul’s looking at scrawny little David. And, and Saul’s like, I mean, I don’t know that you should be doing this, bud, but he’s so fearful of Goliath. He’s like, well, I mean, if you’re willing to do it, so, so da David, who’s this young man, ends up going out to face this giant. And here’s what it says In one Samuel chapter 17 sermon verse 45, it says, then David said to the Philistine, you come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of the host. So pause for a second. What does he do right off the bat? He names the fear, the the fear that everybody else has been scared of the, the, the giant. He names it. And he says, Hey, this is who you are. You are doing this. He, he named the thing that the whole army was afraid of. But then he shows where his faith comes from. He says, but I come to you and the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied rhis day, the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I’ll give the dead bodies of the hosts of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth is a pretty good trash talker. Like I don’t know about you, but he is not messing around. That all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with the sword and sphere for the battle is the Lord’s. And he will give you into our hand. And here’s what I I wanna unpack. It’s this concept that fear is fed by what fills our eyes and our ears. When we are fearful of something, it’s because of what we’re seeing and what we’re here. But faith is filled by who fills our heart.

Just just think for your own life for a moment. Think about the things that we put in front of our eyes, the things that we listen to with our ears, that if you watch the news very often, what do you see? A lot of, a lot of fear. Why? Because fear sell. Fear is something that we get hooked into. We, we wanna watch, we wanna listen to, we wanna read about that. Social media. What what’s the point of social media? Social media is just trying to engage your attention nonstop all the time. And the things most likely to engage our attention are bad news, fear, tactics, things that we might be afraid of. I’m 41 years old. I don’t remember a moment in my life where some article somewhere wasn’t warning against the fact that we’re about to have World War ii, like at any given moment. Oh, it’s about to happen. Every election that I’ve ever been a part of in my entire life has been the most important election of our lifetime. Because if this one goes the wrong way, the whole world falls apart. Everything is always this sense of urgency, nonstop. And it’s fear-based. Why? Because we respond to fear. We’re engaged by fear, the things that we put in front of our eyes, the things we listen to with our ears. But instead of being focused on that, what does David do? David has a faith. And his faith in God is bigger than his fear of Goliath. And now, don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean that there’s not a fear of Goliath. I mean, David’s not an idiot. David’s like, Hey, he’s huge. Like this guy’s stronger than me. He’s bigger than me. He’s more well trained than me. He’s more famous than me. So it wasn’t that the fear didn’t exist, It was that his faith in God was larger than his fear of the giant. It’s interesting. Jesus picks up on fear and talks about being afraid a lot. I look in the New Testament in John chapter 14, verse 27. Jesus says, peace I live with you. My peace I give to you not as the world gives. Do I give to you?

Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Matthew 1427, he says, take heart and His. I do not be afraid. Luke 1232, fear not little flock for it. Is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom? And now, now, understand that Jesus doesn’t say, Hey, there’s no such thing as fear. Fear is not a thing. He never denied. That fear exists. He simply commanded that it would not rule our hearts. I don’t want us to falsely come in and hear a sermon series kickoff about fear and think that the action step from here is, okay, I heard a sermon and I’m supposed to be David, and, and fear is the Goliath. And so I’m just supposed to conquer my fear. And if I just have more faith and my fear goes away, and we’re gonna charge the day, because I, I don’t think that’s the message of scripture. I think it’s recognizing that that fear is real. And there are parts of our life that are unspoken fears that, that have been floating around the back of our brain, that are radically affecting our thoughts and our words and our actions and who we are and how we live. Instead, what, what I think Jesus calling us too is very similar to what we see the author write about in deep survival. He says, recognizing the reality of the situation, maintaining hope and making deliberate informed decisions that I, I think that’s what it means when we have faith and God that’s bigger than our fear and the things in front of our life that I’m recognizing. I’m naming the shark. I’m saying, okay, this is a fear. That is a real fear that I have in my life, that, that I’m putting my hope in Jesus. Okay? But there is a hope that is bigger than this fear, however big that fear is, and the fear’s not fake. It’s a real fear.

But my hope is bigger than that. And now I’m gonna make intentional informed decisions in order to conquer that fear. I I think one of the challenges sometimes when we hear the story of David Goliath

Is that we turn David into the hero. We’re like, oh man, David’s the man. David’s so cool. He’s so awesome. But David himself doesn’t make a case for that. David says, I’m gonna defeat you, not because of me. He, he didn’t say, Hey, I’m gonna defeat you Goliath, and the reason I’m gonna defeat you is because of how cool I am, how strong I am, how smart I’m no. He says, I’m gonna defeat you because my faith and my trust is in a God who is bigger than you. And that’s the story of scripture. That the redemptive story of scripture for you and I, is that we are not the hero of the story. The Jesus is the God steps out of heaven in flesh. That the Jesus comes to the earth fully God and fully man. He lives a perfect life, his sinless life. And then he chooses to go to the cross for our sins. Why? Because we were incapable of saving ourselves. There’s nothing we could ever do to get over our sin, to fix our sin, to put us back into a relationship with God.

So God solves the problem for us that Jesus dies on the cross, but he doesn’t stay dead. Three days later, he rises from the dead. He conquers death. He conquers sin. And the point is this, that if we would’ve recognize that, that Jesus is the hero of the story, that Jesus wants to be the hero of my story, that when I put my faith in my trust into him, it doesn’t mean that I never have fear ever again. It doesn’t mean that bad things will never happen to me ever again. It means that when I face those things, I can do it with the confidence that Jesus is bigger than those things that, that I never have to be alone when I face those things. I don’t have to be the hero of the story. And man, that’s a burden to try and think it’s all on me every day. No, I gotta be the guy that, that fixes everything and solves everything. And, and I’m always the hero. But instead to say, Hey, I’m not the hero. And that’s okay. Jesus is. So, let’s just get practical for a second. What does this look like? It starts with understanding this, that fear thrives in the dark.

When I was a kid, I, I was scared of the dark. And now as an adult, I’m still scared of the dark. I just am better at hiding it than I was as a kid. If it’s pitch black and I hear a noise, I mean, I don’t know what the noise is. I just assume there’s a shark in my room trying to eat me at night. There’s no ocean, there’s no water. That makes no sense. But that’s, that’s where my mind goes. Like, we are fearful. When something is unknown, we can’t see it. But do you know what alleviates that fear so quickly? It’s just flipping on a light. You turn on a light and whatever fear you had gone in an instant, fear thrives in the darkness. So what do we do about it? Here’s step number one. Naming your shark is the first step to defeating it.

Naming the fear that exists in your life. Modern psychology would back up that, that’s the first step. Scripture would say, Hey, that’s the first step that we should name the fear. And then I think that second step is recognizing what are the things that I put in front of my eyes? What are the things I’m listening to with my ears that if I am living in a, a state of fearfulness, that that I need to stop and reflect and say, what, what am I watching? What am I listening to? Because if I’m just constantly scared about the world around me, but I’m always watching the news and listening to things that are negative, probably those are things that I need to take, take a step back and say, okay, this is not healthy for me. So instead, what if I start spending more time in God’s Word, focusing my eyes on things that will raise my faith in him, start listening to worship music, start listening to God’s voice in prayer.

Put my eyes and my ears in a place that can reorient my heart. And then I think the third thing is recognizing the truth that Jesus is the hero of the story. Now, as we go through this sermon series, we’re gonna have moments where we talk about, okay, so what happens with fear when really bad things are happening or have happened? What do I do with that? How do I wrestle with that? We’re gonna talk about lies. We’re gonna talk about shame and guilt. But, but at the, the root of it all, it comes back to this, that Jesus is the hero of the story. So when I’m paralyzed by fear, that first step, I’m gonna name it. And I also gotta put my hope in the one that’s bigger than it. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we are grateful God, that you do not want us to live in fear. God, the fear can, can wreck so many different areas of our life. God, I pray that today across the room, that we can name the shark, name those things that are causing us to be fearful. Reflect on what we watch and what we hear make you the hero of the story. I pray for anyone in this room that doesn’t know you, that today can be the day they make you their heroes. The name Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.