Overcoming Fear

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We thank you, Lord, not only here, but across this whole area. There are many churches proclaiming your good news, your gospel today. We thank you for all of them. We pray that your kingdom would grow in Southwest Florida, not only here, but everywhere. In our hearts and lives, in our neighborhoods, Lord. We lift up our neighborhoods. There are many people there we know that are living with anxiety and worry and fear in different fashions and ways, Lord God. How they keep running and keep looking and keep trying, but they don't know where to find their peace. And we pray, Lord, through us, in some way, they would be introduced to you. The king of peace, the lifter of their head, their glory, the one, Lord, who's done it all on that holy hill. And we pray, Lord, as we look at your word today, and that it just soaks into our very being, to the depth of our souls, deeper than our fears, deeper than any of our emotions, so that the reality of you becomes the greatest thing in our lives, the identifying factor in all matters, Lord. So into your care we place this day. We're confident that this time together is your God-appointed time to do work in us. And we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, so we're going to be talking about overcoming today, overcoming fear. But I am excited as well. Starting next week, we've got a three-week series called Divine Direction. Have you ever had those questions about how do you make good decisions? You ever wonder about that? Some of you might be a little close to home right now, how that works. But we're going to look at that and how you can have confidence in the decisions that you are making, that they are in line with what God has planned for you. So today we're going to be reading through Psalm 3. Let's do that right now. I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God, for you strike all my enemies on the cheek. You break the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be upon your people. You know, the Psalms are deeply emotional prayers. We modern people so often look and say, hey, we are the most attuned, emotionally savvy individuals around. And so it kind of sometimes surprises us when we read through. If you read through the Psalms and read through them, it's like, wow, are they filled. Almost every emotion under the sun is expressed in the 150 Psalms, and some of them in such a raw, powerful way. And it's like, I don't know about that. I don't know. I mean, this person's just expressing a little too much. And we we look at that. And so some people, religious people, even look at it and say, what are you supposed to do with your emotions that rage inside of you? Because we've all experienced probably anger and frustrations and sadness and grief and torment and fear and love and passion and desire. And all of these things that are going on, what do you do with them? And so a lot of religious people will say, no, no, no, no, no. You mustn't be angry with your enemies. That's wrong. Anger is always wrong. And so we think you need to suppress your emotions. Just like, you know, oh, everything's fine on the outside and inside. You're going like, oh, have you ever done that? I've seen a few students do that with me. You know, here I say, yes, and I'm the final. And they're going like, uh-huh. I can't believe he's expecting all of this out of me. You know, no, you've never done that to a teacher. But we're like, I'm afraid to. So then we have also other people say, no, the thing to do with your emotions is to just vent your feelings. And they vent them all over the place. Have you ever been on that other end of someone venting their feelings at you? Do you think it really helps? Does it work? Actually, they've done studies on this and actually suppressing your feelings or expressing them this way doesn't get you where you want to go. People who express their anger and express this and that end up just staying that way as well. It doesn't go away. So there's no such thing as real catharsis. So what's great about the psalms is the psalm doesn't say suppress your feelings. And the psalm doesn't say express your feelings all over the place. The psalm says pray through your feelings. Because that's what's really going on in the psalms here is David is praying through his deepest feelings, his deepest thoughts. He's expressing them and reflecting upon them with God and letting him through that prayer kind of sort them out on the way through it. Now of all the feelings, emotions that we have, probably the most primal emotion in our lives is fear. Fear. Why do I say that? Hey, think about the birth of a child. You know, child comes either – I don't care if it's through C-section or through a natu...