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. What a joy and privilege it is to be here. If you are a guest or a visitor, we especially are welcomed in Christ's name. And just to refresh, I am not the main pastor, so don't leave after the sermon today. Give our real pastor a chance to do that. I would say I'm a pinch hitter, but with baseball being locked out and all that going on, I don't know if I want to be a pinch hitter. That's a complicated story. I'm coming in off the bench. It is my privilege to do so, to bring the word of the Lord to the people of Thrive and those who are part of our community. Thanks be to God, especially about this topic, right? We've been talking about, I have my doubts, and they seem to be built into us, don't they? Doubts seem to be built into us. It's just impossible to avoid them. I believe, help my unbelief, not only the cry of the dad whose son was possessed, but my confession. How about that as your pastor? I believe, but God help my unbelief. Related to that unbelief is doubts and fears. Fears are a close cousin, a first cousin, a very close family friend of doubts, fears. And what I hope to be able to show today is that they are interconnected. What I hope to be able to illustrate today from Psalm 27 is that our fears have to do with our focus. And I also want to begin to illustrate that fears also are simply a part of our human nature and our brain. Last week John spoke on the nature of the mind, right? Who knows? I can't remember either. Sorry for asking John when he preached last. I get it, I can't remember either. But there was a Sunday sometime in recent history when John was talking about the nature of the mind. And the mind actually has a place and an opportunity and a function to process fears. So we're going to talk about the nature of the mind. We're going to then move from the nature of the mind in processing fears to the nature of the spirit. One of the key elements I want you to watch for as we kind of unfold this nature of doubts and fears and fears and doubts and how they're interconnected is that fears are normal and God-given opportunities to protect ourselves. But what happens over time is fears become our friends. When I begin to realize this, I kind of shake my head. I noticed in pastoral care and counseling and marriage and family therapy, I've noticed that sometimes people will hold on to their fears because they serve a function and a purpose in their life. They keep them from doing something. They allow them something that they can control. And to become fearless is actually out of our control. It's actually a surrendering process rather than something I muster. What you should be able to see in this message over and over again is that I'm not going to ask you to dig deep. I'm not going to ask you to straighten it up. I'm not going to ask you to figure it out. I'm going to ask you to be open and surrender, which may seem the very opposite of what people would think about doing when they're afraid. All that by way of introduction as well as to say thank God for the opportunity this week to be at the Thrive Support Dinner. We thank you for your gifts and your commitment to this. Thrive has got a very clear and functional mission and vision, and that's relationships aren't something, they're everything. And we exist here at Thrive to make sure that our relationship primarily with Jesus Christ works with one another and with one another forms community and that that community changes the world. No, the good people of Thrive didn't dream that up. It actually came from the Bible. Relationships aren't something, they're everything, especially with doubts and fears. You want to magnify fear? You want to exaggerate fear? Be alone. Let's walk through this. Jesus, I am afraid. Let's take a poll here. Raise your hand if you've ever been afraid. Yeah, right. Okay, okay, okay, okay. You get my point made, right? Yeah. Here's the nature of the triune brain. This is the oversimplified focus on the nature of the mind, the triune brain. I did not name it the triune brain. It was named the triune brain by scientists. I love that, but that's a whole other story. So the brain in an oversimplified fashion has the green portion of the brain is where we do heavy calculations and thinking. That's where our math majors like Hugo and others are figuring out strategies and differential equations and other things that I don't know what they mean or how to do them. Those are strategizing, thinking, communicating creativity. It's all found up there. The blue is, in an oversimplified fashion again, once again, our emotional state. That's where our emotions reside. That's where we feel about stuff. And what we have here then at the base there in the red is the amygdala and all of the functions around the amygdala that make us duck out of fear. And it's placed right over the top of the...