James MacDonald - Getting Unstuck from Fear
Summary:
The preacher confronts how believers often mask fear as caution or thoroughness, describing a spirit of fear as embracing negatives, enlarging enemies, and engaging destructive thought patterns, while contrasting it with God’s gift of a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind from 2 Timothy 1:7. He explains that power overcomes circumstantial fears by embracing promises, enlisting support, and exercising faith; love conquers relational fears through God’s supernatural capacity to love the hard-to-love; and a sound mind defeats internal battles with clear, truthful thinking rooted in God’s Word. The ultimate call is to reject fear as not from God, memorize and meditate on this verse, and live boldly in the power, love, and soundness He provides, illustrated by a courageous girl’s stand during persecution.
Unmasking Fear
You call it caution; it’s fear. You call it thoroughness; it’s fear. You call—I don’t know what you call it—it’s fear. Let me give you three characteristics of the spirit of fear. All right, here’s what a spirit of fear is. Number one: embrace the negative.
Anytime anything goes wrong, you’re convinced God is going to let you down; God’s not going to take care of you. This is it! I knew the sky would fall. I’ve always felt the sky was falling. Hey, look, the sky is finally falling! That’s how you run to the negative as evidence of what you won’t trust God for.
You’re praying for your kids, and anytime something goes a little sideways, you’re like, «This is the end! He’s never heard me.» Embrace the negative; this is really big. Enlarge the enemy. I’m sure there were some giants in the land; I seriously doubt they were all giants, and it didn’t matter anyway in terms of what God had promised them.
Characteristics of Fear
So you enlarge the enemy. You take my financial future, my career, my health—whatever it is—and you make that opposition, that obstacle, that hurdle. You make that insurmountable, untraversable. But God’s word says we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. But fear embraces the negative and enlarges the enemy.
And I want you to hear this. You’re not going to like it, but I’ve seen it to be true: you engage your fear. You engage it. That’s a pattern of thinking. And more than we want to admit, we do have control over what we think. That’s a pattern of thinking.
Why are you so cranky? Because I’m always like this. We know! And fear is like that. It’s a way of handling what feels like too much. You didn’t go to God; you handled it your own way. And now, over time, this has become a pattern of thinking.
The Spirit of Power
If you’re going to get unstuck from it, here’s what God offers in the place of the spirit of fear: the spirit of power. First of all, embrace the promise. God has made some promises to us, and we want to live by those promises.
You should take this verse and memorize it: «God has not given me a spirit of fear.» When you feel the waves of regular fear crashing on the shore of your mind, it’s like, «No, I don’t have to think like this! This isn’t the way God wants me to live.»
I don’t have to be Mrs. Doomsday or Mr. Dark Clouds; I can trust God for better things ahead. I can believe that God is going to be good and faithful. Embrace the promise. Enlist the support. This is a big deal!
Community Support
I love this church, and I love the people in this church. I don’t know where you’d find more Bible-believing, God-loving, Spirit-filled, Jesus-adoring people than in this church. And you’re not supposed to live your life alone. You’re not supposed to go through it alone.
You’re not supposed to just get together with Christians, play a game of Monopoly, and go home. You’re supposed to pray together, encourage one another, and lean on God together. The resources available to you across the seven campuses of this church are staggering, in terms of people who want to wrap their arms around you, care for you, pray for you, and minister to you.
Get your fear out of isolation and into the open. Embrace the promise. Enlist the support. And then—this is key—just exercise your faith. That’s a lie! I’m not going to believe that. That’s the truth! He said He will never leave me or forsake me. That’s what He said.
You spend a couple of days living in God’s word, meditating on the promises, and you’ll find that fear will flee in a hurry. As a Christ follower, you do not have a spirit of fear; it’s an echo of who you were before you came to Jesus.
Power Overcomes
You have a spirit of power—what did I tell you about the dynamite part? Did I already share that? Because I wish I had another one; I really like that part of the sermon. And the spirit of power obliterates opposing forces and powerfully overcomes through Christ. That’s what God has given you.
You say, «Well, James, my deal is not circumstances. My life is fine, and I have my bills paid. We’re healthy, thank God. My fear is not circumstantial; it has to do with people.» Well, for circumstances, God gives us power. For relationships, notice in your notes, He gives us love.
That’s why He says God has not given you a spirit of fear. He’s working down the fear list: power for circumstances, love for relationships. Think about that! There is nothing happening in your life relationally that love cannot overcome and conquer—the love that God gives us.
The Power of Love
I was watching the nightly news this week, and they had a really cool feature about people who go into newborn intensive care units (NICUs). There was one couple that has done this for 18 years. They go in and hold the babies—these little preemie babies that are just this big—and they sing to them.
Every single sign of life improves when they are embraced and loved. And see, God made us with a need for love; most people agree on that. But here’s the second thing: God made us not just with a need for love. You need to hear this: God made you with a capacity to love.
You have a capacity to love people who are hard to love. I have a capacity! I don’t have a spirit of fear! I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this, but I don’t have to fear that—I have a supernatural capacity given to me by God! You have one too—a capacity to keep loving people. Thank God for that!
Love Is the Greatest
I love that verse—1 Corinthians 13:13 says, «Now abide these three: faith, hope, love.» That’s a good list right there. There’s the big three: faith, hope, love. I love hope—it means things are going to get better, not worse. Amen? Love’s better than hope, though.
We wouldn’t have hope if it wasn’t for the love that sent Jesus Christ into this world; we’d have no hope. Well, I love faith. If it wasn’t for faith, I wouldn’t be saved. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. Faith is great; I’m not going to kid you about that.
But faith in nothing is worthless if it wasn’t for the love that God demonstrated toward us—in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Check it! Love is the greatest thing! Love! Say it again: love is the greatest thing!
And you don’t just need love; you have a capacity to give it. You have a supernatural, God-given capacity! I’m just so fearful of what’s going to happen with my sister. Let that love rise up in you!
Love Never Fails
Let the love that God has given you rise up and overcome what’s been said to you, what’s been done to you, and what’s happened in your life. I wrote this sentence down: if love never fails, then where I am fearing the fallout of relational failure, the fix for sure is love.
Only that will get you forward. Keeping score won’t get you forward; waiting for someone else to figure it out won’t get you forward. Only love will get you forward; only love will get you free. «But I’m just so afraid.» Right? But that’s not from God. And that’s what this sermon is about.
God has not given you a spirit of fear in regard to the relationships in your life. «Well, what if they disappoint me?» You will love them in spite of it—yes, you will, and I say that by faith. «What if they hurt me?» You’re going to love them through it.
They’re going to hurt you, and you’re going to keep loving them! Your love is going to be the thing that God will use to change them and turn that around. «What if they leave me and betray me?» God will love you through that circumstance, and you’ll know His love in a way you’ve never known before.
A Personal Confirmation
I want to confess that I was writing that down in my message notes, and I kind of stopped because I don’t want to preach things to you that I don’t believe and that I’m not experiencing and living. So I wrote down, «What if they betray me and turn on me? What am I going to do?»
And I wrote down what I just said to you: God will love you through that, and you will know God’s love in a way that you’ve never known it before. I just stopped and prayed. I said, «Lord, do I know that? Am I experiencing that?»
As fast as I mean it, it was like—I was like, «Lord, do I know that?» Ding, ding, ding! And my phone rings; it’s this guy I haven’t talked to in probably two years. He visited our church a couple of years ago. His name is Tom Randall.
He’s a pastor now in Ohio, but for many years he was the chaplain for the PGA Senior Tour. He’s a really great guy. Back in the late 90s, he started an orphanage in the Philippines. Earlier this winter, he went to the Philippines to visit the orphanage he had started, and when he got there—because of some false charges that I won’t get into—you can read it for yourself—they arrested him and threw him into prison in the Philippines.
God’s Timing
Nobody could talk to him, nobody could get hold of him, and it was awful and arduous. People were praying, «What’s going to happen?» Anyway, the phone rings, and I hear a friend on the other end. He’s like, «Hey, I want you to talk to Tom Randall for a second.»
Bam! He’s just on the phone with me, and I had heard the details. After 21 days, he didn’t know if he was going to be there for 21 years, and on day 22 they let him out; it was a big-time answer to prayer—all the charges were completely dropped, all of them!
Now he’s back in the U.S. But he gets on the phone and says, «James, remember I had just been praying, ‘God, is this really right? ’ Ding, ding, ding!» And this guy’s on the other end of the phone sobbing. «James, I’ve been wanting to talk to you! I asked if I could just talk to you for a minute.»
I was in prison for 22 days and didn’t know if I was going to be there for the rest of my life. Every single day in prison, someone had given me your book, Always True, and the promise is that we can trust God about. He’s crying on the phone. «I just have to tell you what that meant to me and how God used that in my life.»
And I’m just sitting here praying, you know, «Lord?» And it was just so obvious. You can’t tell me that God didn’t line all that up, ring that phone, and say, «James, go over to the church; I’ll just give you a little reminder here.»
A Sound Mind
I wonder how often, if we would just pray little childlike prayers, «God, is this true? Can you confirm this to me?» I believe you; I’m trusting you. This is like an awesome moment! Trust me when I tell you this: God doesn’t want us to have fear. He wants us to experience power for circumstances, love related to any relational fears we have.
Someone might say, «You’re getting closer, but what I fear is not out there! It’s not people or circumstances!» What I fear, honestly, is inside here! Sometimes I’m just like, «I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I don’t know how much longer I can endure in the situation where God has me.»
I honestly sometimes think, «Pastor James, I feel like I’m going to lose it. I just feel like sometimes I’m not going to be able to hold it together. I just don’t know how long I can keep waiting and praying and hoping. I just can’t do this forever!»
And if you’ve ever had those thoughts, you have nothing to fear—not internal battles! Others of you don’t know—but some of us do! Somebody just don’t leave me up here—how many people know what it’s like to battle yourself? You know what I’m saying? Just battling myself! «Is this it, God?»
And all those internal, kind of patterns of thinking. And into that He speaks this: «God has not given you a spirit of fear but of power and of love.» My translation says «a sound mind»—a sound mind! But actually, that word is difficult to translate. Translators do it in a bunch of different ways. Sometimes it’s translated as discipline, sometimes as self-control.
Clear Thinking in Christ
It’s used 16 times in the New Testament. In Mark 5:15, it describes a person who’s no longer demon-possessed but is in their right mind. In Acts 26:25, Paul denied charges of insanity using this word, saying that his words were sober truth. Again, it’s that sound-mindedness.
In 1 Peter 4:7, the word is used to describe the clear-headed judgment needed to pray at the end of the world. All that to say this: I remember my grandfather—we’d be frogging around on his farm when we were little kids—and he would say, «You boys are out of your mind!»
And he would tell us, «You need to get in your right mind.» Kids aren’t always in their right mind; any amens on that? But when I became a man, I put away childish things. I am in my right mind.
I know who Jesus Christ is. I know what God’s word is. I know light from darkness. I know truth from error. I know sin from righteousness. I know right from wrong, and I see it clearly. I seek to see it more clearly in myself.
I know what God’s promised about the future. I know how all this ends, and I know what we’re going to enjoy for all eternity. I’m in my right mind; I’m in my right mind! And listen to me, you are too!
Reject Fearful Thoughts
If you have some of those thoughts like, «Oh, I just feel like I’m going to lose it. I just feel like I can’t go on! I don’t know how much longer!» No, God did not give that thinking to you! God gave you a sound mind—get the error out, get the truth in!
I know who I am. I know who I belong to. I know where I’m going. I know what this is about. I know what I’ll be singing a hundred years from today, regardless of the next ten months or ten years. That’s a sound mind!
I know what’s right, and I know what’s wrong, and I’m not going to be moved off of it. God help us! He’s not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.
A Story of Courage
So in 1898-1899, there was a nationalistic uprising in the land of China. They were trying to crush all Western influences—Americans for sure had to go, and worst of all, American Christians and missionaries. There were these men in special attire.
If you see pictures from that time period, you can see stacks of bodies. They would behead people who were Western, American anti-Chinese nationalism, and worst of all, Christians. A particular story from that time documented: a group of these boxers, dressed like Eastern soldiers, descended upon a missionary compound.
Inside were a hundred Christians—some missionaries, some Chinese Christians. They locked all the doors and left only one way out of the compound. They stood outside with their weapons, swords with which they were killing people, and drew a cross in the dirt.
They said, «All right, now you come out one by one. Either you trample the cross under your feet, or you die.» So seven people walked out; they trampled the cross and were let go free.
Standing Firm
This little girl, a true story—an Asian Christian girl—comes out. Number eight, she kneels down in front of the cross and prays to Jesus. She gets up, steps carefully around the cross, refusing to step on it and to her death.
The 92 people in line after her all went to the same death. Why? Because one person stood up and said, «God has not given me a spirit of fear. That’s not from God! I have power, I have love, I have a sound mind.» And she chose the right. She’s pretty fired up about it today!
I believe that God would give you—those of you here who love Jesus Christ, I know you do. I believe that God would give you the strength to stand. Don’t you believe that? That God would give you the strength to stand for Him in your hour of testing, as hard as that would be?
Memorize and Meditate
And what a good verse! Can I just encourage you to take that verse and write it on a little card—2 Timothy 1:7—and post it by your bathroom sink, on the dashboard of your car, maybe by the fridge or next to your computer.
Say that verse out loud seven times this week, and when you’ve done that, you’ll have memorized it. When you’ve memorized it, say, «God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind!»
When you’ve memorized it, you can begin to meditate on it and think about it. No, I don’t have to think like that! I have from God! And meditate on it. And when you’re meditating on it, you can marinate in it.
And when you’ve marinated in it, you will find increasingly that you are getting unstuck from fear. Amen?