Student Message on 9/9/07 To read additional sermons, click here. Fear by Dan Johnson To get the PowerPoint used with this message which included the Fear game, click here. Today I am talking about fear and I have a game for us to play. I did some research on phobias and found a bunch of interesting ones. So if you will look at the power point. It will show the name of the phobia and you will need to guess what the term is a fear of. (Play game) There are many different fears out there. These fears may cripple many and prevent you from advancing to your goal. Are any of you afraid of spiders, bees, or some other insect? Do they frighten you to the point that you can not move or you run away or scream? Usually our response to fear is face it or flee from it. Out of all the fears that may stop us from moving on, one fear that should affect us more is often over looked. This fear is called Integrity. I define Integrity as the fear of God over man. Looking around these days I wonder where the fear of God has gone. Now I want to ask you. What does it mean to fear God? (Ask them) Pastor Blythe last year gave a message on Fear and in his message he mentioned that the Bible uses the word fear in two ways: 1. Reverence: respect for God our creator and living a life that honors Him 2. Terror and Dread defined: A feeling of anxiety and agitation caused by the presence or nearness of danger, evil, pain, discomfort Bet you can’t guess which definition we should live out. In Jr. High I had a skewed view of what fearing God was. I went to a Christian School and on the back of the shirts they gave to the basketball team was a verse about fearing God and I was thinking that this was a weird Christian school telling us to love God and now that we are to be terrified of him. Whatsupwitdat!? I did not have a true understanding of what it was to fear God. Open your Bibles to Genesis 22. We are going to look at some characters in the Bible who displayed fear of God. Starting in verse one. Genesis 22: 1 – 12 (NIV) “1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. 2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." 3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" 8 Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. 9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. 12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Abraham’s immediate reaction and response is one of the best examples we see in Bible of fearing God. Now by no means are you to go out and sacrifice your child if you have one. What should be done is we need to be more concerned about what God thinks and his opinion rather than what man thinks. Keep in mind those who may not have read much of the Old Testament, God may ask you to do some pretty weird things. Take Gideon for example. I am going to summarize the story, but you can read about it in Judges 7. This man had thousands of men ready to fight for Israel. But God told him that he had too many men to deliver Israel from the Midianites. So God took him down to a few thousand men, then down to 300 men! If I were Gideon and I were going up against the Midianites with only 300 men I would think that God must have taken his crazy pills that morning. Gideon feared God and trusted him so he did as God had asked. Back to the story, with the odds seemingly stacked against Gideon, only a miracle could save them and sure enough God came through and confused the Midianites to the point they turned on each other and killed each other. God had delivered the Midianites into the hands of the Israelites, simply because Gideon feared God more than the impossible odds. Who knows? God just may be asking you to do something insane or simply out of the ordinary to accomplish his plan and purpose. My Pastor from up in Omaha was once walking through the mall and he passed by this young woman and God told him that the young woman was going to commit suicide and to tell her that “God loves you”. Seems simple enough? My Pastor did as God had told him and sure enough she was going to commit suicide that night and those were the words she needed to hear. She did not commit suicide and went to bed knowing the Lord and Creator of the universe truly loved her. It seems simple enough to just talk to someone and say that God loves them. Think about it, how easy is it to step out of your comfort zone say at Metrocenter Mall, walk up to someone at random and tell them the truth that God so loved the world that He sent Jesus to die on a cross just so we would not go to hell because of our sins as long as we turned from them? It is not easy to go out and do that. What if someone sees you? What if you heard or felt wrong? What if you say something wrong? Let me encourage you today to make God’s opinion the only one that matters. A warning though, you probably have seen those commercials for a new drug that says it will lower your cholesterol, make you grow hair, or lose 50 pounds in one serving. It is a wonderful drug and you might be sold on it but the last part of the commercial is what gets you. May cause nervous break downs, ulcers, tuberculosis, hypoglycemia, or some other problem like that. Here’s the commercial for fearing God. Fear God, he will take you from the guttermost to the uttermost. Trusting him will change your family, school, work, church, and everyone you come into contact with. Fearing God is not for everyone. Side effects may include frustration, doubt, temptation to give up, family friends thinking your weird crazy insane or any combination of the three, and in some cases loss of financial or emotional support. It is not easy to fear God in this day and age. If I can be completely transparent, I do fear God, but I know that if I truly had that fear to trust him to accomplish the impossible or that he would totally transform my world changing me into someone I cannot fathom. That scares me for reasons I cannot begin to understand. The Lord will give me the peace to trust him to take the proverbial plunge and fear him more than man. This next verse we all have heard many times. It’s found in Psalms 23. Psalms 23: 4 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff comfort me”. Though I may find my self afraid of what God has in store for me, I know I can trust him to have the best in store for me. Sure I may not become the father of many nations or lead 300 men into victory against the Midianites, but I may be at the mall when God dials my number. The choice is mine to make whether or not I do what God wants me to do. Though the question is am I more afraid of what will happen if I do than what will happen if I don’t?