Discover The Power To Live Fearlessly

Video Transcript Below

Well, I don’t know about you all, but I am so grateful that God is teaching me how to live fearlessly. You know, the Bible says that perfect love casts out fear. That’s 1 John 4:18. And there’s only one perfect love and that’s found in Jesus Christ. But I don’t think I ever really grasped applying that to my own life. Because to be honest with you, I’ve always succumbed to the fear of  a drastic change in my circumstances. You know, I mean, come on y’all. How many of you have been afraid of, you know, losing your, losing somebody in your family? Or massive career change, or career failure, financial disaster, cancer, death. The fact is, we all fear these things. And we have to figure out, well, how do we live without being afraid of those things? Because a lot of them happen to us, right? And so how do we face those fears with courage and keep ourselves from living, paralyzed with fear? We can’t just be oblivious to the inevitable. So how do we face it and live with courage, right? Well, I mean, in a nutshell, that it is to draw close to the presence of God, who is love, who casts out fear, and that necessarily involves abandoning our own sinful way, right?  Yes, yes, and yes, right? But what does that look like? 

You know, because the bottom line is God is not afraid of anything. He’s not afraid of death. He’s not afraid of cancer. He doesn’t like any of those things because they hurt people, right? And he didn’t choose to destroy the culture that he had created in this world, this culture of love. We did. And he still gives us that choice. And we’re still choosing the wrong behavior that he’s prescribed, or that he has said we shouldn’t do in the Bible, right? So we can’t blame him. But the fact is that we don’t have to live in fear. He has given us an out to living in fear. And it really isn’t what I thought it would look like, okay? It’s not marching around saying, God’s my defender, my strength, and my strong tower. No, that’s not what it looks like, at least not for me. So I want to kind of talk about that. 

So when I was asking God, you know, Hey, how do I quit living in fear? Because what’s happened in my life in the last couple months is that my whole foundation that I had built for the last 20 plus years, it’s kind of been ripped out from under me. It’s like I was sitting in an easy chair in front of my fire, enjoying my popcorn, watching a movie, and it’s like somebody walked in the room and ripped the rug out from underneath my easy chair, flipped my chair over, ripped it up, basically said, get out, get out of  here. This is not your home anymore. And so, I mean, I’m using that as a description of an event that’s happened in my life. It just totally shook me up, shook my world, and it really has made me afraid. And honestly, if I didn’t have a history with God over the last 12 years, I probably would’ve been in a stress center by now. But thank God, you know, we have a history together now where I am learning to ask him to guide me and to help me, and to change me and keep me close to him. So back to the subject of fear. You know, as I’ve been walking through this, how has God been teaching me to be courageous? And he used a remarkable story of Daniel to teach me this. And I just love this. I’ve never looked at this story of Daniel in the lion’s den before, like I do now. And so I want to walk through that with you. 

So, first of all, Daniel at the time that King Darius was reigning, this was his fourth king that he had been enslaved under, and Daniel was probably around 90 years old at this time. And he’d been a slave for about 70 years. So here’s Daniel, you know, every morning, or three times a day actually, he opens his window and he openly prays to God. And the other advisors to King Darius were all jealous. And they were like, you know what? Daniels got way too much favor with the king. We’re going to find a way to get him. So they convinced King Darius, who was evidently a pretty vain guy, to make this law that says, you can’t worship any other God. And so Darius wasn’t thinking about his friend Daniel, and he said, oh, yeah, it sounds like a great idea. Everybody should worship me. And so, of course Daniel knew about the law. It wasn’t like he didn’t know, but it didn’t change his behavior. As soon as the law was passed, he carried on his routine, opened his windows, openly prayed to God, and he knew the risk was death. He knew that the penalty was death for doing what he did, but he was courageous. You know, that’s remarkable because it would’ve been easy for him just to go pray in secret.  But no, he had the courage to keep doing what he did because he knew the presence of God. He had walked with God remarkably. I mean, read the Book of Daniel. It is unbelievable what he’s done. And so he had a history with God, a history of walking with God, a history of testing God’s faithfulness in his life. And so the Bible says, because Daniel knew who he served, the Bible says when Daniel knew the writing was signed, he went home and in his upper room with his windows open towards Jerusalem, he knelt on his knees three times that day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since the early days. That’s in Daniel 6:10. Now, you know, why? How is it that Daniel was less afraid of a pack of roaring lions than he was of God? Well, he and God had a history together. They had been together. I mean, it was evident from the Bible at least 70 years that Daniel had served the Lord. Like I said, as a slave, he wasn’t a free man. See, God doesn’t always deliver us in the way we think he should. And sometimes we have to get in the den with the lions, not for ourselves necessarily, but so that others can see God’s great strength and his deliverance. And of course, sometimes we need to see it for ourselves too. But I suspect that wasn’t the case for Daniel. 

See, what happened was that King Darius was amazed by his decree. First of all, Darius was up all night worried about Daniel, okay? After he threw him in the lion’s den, because he couldn’t go back on his decree. And the next morning he ran to the lion’s den. He’s like, he said, did God save you? Daniel? Did your God that you served, did he save you? And Daniel said, yes, God sent an angel to shut the lion’s mouths. And he was in that lion’s den all night long with those lions. And as a result of that Darius he was so amazed that he sent out a decree that basically, I’ll read it to you. He said, I make a decree that in every dominion of my kingdom, men must tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, and steadfast forever, his kingdom is the one which shall not be destroyed. His dominion shall endure to the end. He delivers and rescues. He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, who has delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. 

Now, let me ask you this question. If God had rescued Daniel from the lion’s den, if he had said, you know, Daniel, you really just don’t need this trial right now. I’m just going to rescue you. Would Darius have sent out this decree to the entire empire? No, he wouldn’t have. Would Darius have recognized who God was? No likely not. But because Daniel went through the lion’s den all night long, God was glorified. And who knows all the people who were affected by that? I mean, we don’t know. The Bible doesn’t tell us that. But because Daniel went through the lion’s den, he had a much more powerful testimony and glorious testimony of God’s strength, his omnipotence, right? And King Darius recognized, a man who probably didn’t know, even know God, recognized that. Who knows, maybe he got saved. I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t really tell us. But he made a pretty powerful decree. And see, the key is that Daniel’s relationship with God was his most important, most important part of his life. And that’s manifested because his relationship with God was more important than his physical life. He wasn’t afraid to die in obedience to God.

Now, I want you to think about, I mean, this is what I’ve been thinking about. Kim, is that how your life is? Are you more concerned about the presence of God being completely manifested in your life? Or are you more concerned about saving your skin, about saving your finances, about saving your relationships, about what people think about you? Whatever. The fact is, when we get that  flipped upside down, where we’re more concerned about anything except our relationship with God, then we can expect fear to rule our life because we have dethroned God in our life, and we’ve put something else on the throne. Well, I hope you know, good luck with that. If your job is what you respect more than you respect God because it’s what you think about, worry about, work at the most, then let’s see how well your job keeps you from living fearfully. But when God’s presence is our most  important endeavor, and the sense of his presence, then he fights for us. He fights our battles. Anything that we put in the place of God, then we are fighting that battle by ourselves. And we should be afraid because we have some terrible enemies. We have, you know, Satan is an enemy. We have the world culture. We even have our own flesh. And they’re out to get us. They don’t want us to experience the fearlessness, the courageous presence of God. They want us to cower in fear. And we are in a spiritual warfare. There are people who do not know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And, you know, our enemies know that if they can keep us cowered down and afraid and clinging to things that we can’t even take with us when we die, things that cannot protect our hearts, then they win. They win. But when we are willing to walk through the lion’s den, when we are willing to walk through the valley, giving all of our heart and all of our mind, and all of our soul and everything we love to Christ because we know we can trust him, then we get these great stories, great stories like Daniel in the lion’s den, to bring glory to God and have this eternal purpose. And we can live fearlessly. 

Oh my goodness, when, you know, the way that God kind of summed this up for me, was in this little saying, when my heart belongs to God, my fear is lost in his strength. Let me say it again. When my heart belongs to God, my fear is lost in his strength. You know, it is just remarkable as the more I say to the Lord about this crisis I’ve been going through. My law practice belongs to you. My resources belong to you. My house belongs to you. My love belongs to you. My time belongs to you. My gofaithstrong.com belongs to you. The devotionals I write belong to you.  Yield, yield, yield and give him everything. The more I do that, the less I’m afraid, because everything I have belongs to him. Every problem I have, it’s his, you know, and nothing is too great for him. You know, the Bible says that when we are weak, he is strong. And it doesn’t mean, you know, we’re puny. That just means we acknowledge our complete dependence upon God, and then he comes in and fights our battle. 

You know, I don’t want to have any territory in my life that doesn’t belong to God. Because then I’m left fighting that battle by myself. If my law practice belongs to me, then I’m going to fight those battles on my own. But when they belong to God, shoot, everything, everything belongs to him. Yep. God, that’s your problem. Because I don’t know how to deal with it and it belongs to you so that’s your problem. I’m just going to  stay close to you and watch you sort it out. And then I’ll be able to say, look at God did. Anyway, that may seem really simplistic, but it comes back to our daily walk with God. We have to be committed and surrendered to him, and then he fights our battles. When our heart belongs to God, our fear is lost in his strength. Isn’t that remarkable?

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