Trust vs Fear

just be with us Lord in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you guys for coming. Got a great group of new people here.

Um the Dead Poets Society was a a movie that um was really pretty neat and and uh power uh Robin Williams gathered the classroom together and and he said a very powerful line. He said that the powerful play of life goes on and you can contribute a verse. That the powerful play of life can go on and you can contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

And if you don't contribute your verse, the main reason will probably be fear. It won't be God. God can provide the power, the plan, the provision, the purpose. Um, it's going to be fear, okay?

And today, we're going to talk about trust versus fear. Last week, for those who weren't here, we talked about faith versus trust. We were talking about faith as a starting point, okay? Uh, but trust costs you control.

Faith will get you in the boat, but trust gets you on the water walking like Peter. Okay? Trust is following God no matter what with no backup plan. You burn your ships.

Okay? Um, most people don't want God's will. They want God's to bless their will. Okay?

And and God's not here to serve you. We're here, okay, to obey and serve him. And so obeying God shows trust. John 14:15 says, "As you, if you love Jesus, you will obey him."

Trust is faith and action. Act of obeying God. Proverbs 3:5, we talked about it a lot. Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding.

Basically, do what God says with boldness and courage. Okay, that's what we talked about last week. But today, I want to talk about why we don't trust, why we don't step out in faith. And I think fear is what keeps us so often from obeying God and what he tells us to do.

If you have a notepad, I'd love for you to take notes. Okay? Something I want you to We've got everything on that back table's free. You can grab a journal.

There's there's um Bibles back there. Feel free to grab it. Um I want you to jot this down. Wherever fear exists in your life, that's an area you don't trust God.

Okay? Wherever there's fear in your life, that's an area you're not trusting God in. The focus is on us, our abilities, okay? Our resources instead of the unlimited God.

But he says the outcome is his. If we do what he says, the outcome is his. Okay? The Bible says 365 times, "Do not fear."

That's one for each day. Why? Because every day you get an opportunity to wake up and either trust God and step out in obedience or not obey him, usually because of fear. Okay?

So, a lot of people have fear of, you know, who would want us, who would want us on the sidelines, not in the game. The devil, right? That's that if he can't stop you from going to heaven because he can't stop you from asking Jesus into your heart. He can maybe hopefully get you fearful and on the sidelines so you're not actually stepping out and doing what he we he calls us to do.

But this is not our home. Okay? They say the number one fear people have is of death, dying, and um you're not seeing things spiritually the right way when you have that fear because this is not our home. This 70 80 years on this planet is is just a blip.

Okay? We've got all of eternity that that is coming. Okay? Plus a millennial reign.

Fear focuses us on us. But if we focus on God, okay, um we can have trust. Step out and trust. When people talk about end times, you know, there's a lot of talk about it.

It's usually out of fear. Okay? But but actually, I've been called to talk about it through love, to preach revelation through love. A loving king is going to come and set everything right.

That's actually what happens at the end. A loving king comes and sets everything right. And after that, there's something called the millennial reign. And you never hear people talk about it or preach about it.

And so I'm gonna take you to to where it talks about it in scripture. Okay? Um so Revelation, you got 19 chapters of Revelation, all dealing with seven years, okay? A seven-year timeline.

And chapter 19 is where Jesus comes. There's the wedding supper of the lamb. He comes, he throws the antichrist and the thing into the lake of fire, defeats all his uh enemies with the throne. And then we get to chapter 20.

This is what happens next. Okay, chapter 20. Revelation 20:es 1-6. And I'm reading now.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. and he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a while.

And I saw thrones and they sat on them and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God who had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. It's on this planet.

But the rest of the dead did not live again until a thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has pardoned the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power.

But they will be priests of God and Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years. Six verses for a thousand years of time on this planet. Okay, it's interesting, right? Where we had 19 chapters about seven years.

We got, you know, a thousand years in just six verses. What do we know from these six verses? Okay, there are Old Testament um prophecies of the lion laying down with the lamb in a time of peace and prosperity. Those are probably talking also about this thousand-y year reign.

Okay. Um but here's what we know. It's on this planet. Okay.

The devil is locked up, right? So there's no sin. Jesus is ruling, okay, on this earth. No Putin, no Trump, no Chi.

Jesus is ruling, okay? Who's the secretary of state? You know, Peter, right? Um, minister of defense, James, right?

You got all the biggies, all the people who were martyed in his name are there and they're ruling with him. Okay? All the martyrs of yestery year. We know that God is good.

John 10:10 says, "He came that we may have life and have it more abundantly." Okay. Proverbs 29:2 says, "When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice." So, this is going to be a time of peace, of prosperity.

What's what's the constitution? Probably this, right? What's uh how's it how's he going to speak to us? Is it going to be, you know, social media, whatever?

No. The small still voice. If Jesus is here living with us, we're living with him. Okay, we're here on this planet.

He He knows how to communicate with us. He does it now. If you have time, if you spend time with him, right? So, this is a good time.

Imagine this planet with with the devil locked up and sin taken away. How how how great would this be? He comes to give us uh an abundant life. After the tribulation period, a third of the sea is going to be destroyed, a third of the trees.

I mean, there's a lot of damage that happens. Does he restore it? If he resets it at that point for this thousand years of living, does he reset it to 1980s America, or does he set it more like the Garden of Eden, only without the snake crawling around, right? Back then, they lived a thousand years.

This is a thousand-y year reign. Maybe we live longer. Okay. Jesus said in in heaven there's no marrying.

But he he doesn't say anything about this millennial reign. If he's allowing us to be here and we're living here and we're love and we're healthy, he's probably going to reset us to what? 60 year old bodies or 18 year old bodies? Hoping 18 year old bodies, right?

That's right. That's right. Um and so this is going to be a wonderful time. And if we're in this time of peace and prosperity, our bodies long life, why wouldn't there be the guy who instituted marriage with Adam and Eve?

Why wouldn't there be marriage again? Why wouldn't there be kids? Why wouldn't there be grandkids? only you don't have a government that's putting chemtrails in the sky or poisoning your food or or anything like that.

You actually have a government run by a righteous king who loves you. Man, that's going to be a good time. And it could be just seven or eight years away. It could be.

Okay. And so you say seven or eight years is a long time. COVID was six years ago. Y'all remember the mask?

Trust the science. That was six years ago. So it goes by like that. So seven years is not that long.

Could be. Should you be afraid of what's to come? No. Why?

Because God promises to protect you. In Psalm 91, he says he will protect you against pestilence and everything else. John 14 23 says this. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.

That means obey. and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home in him. So when you ask Jesus into your heart, Holy Spirit comes in. The Holy Spirit's in your heart.

So you got literally God inside of you. Why do we cower in fear when the omnipotent God resides within us? Okay, we've got to trust the Lord with your life. If you trust the Lord with your life, you won't fear death.

Okay? A lot of people are uh afraid of witnessing. I'm just thinking of some big things that people are scared of telling people about Jesus. You know, if if time is short, we don't have a lot of time, okay, to reach out to people and talk to them about Jesus.

But we're told to go and make disciples, okay? Reaching lost people is something that we should be doing. Okay? And it shouldn't flow as a thing like you're trying to uh earn your salvation.

Your salvation was secured. It's got nothing to do with what you do. Okay? That's Jesus does that for you.

But but if the love of God is flowing through you, then you want to share that love with other people. That's what witnessing is at its core is you're just sharing God's love. I went yesterday to the the St. Patty's thing that and just walked around, talked to people.

We got two guests here that I spoke to yesterday that that renew that came. It was it's just and I just caught his eye and I just, you know, went over and started talking about Jesus with them and there's they're just a sweet couple. So, and they don't have a church home. So, hopefully So, for those who don't know, we started this church about six months ago.

So, I I um I was told by God to start a church almost a year ago, and I had no I was living on Lake. had no um people in a church. It wasn't like we had a small group and then we opened up a church. Like there was nothing.

I just invited everyone I knew and um like 70 people showed up the first day and I'm like yes, you know. Then the next day, the next week it went down to like 12. Okay. And that's a preachers's count.

All right. You know what a preachers count is? You count the pe preacher, the music people, everyone's counted as a guest, right? that that you take away my four kids, we probably ran five people that second, you know, week that were real guests.

So, um, but here we are and and God's growing it every day. But there was a time where I I melted down a little bit about that. I was, man, God, you know, you called me to do this thing and it's it's, you know, there's like six people here, you know, and um, what are you doing? And God got all over me.

He said, this is not your church, pal. He said, he said, "You are, if I bring 14 people or 1400 people, you have to preach to them. You just do what I tell you to do and it'll and it'll do and the amount of people will be here who need to be here." Okay?

And hopefully um a lot of you will come back. But but when you look at witnessing something I read uh recently, there's only three options that people have when you tell them about Jesus. There's only three results that are going to happen. Okay?

They're going to say yes, which means you've got a salvation decision. that's just been made, right? Praise the Lord. That's a victory.

Or they might say, "Maybe, think about it. Whatever. You've planted a seed. That's good, too."

Or they could say, "No, and we think, oh, man." And that's what we're afraid of that we're going to get rejected. But we're not being rejected. Okay?

They're rejecting Jesus and not rejecting you. But I read something really cool that puts it in a different light. Okay? You really can't lose when you're when you're witnessing.

Okay? Winner winner chicken dinner. You win no matter what. And here's why.

Of course, if they say yes, woohoo. You now have a new friend that's going to live forever in heaven with you. Amen. Praise the Lord.

If they're considering it, pondering it, you planted a seed. 1 Corinthians 3 6-8 says this, and this is Paul speaking. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God gives the increase.

It's all God. Okay? It's not us. It's God, right?

God gives the increase. Now, he who plants and he who waters are one. And each one will receive his own reward for his labor. So, in other words, yeah, you plant his seed, you get a reward for that.

There's a beac judgment after the great white throne judgment. And and we get rewarded for the things we do, which is just blessings upon blessings, right? Because man, we just get to be in heaven. That's a blessing.

And we did nothing to get there. And then God's going to give us rewards for just doing what we love, you know, sharing his love. That's crazy to me. Now, what if they say no?

Okay, which is where people are afraid of. First Peter uh 4:14 says this. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. In other words, if you tell someone about Jesus and they just say, I don't want to know about Jesus.

I don't care about Jesus. which I haven't found much in the south. Most people, they're either apathetic or excited about it. They're not they're not like throwing up a crucifix saying, "Get away from me, you Jesus lover."

Um, it might be that way up north. Doesn't seem to be that way down here. But Luke 6:22-23 says something amazing. This is Jesus speaking now.

He says, "Blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and cast out your name for the Son of Man's sake." You've talked about Jesus and now they're saying, "Get away from me." Rejoice in that day and leap for joy. For indeed, your reward is great in heaven.

For in like manner the fathers did the prophet. So even if you tell someone about Jesus and they say no, now you got a great reward. So it's good, better, and best. I mean, just go cha-ching.

Okay? You you can't win. You can't lose. Winner winner chicken dinner.

So when God tells you to talk to someone, just do it. Don't be like me. When I first got saved, so um my favorite car is a Lexus. I I have one.

It's they they're just great cars. And so I've had them for years. Back in the day, back in the early 2000s, if you brought your car in for its oil tuneup or whatever to the Lex dealership, they'd have someone drive you to your work and then they pick you up. Now they just give you a laner car.

Okay. back then they'd have someone drive you. So, I'm a newbie Christian, but but this guy's driving me and man, God got all over me to witness to this guy. Okay?

And that debate is going on in my mind, and I'm trying to think of what to say and how to say it and all the right things to say and everything. And the 15-minute trip to my office and I don't I don't actually approach the subject. I get out, I'm like, "God, I'm so sorry. I blew it.

I blew it. I blew it." Comes to get picked up in the afternoon. Same guy.

I'm like, Okay, y'all were driving by a cemetery on the way back. I mean, God just laid it up for me. Like, here you go, Brian. Just just tap it in.

You got a three inch butt. Okay. I mean, it's right there. Oh, look, a cemetery.

Where do you know where you're going to go when you die? Um, I mean, it was just laying out there. No, I still fought and fought and fought it. So, again, I failed to even talk to him about Jesus.

this on the drive back. God stayed all over me for days just hammering me. And finally, I'm like, "All right." So, I had to go up to the dealership.

Now, I had to go and find him back in the mechanics area where they got all these auto mechanics looking at me like I got lost crawling out of my ears. And it was probably the worst the worst witnessing that's probably ever been done. You know what I mean? If that guy ends up in heaven, it's certainly not by me.

All right? Because it was so bad. All I had to do was just obey God at the start. There was no I wasn't gonna lose.

If he said yes, I win. If he says maybe, I win. If he says no, I win. I just had to obey him.

Instead, I went out. So, so trust trusting God is simply obeying him. All right? There's nothing to fear.

Why wouldn't you trust God? Really, we know he's good. We know he loves us. Why wouldn't we trust him?

And not only that, we know when things don't go our way, Romans 8:28 says he's going to turn them around for our good anyway. So truly as a Christian, if things go your way, great. If things don't go your way, God's going to bring it around for good anyway. You really can't lose if you're sold out believer in Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, you can't lose. It's it's just it's just a great place to be, man. Maybe you didn't have a trustworthy father, you know? Maybe there's some fear there.

Baby step into trust, okay? Start trusting God in little things. Watch him deliver and that'll grow. But you don't have to.

You can dive right in and trust God. God is trustworthy. He really is. And you can trust him with your life and you can trust him with your fear.

So again, I say, where do you start? Wherever you have fear or worry, there's a place you're not trusting God. about money. Step out and tide.

Start trying. Okay. I've got friends. Um, most of my friends.

So, I come from I I own a company and I do a lot of you guys are new. I own a company and that's where I make my real money and and then put the money into this church. But, um, most of my friends are wellto-do, okay? Guys at the yach club, etc.

, they're they're welloff guys, okay? And probably in that group. I'm I'm I don't make as much as most of them. Most of them probably make a lot more than me, but most of them don't tithe 10% and I give over 50% away.

So, I probably give a lot more than them. Okay? With all that's going on in the world, they're worried right now. Okay?

You see it in their conversations and the things they have about the stocks, about this stuff. They're worried. Okay? They got 10 times more money in the bank than I do.

Okay? They make more money than me and they give less away. And they're worried. And I'm not.

Why? Because I trust God. I just trust him. It's going to be okay.

No matter what happens, I'm going to be all right. Why? He's going to work it for good. He always does.

And I know it from from from time after time after time, he's proven to me that Romans 8:28 is true and he's going to work around for good no matter what's happened in my life. So, wherever you fear, you got to remember you're focusing on you. The way to fix it is begin to focus on God. Okay?

Maybe you're single and you worry about relationships. You know, am I ever going to find someone? You know, Hebrews 13:5 says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Okay, what a great promise of scripture.

God's always with you. So, I'm a single guy. I sit out on my patio. I'm looking up at the stars and I'm hanging out with Jesus.

I'll be listening to the song. I'll start dancing. I'm all by myself, man. If neighbors my neighbors aren't here, um they they come usually, but uh and we have to keep them in our prayer.

She just found out yesterday that her father's dying and they're flying down to Tampa um today. So keep Natasha and Justin in their prayers. But they might they must think I'm weird, you know, out there dancing, you know, at night just all weird. I'm having fun with Jesus, you're never alone if you've got Jesus in the thing.

But I will tell you, if you're a single person in this room, we've got quite a few of them, my kids here. If you will focus on God and not worry about the horizontal, not worry about that relationship, God's going to bring you the right one. Okay. If you focus on God, then you get to a point where people like the right kind of people are going to be attracted to you.

It's it's irres when you're not clingy, needy, and you're just focused on God, man. They flock to you. It's it's amazing. And so now, what if you're married?

You're worried about your marriage. It's not happy. You know, you've got to obey this word. If you're married in this room and you're struggling in your marriage right now, I pray that you'll go to what this Bible says about you as a husband the way you're supposed to act as a wife the way you're supposed to act, okay?

And start obeying it and then pray. Pray with that spouse and pray for that spouse. And if you do that every day and you and you obey what it says, God just might heal and restore that marriage. Okay?

Why? Because he does that. Um there was that movie Fireproof, I think it was with Kirk Cameron where he did that. You know, it was I think based off that Love Dirt book, but it was that same thing.

So, don't look at the speck that's in that spouse's eye and don't go online to try to fix it. Because if you go online, say one thing negative about your spouse, you're going to get fed so much stuff and within 15 minutes, you're going to believe your spouse is a narcissist because that's what they're going to run you to. Okay? Just don't do that.

Go to this word. Stop taking the fleck out of their eye. Take the big plank out of yours. I used to do that, man.

And and it's something I've repented of and I've apologized to my ex-wives and everything. I our marriage is disintegrating and I'm going to scripture. I see something that she's clearly doing wrong and then I tell her, "You're doing this wrong. You know what about what I was doing wrong?"

Right? Okay. So, take the log. You focus on you.

You do your part. You obey God no matter what. Okay? You obey God and pray.

That's where the power source is. Just pray for your marriage. Pray together and then trust God to bring the results. Arranged marriages work.

You know, they used to arrange all the marriages, right? So, the parents get to pick who you who you end up with. Josh. Um, and it worked.

Why? Because there wasn't an option of divorce. Okay? You just stuck together.

You choose a good person and a good person. If you commit to it, it's going to stay together. Whenever I see someone who's been married 50 years, I always ask him, "What's the secret?" Always.

No matter where I find him, I always ask him. Why? Because I didn't do it. I didn't get to 50 years, unfortunately.

And that was my heart, my desire, right? But it didn't work out that way for me. But I but I ask them and always always always they say hard work and commitment. One of those two or both.

Okay? They never say, "Oh, I just spent all this time and I found the perfect match and we just rainbows and kittens the whole time." It's never like that. It's always, you know, we just were committed to the marriage and they're sitting there 50 years with kids and grandkids all around them, right?

Blessed. And um and that's a good thing. So, so burn your ships. Okay.

The heart of fear is focusing on us, not trusting God. Worried about your children? They're not yours. They're not yours.

They're God's children. He loaned them to you for a while to get you to get them up to 1820 where they could have their own relationship with God. And you turn them back over to you. You were a steward of those children.

You weren't They weren't your children. Okay? So, what do you do with children? You obey what God tells you to do.

What does this Bible say to do? teach them scripture, right? Love on them and discipline them and spare the rod, spoil the child. Got to do those things.

And if you do that and you pray, oh, and pray over them. I pray over each one of my kids still today, every day. And so do their their moms. So when two or more gathered together, these kids are getting prayed over every single day.

And they're all here today. Um well, four to six. Um but God has this. You can trust him with your children.

You can trust him with your life. You can trust him with these fears that you have. So we're there's only one fear that's acceptable. Okay?

And that's the fear of the Lord. All right? And that fear is a reverential kind of fear. All right?

It's not a afraid fear. It's a reverential fear. He loves you. He loves you.

But he is watching you. You're sitting there in the dark and you don't think anyone's watching. He's watching you. Okay?

He knows what you're doing. And he may correct you. Why? Because that's what a good father does.

Okay? If he loves you, he loves you just as you are. It's an absolute truth. He loves you just as you are.

Okay? But he doesn't want you to stay there. He wants to lead you to fruit. He wants to lead you to a better place.

He doesn't want to leave you in the pig pen. Okay? So, respect that authority. You know, I I used to back 20 years ago, I was the uh head of the men's ministry at Summit Baptist Church over there, and we would bring in these preachers, and I was at the airport picking up this one preacher, and we're driving back, and and I'm going probably 10 miles over the speed limit, which is about the speed that everyone else is going, right?

You usually go about 10 over. Um, but then I saw a cop on the side of the road and my foot came off the pedal immediately, right? Slowed down to this to the speed limit. Why?

And as did everyone else. So I was again still going with the traffic, right? Why? I mean that that I there was a pastor next to me, right?

I should have been following the law immediately, right? No, that cop could give me a ticket and increase my insurance. I there's a repercussion for that. And so there was that respect.

I'm not afraid of the cop, okay? I don't think he's going to come and shoot me. All right? I just don't want to get a ticket and have my insurance go up.

Right? So there's a repercussion. Jesus can correct you and discipline you. All right?

So respect God's authority in that. Jesus himself said in Matthew 10:28, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy," and that him is a capital H to destroy both soul and body in hell. In other words, have that healthy respect of the Lord. Every other fear, every other worry is from the devil.

It's not from God. It's a lack of trust in God. You're focusing on you, your abilities, what you think you're responsible. But the proper way is to focus on God.

Just obey him and then let him have the results. Okay? That's how it works best. And it's easy.

It's Jesus said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." Right? And and it is if you just all I got to do is obey. I use it all the time because it's a great analogy.

Forest Gump man had it figured out because you told me to drill sergeant. That's all you got to do. What What am I doing today? Whatever God tells me to do.

Okay. So, here's your homework. What are you worrying about? What are you afraid of?

Okay. What is the thing that wakes you up in the middle of night? What is the thing that you're worrying about during the day? What is it?

Okay, that's an area you're not trusting God. So, pray. Begin to pray about it and ask God to reveal this area that you're not trusting him in and what you need to do different. And then whatever he tells you to do, just start stepping out with trust and obey.

Okay? And as you see him delivered, that trust will grow. And then you just worry about today. Just be obedient to God today.

Few weeks back we had a sermon pray obey just worry about today. Jesus says just worry about today. Do you realize when he says in the Bible look at the sparrows they don't worry. So he tells us not to worry.

So if you worry so if the Bible tells you not to worry and the Bible tells you not to fear but you have worried you have fear you're disobeying the Bible. You are sinning. Worry and fear are sins. They are sins.

you're doing what the Bible tells us not to do. All right? And the way to stop that, focus on God, pray, and just do what he tells you to do. Just do what he tells you to do.

And if he doesn't give you anything specific, like call your aunt Betty. Um, then just go to work and operate. Do what you're supposed to do that day as if serving the Lord, not man. And then just worry about that and journal your progress.

Focus on God and obey. He wants to get you to a place. You want to get to a place where you trust God, where you really trust him in everything. When you step out daily with zero fear or worry.

There's so much chaos in this world, man. But if you're anchored in the Lord and you're focusing on him, you don't have to be a ball of fear and worry. Okay? I know specifically from what God's shown me things that are going to happen that aren't going to be fun.

not worried about it at all. God's got this. He's got Brian Pierce. Okay.

So, as the band comes on up here, trust the Lord with all your heart needs to obey him. Okay? Just obey and pray. Um, let me pray over you guys.

All right. Lord, as these guys come to lead us out in a a song of of reflection. Lord, I pray that if anyone is here who doesn't know you, uh that they come forth. I'll be right there.

We can come and we can nail down that salvation today. But Lord, for those that are here, man, I just pray I pray that they will learn to trust you in everything, Lord. That they will take this fear and lay it down. Lay it down right here.

Get rid of it now. Get rid of it today. Step out in obedience and faith to the Lord because he is good and he does love you and he will lead you to a higher place. And so Lord, I just pray your hand on everyone in this room.

I pray that they'll reflect now on these things they fear and they'll commit today to beginning to pray and obey and um to trust you in all that they do in Jesus name. Jesus.