Fear and Anxiety – Being At Peace – Sermon – Pastors Marlee and Dave Page

Well, this morning we want to address one last group of you that we think are out there or perhaps watching this morning…. Don’t raise your hands, but we want you to be really honest with yourselves this morning. How many of you during these last 3 weeks have said to yourself something like…?

“Yeah, I hear what they’re saying… but does that really work – ya know, my fears are real”…. or maybe, “I’ve tried that but it never seems to turn out that way for me”…. Or maybe still, “yeah that might work for some folks, but you don’t know what I’ve done – those promises couldn’t possibly be for me…”

And in all of that, some people find themselves doubting God, and I get that, I’ve been there myself, and I’ve done that, I do doubt God occasionally, but more often, if I’m honest, who I find myself really doubting, is myself – anybody relate?

I doubt myself because I know the me that you don’t see. I know the voice in my head that says things to me about me that are not always kind, not always uplifting, and not always positive. Does anybody know what I’m talking about? I know my insecurities, I know my own critical voice, my thoughts, I know the times when I dislike myself, sometimes it’s as simple as like, I don’t like what I said. More often for me it’s like, I don’t like the way I said it, or I don’t like what I did, I don’t like what I didn’t do.

I know what that’s like. In fact, sometimes worst of all what I know is that God knows all of my faults and probably knows some that I don’t call faults too. And that makes me wonder sometimes honestly like, I know He loves me, but why would God choose to use someone like me? Why would God want to listen to my prayers and apply His promises to me…. And so if you’ve ever doubted yourself, if fear and anxiety leave you feeling insecure, if you’ve ever felt incredibly spiritually inadequate or insufficient, this final message is for you….for all of us really.

And for all the rest of you, those that are confident, those of you that are perfectly completely assured, for the best of the best, the cream of the crop, those who graduated top of your spiritual class, voted most likely to succeed, that never doubted, for the rest of you, this final message in our series if for you too. I promise you; His promises are meant for all of us. And so today we’re going to conclude the series by talking about facing your insecurities.

Insecurity – based on the ‘what if’s’ of our fears can be debilitating for a lot of us. So let’s revisit something before we go any farther –  you know that God knew exactly what he was doing when he made you. You know that because we’ve talked about that before….but I’m not so sure we always remember that  – especially in our moments of fear, anxiety….our moments of doubt and insecurity. So, right here, right now, let’s practice some self-love, that’s how we’re going to start – so that each one of you has no doubt about who you are, and who God thinks you are.  

So, I need you to do me a favour, everybody in here, and those of you watching, you jump in here too….go ahead and wrap your arms around yourself, come on. If it’s later in the week when you’re listening to this in your car, don’t wrap your arms around yourself, okay? Do this later. But just go ahead give yourself a big hug and just repeat after me,

– I love you.

– [Congregation] I love you.

– You’re amazing.

– [Congregation] You’re amazing.

– You’re doing great.

– [Congregation] You’re doing great.

– I’m so proud of you.

– [Congregation] I’m so proud of you.

– You’re the best and I love you.

– [Congregation] You’re the best and I love you.

Now some of you, that felt good, right? Some of you felt good, like I need to practice some self-love. But for some of you, I wonder if that was hard to say, let alone believe. So I wanna remind you what Scripture says about you, we are God’s what? Say it with me,

Ephesians 2:10

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

You’re God’s masterpiece, you are created for the promises that he planned for you before you were even born. The word masterpiece comes from the word ‘poiema’ and the definition of this is a creation with a designated purpose, a workmanship, a masterpiece. This is where we get our word poetry from. So, what are you? You’re God’s poetic statement, you’re beautiful, you’re valuable, you’re custom designed like a good, tailored suit, you’re custom fit for what God created you to do. So when the devil tells you, look at you, you’re a mess, no those promises aren’t for you, your faith is misplaced – that stuff is only for the good ones, those people that God loves and can work with…..that’s the lie, that’s the ‘what if’ sneaking back in – “What if that’s actually true about me……”

If you start feeling that or hearing that in your mind, that’s when you gotta shout back, I was a mess but now I’m God’s masterpiece, I’m His masterpiece.

So, here’s the question, we led out with; Can I really get my mind off of the What If’s….and get focused on the promises of God through prayer and petition, just like Paul encouraged?

Can those promises of faith really apply to me?

The answer to that is an emphatic ‘yes!’.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done or when you’ve done it, God’s purpose for you and His promises to you are true for you today! As you look at scripture carefully, there are three types of people God chooses to carry out His plan and receive the promise scripture tells us about….and this is going to be really helpful because each of you are going to fit into one of these categories I suspect.Number one, God’s promise and purpose apply to the unlikely, okay? Now we’re gonna go to scripture, and some of you may remember God told the Prophet Samuel to appoint the next king of Israel. Scripture says this:

1 Samuel 16:6-7.

“When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed stands here before the Lord.”

God is so often looking for qualities that people overlook. See, Samuel was looking for that 6’2″ tall, dark, and handsome, kind of Jason Momoa or John Wayne, but God was looking for something different, right?

Don’t miss this difference, He looks at what others overlook. So, Samuel goes one by one looking all the “qualified candidates” and God keeps saying, nope, that’s not it. And then the father, Jesse actually says, wait, there’s one more but he’s kind of a junior shepherd. He’s tending the sheep right now. And Samuel says, no, no, bring him forward, I need to see this guy. So David shows up on the scene and David is the youngest, he’s the least likely, and God says, that’s the one I choose.

God, calls him, God chooses him.

You see, God loves to use those who are overlooked by others. If you’ve ever felt overlooked, know this, God doesn’t overlook anyone – His promises don’t overlook any of His own, God specializes in using the unlikely to accomplish the impossible.

God specializes in applying His promises to His faithful, even when the world seems to be passing you by. So, number one, the unlikely.

Number two, God’s promises apply to the insecure.

Remember what we’ve talked about over these past weeks, how fear and anxiety, all the what if’s, those things can cause us to drown in our insecurities. Now you may remember in the book of Judges after the Israelites had sinned, God had turned them over into the hands of the Midianites. And there was this guy named Gideon who was insecure, I mean really insecure and so he was afraid and hiding, but then an angel appears to him and says to him, the Lord is with you mighty warrior, God has chosen you to rescue Israel from the Midianites. Now you’d think that Gideon would be like, okay, if an angel showed up and told me that I’m good, I don’t know but in my mind, I hear Enneagram 8, Commander kicking into gear and saying, yeah let’s go do this….

In fact, his insecurities shouted louder than God’s affirmation. Gideon was paralyzed by his insecurities. In fact, scripture says, “But Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh and I am the least in my entire family.”

You see for some of you in this season, God is gonna call you, he’s gonna stir something inside of you, he’s gonna move you to actually do something, he’s gonna call you to serve in the church, maybe he’s gonna call you to be a witness at work or at school, he’s gonna call you to share your faith with others. But sometimes, instead of our own emphatic yes, what comes out is something like… , ‘but Lord…’, and then you’re gonna tell him all the reasons why we’re not the best person.

I’ll be transparent again with you…So, for a long time in my life now – just about ½ of my life, I’ve had the privilege of being around some really incredible people of God- Women and Men both….  And there are many times when I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, how the heck am I sitting here? And when I think about my life and I think about my past and all the things that I’ve done, it just kind of breeds that in insecurity. You know, from age 10 to 30, I battled with my purpose in life…. And it ate away at me. I listened to the world around me, I stopped going to church for a while, honestly, you could look at my life during that time and from a faith perspective say there’s know way that guy’s going to become a Pastor….Oh don’t get me wrong now, the world thought I was successful…climbing the corporate ladder and all that. And while I’ve been truly free from that since I’ve been baptized and truly given my life to Jesus. But there’s still times where I look at my insecurities and my inadequacies and I’m sitting next to some incredible people of God who are a lot more accomplished and I feel insecure, I feel like, man, I don’t belong in this seat.

And that’s what happens, the devil’s gonna try to stop you. One of the greatest tools that the enemy uses is to attack your self-worth. He’s gonna tell you, who do you think you are? You’re not ready, you don’t belong here, you’re not good enough, and then we’re back to all the ‘what if’s’ again….. If any of you are in that place today let me speak very clearly to you…..think about it, if God didn’t want to use you, if God didn’t have something special planned for you in His promises, the devil wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop you, he wants to stop you….He wants to stop you because the adversary suffers from the ‘What If’s’ as well….

What if she really figures out how much God loves her ?
What if he discovers the power of his faith….

What if they decide beforehand to take their minds off the What If’s I’m shooting at them, and focus on the promises of their faith….

Do you know what James the brother of Jesus said about that:

James 4:7

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

So, I too am sometimes afflicted by the scourge of insecurity, and then I remember, a promise like this that James gives us…. we’re all messed up in one way or another, we all have all fault and failures, right?

And yet God called me and because of God’s favour and his grace, I can stand in front of you and deliver a message that says, if God can use someone like me with my inadequacy, with my insecurities, if I chose to lean into the promises of His faith and found out that YES they do apply to me….if he can use me, he can absolutely use you. If his promises apply to me then they absolutely apply to you. And so here’s what I want you to know, you may not have a lot of confidence in yourself, good, good, because remember, we’re not supposed to be in control – remember that.

Here’s the third context that we want you to see –  God’ promises of faith apply to the unlikely, they apply to the insecure, and they even apply to the failures, He uses failures!

Let me show you a powerful example of this in the Bible. Remember last week how we said that Peter had allowed himself to get distracted by his fears, and how Peter doubted Jesus and how he betrayed him.

This week I wanna focus on a different person, a different disciple. So, after Jesus was crucified the Jewish leaders thought that they had eliminated the threat that Jesus was to religion, but the disciples and other Christ followers began to share the good news of Jesus and people continued to turn their lives to Christ to follow Jesus. And this led to persecution and even the execution of the apostles and one of those was Stephen. And as Stephen was being stoned to death, Saul, a young man was standing there watching this happen. Scripture says this, “At this they covered their ears and yelling at the top of their voices they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.” Chapter eight says this, “And Saul approved of their killing him.

On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church, going from house to house he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.”

So, what you need to know about Saul is the whole time he thought he was actually serving God by persecuting believers. So, Saul goes on to have an experience and encounter with Jesus where his life is completely transformed and he recognizes that he’s actually failed at serving God. He changes his life around and he turns it around and then his name actually changes to Paul. And he begins to tell everyone that he runs into about Jesus. He himself goes on to be beaten, to be persecuted, be put in prison and ultimately exiled because of his faith. And throughout all of it, you know he constantly remembers his falling short of God’s standard.

So, have you ever blown it? Have you blown it big time? Have you done things that you’re embarrassed of, that you’re ashamed of? Do you ever feel unworthy of the promises of God? It might have been a big public mistake that you made, a big public failure where you lost your temper, or you said something you shouldn’t have said, or maybe you made some bad financial decisions, or you lied to someone and hurt someone really special to you. Maybe you battled addiction or betrayed your family or you’ve crushed those that you love, or maybe it’s a private failure – something that you did or that you said, and you didn’t get caught but it weighs heavy on you every single day. Or maybe you’ve just been running from God’s call on your life and you feel that failure is something that not even the promises of God can overcome. Your wrong!!! Paul killed and persecuted Christians, and yet he went on to be a major part of building the church, even writing 13 books of the New Testament. Who better to preach about forgiveness than someone who’s been forgiven of so much? Who better to tell of the promises of faith in Jesus Christ than someone who has experienced those promises despite the enormity of His failure. You see, God is faithful….He is even faithful to people who fail because there aren’t any other kind around, we all fail, we all fall short, we do.

This book is full of failures… think about this, okay? Jacob, he was a cheater, Moses was a murderer, David had an affair, Jonah ran from God, Elijah was depressed, God used him too we talked about that last week… Miriam, man, she was a gossiper, she was always gossiping, right?

And here’s the thing, time after time you look at scriptures, people failed God and yet God chose to apply His promises of faith to them and then go on to use them. Powerfully.

And there are those of you here this morning, or watching that maybe you feel insecure, maybe you feel unlikely or maybe you feel like you’re too bad to deserve the promises of your faith and the devil will tell you all the reasons why that might feel like the truth, but let me tell you, let the Spirit of the living God in you, tell you that in Christ you can believe every promise of our faith.

So here’s the thing, stop thinking about who others say you are, stop thinking about who you say you are, remember who God says you are, you are the workmanship of Christ, you are his masterpiece, So, stop doubting yourself, stop doubting yourself because when you doubt yourself, you’re actually doubting God, the creator of the universe who created you.  You are not what you did, you are not what they did to you. Today you are the masterpiece of God created for the good works that he prepared for you in advance.

Here’s how we want to finish and leave this series with you…