Faith or Fear
Every week the hardest part of preparing to preach is not figuring out what to put in the sermon but trying to prayerfully discern what to take out of the sermon. After spending hours studying, reading, praying, and writing, there’s more content than I know what to do with. And let’s be honest…no one wants to listen to a two hour sermon.
One of the practices that I have in my weekly sermon prep is to create a “bullpen” where all of the additional and unused content goes. A bullpen in baseball is the place where pitchers who are not currently being used in the baseball game hangout and essentially await their turn to get in the game.
The sermon bullpen works in the same way. It creates a space for me to store content that I wish I could use in the sermon but there isn’t space for it at the current moment. But that content is there and so it can be accessed in other venues…like a blog.
This week, as we continued through our series in 1 Samuel, I preached on one of the most popular Bible passages in Scripture: David and Goliath. I realised quickly that the bullpen was getting full and I wanted to “call up” some of that content this week on our blog because I found it to be deeply convicting and immensely helpful as I thought about how to apply this biblical event in my life.
We talked on Sunday about how the gospel produces courage in the face of whatever we deal with on a daily basis. Courage is not something we muster up but it’s something that grows in us as we rely on the presence of God in our life. It is created in us when we realise that gospel Christians live from victory not for victory.
Christ has won the battle that we could not win and now we share in the spoils of his victory. His resurrection marked a definitive blow to the enemy of God - Satan - who holds our sin and the sting of death over our heads and taunts us daily as Goliath taunted the Isrealites. But because Jesus is our representative - as David was to the Isrealites - we can enter the battle (i.e. Ephesians 6) with full confidence that no matter what we encounter, Jesus has already earned the victory over our greatest enemy: sin and death.
Thus we can confidently and courageously go throughout our days and weeks with this truth permeating our minds and indwelling our souls. And the fact is when we live in light of this reality it really does change us. Jennie Allen said, “obedient risk fast tracks growth…risk causes you to want God because you need God when you’re scared.”1
When I sit back and truly think upon the events of 1 Samuel 17, it hits me that God never guaranteed David victory. We read it with the end in mind because we know the end. David didn’t know the end but he knew the God who held the end.
Some of us have the false assumption that we can’t move forward or be used by God – we can’t take that risk because we’re not spiritually mature enough. We actually have it backwards. The reason why some of us are stuck where we’re at in our Christian life is because we haven’t risked being used by God and moving forward the way we know God is calling us to.
That is the nature of risk…you don’t know how it will turn out. I think back to when we packed up the Uhaul and drove away from our home in Greensboro, NC. The reality is I had no clue what is going to happen in the future. I could not guarantee my family that the church would thrive or that we'd all have the greatest life we could imagine in Halifax, NS.
What I could guarantee is that the Lord called us to go and that He is good. And at the end of every day that is enough. That is why the Bible says that as followers of Jesus we live by faith…not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7). One of my favourite preachers, Joby Martin, said it this way, “Bold faith is acting as if you actually believe.” The difference between faith and fear is what you do when you feel scared…you still act anyway.
Fear paralyses. It causes you to shrink back and shrivel up and stay stuck. Faith produces action. That is what one of our core values as a church is that as followers of Jesus we engage the mission. We say it this way:
Followers of Jesus are not saved to pool God’s grace but to create a pipeline from which that grace flows. Jesus’ last words (Matt. 28:18-20) are lasting words and they push us to engage the mission urgently and aggressively in our homes, city, and around the world. That means we are willing to forsake comfort, control, and familiarity in order to chart into the unknown and take risks because Jesus is worth it.
So this week are we going to live out of the fear of Goliath or out of the fear of God?
Where do you need to take an obedient risk - knowing that if you are in Christ, his presence and his power will sustain you - regardless of the outcome?
“Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
— Isaiah 41:10
