[00:00:00] Alright! Hey, welcome to each and every one of you so glad that you're here, whether you're on the local community here. Or you are joining us online, wherever, where you are in the world. Man, we are so glad to have you with us, and our church. I love what God's doing here. So welcome! Good to have you! Hey, so last week we began a series a brand new series that we're calling Love Beyond, and then there's a blank and the blank is because there's. [00:00:23] A tendency to say, I'm going to only love this far, but I'm not going to go beyond. And so we're basically saying, where are the limitations? Where do we stop? Where do we get to give up and say, that's as far as I'm going to go? But I'm excited about the series and I'm excited about what God's doing. And the conversation that was generated this past week was awesome. [00:00:39] Now I want to start today by just reminding you of something. That, um, no doubt you've heard this, uh, often it gets, ya know, spoken, uh, in messages and sometimes it's used in weddings and, but this text is from the apostle Paul and he said this. He said, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a [00:01:00] resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. [00:01:02] If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all that, I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I have nothing. He actually goes on a little bit further in that chapter and concludes it with this. [00:01:24] And now these three, remain, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. You know, it's interesting it's kind of like he's making a big deal out of this all love thing. What's his issue, man? What's the problem? They didn't have a problem, but his issue is he wants to be faithful to Jesus. He wants to follow Jesus. [00:01:43] You see when Paul was a Pharisee, Paul loved the law, the rules. Uh, when he became a Christ follower, he learned how to love people. So what's he doing? He simply following his Lord. He's following Jesus. Who, I remind you from what we'd study last week. [00:02:00] Jesus said these words in John 13, a new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you [00:02:06] so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. And it's just incredible challenge that God put before us to, to be a follower. Now, listen, you don't have to be a follower. You don't have to be a disciple, but if you are a follower and you are a disciple. [00:02:24] You, have to be a lover of people. And Jesus made that really, really clear. Uh, and, and you could say this really is, it's kind of the foundation. It is the, I mean, I don't know how to say this, but it's not an elective. It's crucial to the curriculum. Everything is built on this. If you don't pass this, if you don't get this in your life, there's no way you can move on [00:02:47] to the more advanced teachings of Jesus, because it all begins on this issue of love. And that's exactly what God wanted us to do. Now, let me just say this about this whole, okay, love one another, most of go yeah. I got it. I got it. [00:03:00] Yeah. Yeah I understand. I got to love one another. I get it. I mean, most of us would certainly say we understand what he said and some would go, yeah, I know what he meant by it. [00:03:10] You know, I know what he meant, but knowing what he said and knowing what he meant, it isn't the fulfillment of the command. The fulfillment is when you actually do it. And that's the hard part. It's, what the problem is it's hard. It is hard, but what makes it so hard? Well, here, you can't love one another without involving others and oh gosh. [00:03:32] And that, and you get the others that gets the whole problem. People, people make us so hard. I mean, I

see, I would love the idea that I could just be in this relationship with God and nobody else is involved. It's just me and God. But I can't fulfill this without others. So it's, as if God says, you know what, I'm going to teach you how to live this love out by putting you in a relationship and putting you in community and putting people around around you and everything would be awesome in this [00:04:00] world [00:04:00] if it weren't for the other people who keep getting in the wagon. Could you imagine how fun it would be to drive down a freeway if all the other people would just get out of your way. And we'd have no issues. Right? Well, folks, others are always the issue and, um, God goes, look, this is important. Now I want to explain something that we tend to do with God. [00:04:20] Now I'm going to use some words that you can, you can, these words have various other meanings, but what we always tend to do now, we never say this. We never come out and voice this. But literally what we do is when we hear a verse like John 13:34, we tend to put boundaries around us. And I don't mean that in a good way. [00:04:38] I mean, at like a fence or wall or something, it, you know, it's a, it's a limit. It's a stop point. Then in other words, okay, God, I will love others. I will go this far. And we kind of picture ourselves, you know, I'll stay in this area, but I won't go any further. I'll go to the edge, but I won't go, I mean, I'll go that far, but that's [00:05:00] just as far as I'm willing to go. And we tend to do this, I will, I will love others this far, but no more. [00:05:07] Now, again, we don't say this. It never comes out of our mouth. It's always demonstrated by our actions. It's when our words speak louder, our actions speak louder than our words, because these are the points where we just go look, it's obvious. I'm not going to take it any further than this. Now, um, there are things that get in our way. [00:05:27] And so when we say love beyond there's just these things that just like makes it so hard. And we use these things to get in our way as excuses to not have to actually obey what Jesus said. Kind of stay in this playground here. I'll see in this corral here, I'll see in this meadow here, I'll stay in this, but I won't go beyond there. [00:05:48] And it says, if Jesus comes along and says, no, you need to learn how to go beyond there. Which means we're going to have to deal with some things that are blocking us from being obedient to Jesus. And today what we're going to do is we're going to talk about one of the big ones. [00:06:00] Now they're all big, but this one we're all going to relate to because one of the things that gets in our way of being obedient to Jesus is our fear. [00:06:07] We're going to talk about fear. Loving beyond our fears. Our fears are those stop points, those limits, those walls, those fences, those boundaries. Ah, that one's just too hard and I'm not going to go beyond it. Now I don't know what you think of when you think of fear. I don't know what you think of that it looks like, I don't know how much you feel like you'd recognize fear. [00:06:31] Most of us are pretty adept at recognizing fear in somebody else. When we see fear in them, we can see it quickly. When we are expressing fear or when we're acting in fear, it's harder for us to pick up. They can pick up, but we can't pick up.

The reason is that fear has like a look because here's the concept I want you to, fear is an action that always leaves a tangible, often visible, reaction. [00:07:00] [00:07:00] Fear is almost always hiding something. It's not revealed, but, but when you see it and fear is masking often something else. But the idea is, is that it there's a tangible, not always visible, but by our actions, there's a tangible reaction to the action of fear. All right? Now, what I want to do is I want to talk about three common reactions to fear and, uh, to do this [00:07:28] what I want to do is I want to show you just a little short video clips. I want to show you a kind of a reaction, and then I would just want to demonstrate this with a little video clip. Now this is so common. This is so simple to explain. I don't even need to use people. I'll show you these reactions to fear just based on the faces of dogs. [00:07:48] Cause you could see it on the faces of dogs, but let me say it this way. Okay. So there's three real reactions I want you to think about the first is when you're in distressed. When you're distressed, that's an alarming fear. That's like, I'm [00:08:00] like red alert DEFCON. When you're distressed, you show it. Now I'm going to have to explain these little videos, cause they're going to go really quick and you can go show it again. [00:08:08] And I can't, I can't show it again. So the first one, he is the face of a dog that sleeping in the street and somebody thought it'd be really funny to put a stuffed tiger right next to the dog. The dog awaken sees the tiger. Watch the reaction. Watch this. [00:08:31] That's it I'm outta here. I'm in the next county. Obviously alarm distressed, distressed distressed. The second is when you're disturbed. When you see something, you experience something and you just go,

yeah, I gotta think about that. Cause that really bothers me. So this one I want to illustrate with a dog that just got something out of a dish and it's got some food in his mouth and the owner comes along with a little stuffed animal and does something that [00:09:00] disturbs the dog and changes the dog's mind. [00:09:01] Watch this.



[00:09:03] Oh my gosh, again, I could watch these videos forever. And then there is a third, uh, kind of a reaction disinterested. Disinterested is when you go, yeah, that really bothers me and I'm just going to stay away from it. I'm just going to avoid it. I would just be distant from it. And this one, I don't even need to explain. [00:09:29] You'll figure it out. Involves the reaction of some dogs. Watch this. You have the dogs that love the water. [00:09:40] And then you have the dogs, that hate the water. [00:09:48] I don't know why that reminds me of a junior high dance, but that reminds me of a junior high dance. I don't know where your dog is as it reacts to water, but it's probably one of those two reactions. What I want to point out is this, there's two most [00:10:00] common reactions to fear if you would. All right. And you'll, and you'll get this. [00:10:04] So, let me just, the first thing is you become paralyzed. You become paralyzed and we've all experienced being locked down where you are or locked up, however you would express it. It's that feeling like I, I just I'm overwhelmed. I don't know what to do. And, and, and panic sets in, and you've just feel a total loss of control. [00:10:20] The second one is you become motivated, which, okay, I'm scared. I'm going to do something I gotta get moving.

I got to make something happen here and we get going. Now I want to say this. When we talk about fight or flight, um, this kind of where this comes from, like, how are you going to handle what's coming at you? [00:10:35] What are you going to do about it? Um, but fear is often the thing that keeps us from moving forward. So I want to just make this statement and, and you're free to disagree with this, but tragically, many of us allow fear to paralyze more than motivate. Many of us would just say, you know what? I'm just overwhelmed. [00:10:54] I'm afraid. I'm frightened. And it just shut me down and I can't function. [00:11:00] I, my experience has been, I've run into more people who had described that then, I'm just fully alive. And man, I love being a little on edge about a little bit afraid because it really, really makes me, uh, gets moving. Now I want to say this before we give fear of bad name. [00:11:14] Cause I don't think fear necessarily deserves a bad name. I want to suggest that, um,

there's a couple of ways we could do describe fear. First off I would say that fear number one, it's normal. Fear is normal. I don't have to explain to you what fear is. You're not weird. You're not faulty because you feel fear. [00:11:32] We all have experienced fear. We all get it. Okay. It's normal. It's part of being a human. Okay. So it's no crime to say I'm afraid. Um, the second thing I would say is fear is often wise. Fear is often wise. God uses fear to keep us from doing some incredibly stupid things that we would do if we didn't, if we weren't a little bit afraid. I don't know if you've ever been to Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River, but this year we're driving up to Oregon and Lisa [00:12:00] let's stop and let's go see it. [00:12:01] And, uh, it's, it's an absolutely beautiful curve in the Colorado river. Page, right over here. And it's amazing to me how this is what you see when you get to. When you get to the edge, you see all kinds of people just right on the edge. Now I didn't have any problem with that, but there is a thing that tends to go through you that suggests you might want to back up a little bit. [00:12:24] This is wise. There's no problem with that. All right. The third thing I would tell you about is fear is subjective. It is subjective. Well, we don't, we don't all have the same fears. What gets you uneasy might actually thrill me. What thrills me might make you, you know, however, the reality of it is, is I might love heights and you might hate heights. [00:12:45] I might this and you might, that we're different. And your fear is not my fear. My fear is not your fear.

I discovered this a number of years ago, we had a, kind of a staff retreat on an offsite and one of my Executive Pastors, Paul Carpenter, I [00:13:00] discovered something about Paul. And he also discovered something about me and some of the other staff. [00:13:04] Like I, like, I just gotta be honest with you folks. I dig rattlesnakes. They don't weird me out at all. I like looking for him. I've been around them all my life. They don't bother me at all. And, uh, on this one particular occasion, there was a rattlesnake that was problematic. So we killed it. And, uh, we, and we needed to on this, on this occasion, I don't handle rattlesnakes just so you're clear. [00:13:26] Okay? I'm not one of those guys, but we had to deal with it. So, but after we killed this rattlesnake, we thought, wouldn't it be really funny, and so what we did is we took this rattlesnake and we coiled it up and we put it right in front of the door, just off to the side in front of the door, the place where we were meeting on this offsite. [00:13:42] And then we waited and Paul Carpenter, Paul Carpenter, my executive staff. I'm telling you when he saw that snake, he jumped and screamed and it was awesome to watch. Because it doesn't bother me at all. And it was fun to watch the reaction to him because see fears are [00:14:00] subjective and I, there would be something else that would set me off and I'd be on edge. [00:14:03] And he would, you know, this is the way it is. Okay? That's the third thing you need to know. The fourth thing you need, you know, it's just progressive. What does that mean? It's progressive. It means that when, when you have a fear, if you won't confront the fear, the fear will grow. It was just get bigger and bigger and bigger. [00:14:17] And you find yourself running away from the fear. And as you run away from the fear the fear of growths. And not only is it progressive for you, it tends to be progressive for the family that you have because we justify our fears and we start to explain them and other people pick up on our fears and we start going and then go, why are you so worried about, but, but it's because it's my family [00:14:35] and we were scared of those things. But as, as it's progressive, it's also regressive. What does that mean? It means that as you run away from your fears and they get bigger, but as you turn and you face your fears, you go into your fears, they tend to get smaller. They regress. It all depends how you approach them. [00:14:50] A number of years ago or last year uh, two years ago, whenever it was, there was a, a wonderful guy that was a speaker at the Summit. His, his name is Jia Jiang and he, [00:15:00] uh, he tells a story of being like six years old and being rejected really badly. And he told the story, it was sad. Something happened to him at school. [00:15:08] I believe it was had to do with a teacher. And it was just heartbreaking. And he said from that point on, in his life, he was never marked for being afraid. He was afraid of being rejected because he knew the sting of rejection. And as he grew up, he realized that this thing is not going away. I can't just ignore it. [00:15:23] And so he decided he needed to deal with it. Well, he heard about a thing called rejection therapy and rejection therapy is just a simple concept that if you want to outgrow something, you got to deal with it. You got to go toward it. You can't run away from you gotta go toward it. And then he discovered this game that somebody had come up with help people who fear rejection. [00:15:40] And it was a game and said, look, come up with a hundred things you do in a hundred subsequent days. And, um, And just go, go do it and just plan to be rejected. So his thinking was I'll get rejected so often that what will happen is, is that it won't even bother me anymore because I'm so familiar with it. [00:15:58] And so the first day he went up [00:16:00] to a security guard at someplace that he said, Hey, would you give me a hundred bucks? And the guy said no, and he kind of shriveled away. Going well, the rejection number one. The second day, he went to a five guys, hamburger outlet and he, and he asked them, Hey, he had a hamburger and he went back and said, can I get a burger refill? [00:16:16] They said what? Yeah, I'm done, can I get a burger refill? And again, we don't we refill burgers. The third day he went to a Krispy Kreme outlet, a donut store. And, uh, he went in and he said, okay, have kind of a weird request. He knew it was going to get turned out. He said, Hey, is there any way you can make me a donut, like a single donut [00:16:33] that's got like five circles in like the Olympic rings? And can we color each one with special color? You know, frosting and an absolutely to his amazement, the lady behind the counter said, now describe it to me again? And she actually got the idea and she went to work and she created for him an Olympic donut. And he went, wow, that's bizarre. [00:16:57] Well, it kept going. He asked. [00:17:00] He, he went, he went up to somebody who had, he went to their house and he knocked on the front door and he was all dressed up in a soccer outfit and had a soccer ball in the shins gardens. And he said, Hey, is there any chance I could play soccer in your backyard? And would you photograph me doing it? [00:17:12] Now imagine somebody answers your front, your front doors of guy asking you to do this.

And you know what he discovered ? The guy, the guy goes, yeah, you can do that. Asked a cop, hey, can I drive your cop car? Cop said yeah. He asked a guy at an airport on a private airport with a private plane, any chance I could fly your airplane. Yeah. It was an absolutely amazing, story. And he said this when I quit fearing rejection, I started experiencing, I started to experience yeses. Because it's regressive. When you go into your fears, your fears tend to go away. Then the next one I would just say is it's common. Fears are common and there's nothing again, odd or weird about that. [00:17:52] There's so many stories in the Bible that talk about fear. Uh, let me just tell you just one. Okay. Just one. Um, I [00:18:00] promise you though, that this is one out of like many, I could tell you in the Bible, because

people in the Bible. It's so common that they have to deal with their fears. It doesn't make you weird if you, if you're afraid. [00:18:08] And so the guy I want to tell you about is just a really, really interesting guy. His name is Gideon, and if there was ever a poster child poster boy, for fear, it's Gideon. We meet Gideon in the sixth chapter of the book of Judges. And when we get into the sixth chapter of the book of Judges, what we run into is there's, um, there's a situation going on. [00:18:30] See, Gideon is hiding out. He's afraid. He's hiding in a, in a wine press. He's not making wine. He's actually thrashing wheat, but he's hiding in this wine press because there's these people in the land called the Midianites from Midian and he's scared to death of them. And he's just cowering all by his little lonesome self in this wine press. [00:18:51] And what happens in chapter six of Judges is that, is that an angel appears to him in the wine press and he, and he declares Oh, [00:19:00] valiant warrior. And Gideon, hears the angel, sees the angel.

looks around and he's like, who is he talking to? Oh, valiant warrior. And Gideon's like hey. I don't know like, what's going on here, but I'm the only guy here, uh, you know, you get your directions wrong. [00:19:15] I don't know what your deal is. And uh it goes. No, it's you. And Gideon's going me? I'm a valiant warrior? He says, yeah, God's chosen you to do something and I've come to tell you what he wants you to do. And. And Gideon, he hears the assignment. And let me show you his reaction. This is from Judges chapter six, 14. [00:19:33] The Lord turned to him and said, go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you? Okay, well, pardon me? Pardon me, my Lord Gideon replied, but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family. But God like, Whoa, what? How can I, you know, you calling me to go do something heroic and valiant? [00:19:58] I'm not, I'm just [00:20:00] me. I got nothing. And, and God goes, you're the guy. No, no, no. I'm not the guy. You don't understand of all the tribes in Israel my tribe is the least tribe. Of all the families of the tribe I'm from my family's the least in, my family is the least in the tribe of all the, of all the guys in my, family. [00:20:21] I'm the least in my family. I'm nothing upon nothing upon nothing I'm incapable and adequate and over and over and over, he tried to explain this to God. God gave him a couple of assignments and getting those. Can I ask you something? God, if you really want me to do this, I want to ask you to do something. [00:20:38] He said, look, I want to do this. And you perhaps you've heard of this story. He, that I'm going to put a sheep's fleece out. And here's what I want to do. God, if you're serious, you want me? And you're not like, you know, this is like for real, Then I want to ask it in the morning, this sheep's fleece be covered with dew and all the ground around it [00:20:53] be dry. The sheep's fleece is covered with dew all the ground around it is dry and God goes alright. Alright. [00:21:00] So he wakes up in the morning and the sheep's fleece is covered with dew all the ground. He goes, no, no, no, no, no. So when I meant what it meant, what it meant was all the ground around it is covered with dew and the fleece is dry. [00:21:11] Now folks was what are the odds? Of course you can see what he's doing. He wakes up the next morning. Gets exactly what he asked for and he realizes that God is serious. Um, can I, can I just say that when, when we experience fear, I really don't think that bothers God. I don't think God looks at that and goes, that's a problem. [00:21:33] That's not the issue. It's when we allow fear to control us, don't miss what I'm about to say. To Lord over us that there was a serious issue. Being afraid is not a problem. It's when you give the fear, the reverence that belongs only to God and you become so afraid of the fear instead of being afraid of obeying God, that fear becomes the obstacle [00:22:00] that trips us up in our trap or traps us and trips us up. [00:22:04] Now what's the point? Here's the point folks. I, let me just bring this to a close by saying, the point is we're, if we're going to obey God, we're going to have to face our fears. Now stay with me. Cause I got some important things I want to challenge you to think through. If we're going to a obey God, we have to face our fears. [00:22:22] So we don't face our fears we're never going to make progress. Facing our fears is risky. Love always requires a risk. Risk always involves fear. And I don't know how you can personalize this. I know how I can personalize this. Long time ago, 42 plus years ago, I met a woman who I absolutely thought was remarkable. [00:22:48] Her name was Lisa and I wanted in the worst way to go out with her. And so I had to get together the courage against all odds to ask her [00:23:00] out. And I was frightened beyond measure. Because I don't want her to say no, and I don't want that sting. I asked her out on a date and she said, yes, huge risk on my part. [00:23:11] I gotta tell ya. I also remember standing in her front yard and the first time I thought I just got to tell you something. I have to tell you why, I love you. Scary moment in my life because of the obvious that she could go, Oh my goodness. Well, we have a problem, but she didn't say that. I remember when I got down on my knee before her, and I said, I really, want to ask you to marry me. [00:23:37] I want you to be my wife. Scared me to death. Second, only to having to ask her father, can I have the hand of your daughter in marriage? Folks here's what I'm trying to get across here. It always involves a risk. It always involves fear. Loving anyone is risky. My friend Brian said something that I thought this was so good. [00:23:58] He said loving beyond our fears [00:24:00] means overcoming the impulse to avoid taking a risk that needs to be taken in order to show love to someone that needs us. That's what it's all about here. This is what loving beyond means. Love is risky. It's a risky business. You go. Why is so risky? Because see it always involves taking a risk and love always involves sacrificing for somebody's [00:24:25] good. Often at your expense. We've got, I don't want to, I don't want to do that. Love involves risk and it involves sacrifice and putting other people ahead of you. You go, well, what, like what fears must we face to be obedient to Jesus? Let me just fire off some, okay. The fear of ridicule. What if, what you feel you ought to do is contrary to the values of your family or the contrary to the values of your friends or contrary to the values of the tribe you run with or, [00:24:56] the culture in which you're a part of? And you go, you know what? It doesn't matter. [00:25:00] I believe God wants me to show, you know, love to that person. I don't care who ridicules me. You're constantly going against the flow. Can you do that? The second one would be fear of danger. You know what God, if I did what you asked me to do, and I went actually beyond and I crossed that line and did what you asked me to do [00:25:17] it could be dangerous over there. And again you can't surely expect that I would go into danger. The fear of danger could be the problem. The fear of exploitation. God if I do that, they'll take advantage of me. I'll be used. I'll never, I'll never win. I mean, what they're about to do is it's like, there's just no chance. [00:25:35] Fear of financial loss would be another one. Fear of financial loss. God, I'll never get that money back. Yeah. If I sacrifice what you're asking and that's, I'm just out and this, uh, This isn't going to work out well for me. Fear of failure. I'm going to try, I know. I know. It's not gonna, it's not going to work. [00:25:57] And, uh, I'm just afraid. And then [00:26:00] I got to put one more. Uh, fear of, uh, fear of rejection and fear of we left you a blank. Cause you might go, Whoo, you didn't get the one I was scared of. Oh good. Well, you've got your own subjective fear. Fear of what? Now here's, here's the deal folks. Here's the deal here. [00:26:22] Here's the, here's the big idea that you got to get across, To fear less you must trust more. Toe fear less you must trust more. Our fears do not absolve us from being obedient to God, however much we want to say they do in 1 John 4:18. I always think of this verse, There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear. [00:26:47] Oh, so true. And that there's no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. I can not think of this verse without thinking of something a very good friend of mine. Carl Medearis said. He said, perfect love drives out fear [00:27:00] and perfect fear drives out love. See, this is why God is saying, you've got to go beyond, what's comfortable, we got to go beyond that, which you would limit. [00:27:10] And you got to go beyond that, which you know is in your way. Hmm. So, which is it? What's going to prevail in your life? Uh, love or fear? W w w w will we respect our fear more than we'll respect our God? It's a tough challenge in it. I think about Isaiah 41 10. So do not fear, God says, so do not fear, for, I am with you do not be dismayed for, I am your God. [00:27:43] I will strengthen you and I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. You see to fear less we must trust more. So [00:28:00] what's God calling you to do? What if you're listening to God, what's he calling you to do? Are you going to do it? No, no, no, no. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it because I'm scared. [00:28:16] Well can I suggest if you're scared, do it scared, just do it scared. I'm scared. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it scared. I need you to know I'm scared. I wouldn't do it anyway I'm scared, and do it now! Delayed obedience to the call of God, his disobedience to the call of God. Do it now. Let me pray. So God I, uh, I just wanna pray right now for us Lord. [00:28:47] Um, we need people who are warriors when it comes to loving others, people who are, who literally have the hearts of giants who are not going to back down or be intimidated or be threatened, [00:29:00] God, that are willing to go beyond the safety that we, uh, that we kind of post in, you know, that this is like, I want to stay right in this area right here. [00:29:11] Cause this is where I'm most comfortable. And God I pray that we'd be those kinds of people, men and women who are willing to just do whatever it is you call us to do no matter how difficult what the calling is, is. We'll just do it. We'll, we'll do it scared. And, and we're not going to deny that. But

we'll do it now, we'll get moving on it. [00:29:34] So God, I just pray that you give us the ability to do this. Do great things in us Father. So our prayer in Jesus' name, amen.