Fear brings us closer to what we are afraid of. Ultimately fear brings us closer to death. Even though we are alive on the outside, fear and anxiety can cause us to shutdown emotionally, and be dead on the inside. Jesus calls us to live a new life. By stepping into that new life and reaching out to God in the face of fear, we too can conquer death.

Fear 5 – Fear can be deadly from Redemption Church on Vimeo.
 
Welcome to the final week of our FEAR series.
Before I get started, I want to make sure everyone is awake and engaged, and I thought we could wrap this series up on a positive note. So everybody pull out your phone and type in the number for our Anonymous Text Line 214-856-0550
I want you to text us a fear that you have successfully been able to overcome.
Maybe the fear of texting in church…
We’ve spent this month talking about fear, and today I want to tell you:
FEAR CAN BE DEADLY
Fear is a tool of the enemy; it didn’t come from God.
2 TIMOTHY 1:7 For God did not give us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Jesus tells us that the enemy comes to kill, steal, destroy
 
1st week we talked about how fear is positional; it tries to position itself behind you
Fear often pushes you toward what you are afraid of
FEAR BRINGS YOU CLOSER TO WHAT YOU FEAR
That’s why we watch scary movies and go to haunted houses.  Fear can be attractive.
But even when we don’t want it to, fear brings us closer to what we’re scared of, or brings it closer to us.
Horror movie example: Running, twists ankle, takes wrong turn
But in the real world: Stage fright.
Fear of being lonely/alone. Fear of bad relationships/bad breakups.
Fear of dogs.
Fear of heights.
Fear of germs/illness.
Fear of clowns. –example
Fear of groups of people
Let’s look at three very common fears:
Common fears: The Unknown, Being Known, Death
Fear of the Unknown – Cancer, shadows – You don’t want to find out so it stays unknown
Fear of being found out – You try to cover up or hide but it makes you look more suspicious
Death is a very common fear.
Primal fear – We are alive and we want to stay that way.
We are afraid of that changing, what happens after that changes, and things that could make it change.
Lots of fears trace back to a fear of death: snakes, spiders, germs, heights, water, the dark, pickles…
Fear Brings us closer to Death
Stress damages our bodies, takes years off our life
Fear disables us – “paralyzed by fear” – fear can disable us in dangerous situations
Scared to death
But fear can bring us closer to death in another way:
Fear, Anxiety, Stress, Worry… over time these can cause us to shut down, to give up, to stop caring,
in a way we can die inside.
It might pertain to a specific area of life: finances… health… you give up and are just waiting for the inevitable.
You might already be there with politics. No matter what happens on election day about half the country is going to be very upset, and I suspect a lot are going to shut down and not want to think about it for a while.
But it can also be more general: you are just emotionally dead inside.
A few years ago we did a series about “The Living Dead” and that’s what I’m talking about. You may be alive on the outside, but you are emotionally dead on the inside.
We don’t talk about it very much, but I think it is more common than we realize.
The news oversaturates our emotions, while we’re told that our feelings are simultaneously very important and not important at all.
It is easy for Christians to fall into this state.
I know because I lived like this for several years.
As a child I had lots of fears.