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What do you do with fear?

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What do you do with it? I get this question a lot as I teach on living in perfect peace now

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I'm talking a lot about cultivating courage. What do you do with fear? It's a very important question

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Not just the idea of fear or fear as a concept but the actual feeling of it when it shows up in your body

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floods your mind and wants to dictate your next move a

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Lot of us have been handed one of two options in dealing with fear and neither one of them work

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The first option is suppression just suppress it. This is the religious version. It says things like

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Good Christians don't feel afraid fear is a sin if you had more faith, you wouldn't feel this way

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So it teaches us to override it push it down. Just pretend it's not there

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maybe you grew up hearing things like

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Fear is the opposite of faith. If you're afraid you're not trusting God

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And so you've learned to feel shame every time fear shows up. You've learned to perform peace

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Externally while anxiety continues to eat you up internally

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Suppression says just don't feel it

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Option two is surrender just surrender to it. This is the world's version

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We hear things like live your truth follow your heart be true to yourself and

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those phrases

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Sound freeing at first

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But listen to what they're actually saying act on what you feel

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Let your emotions lead let your emotions be your guide. And if you don't you're being inauthentic

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It's the belief that what we feel is who we are

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But scripture tells us that emotions are not our highest indicator of truth. I

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Do understand the appeal to this especially if you grew up in option one because again, it feels like freedom

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It feels like permission to finally be free of the shame that you're feeling and just feel what you feel

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But here's what happens when you surrender to your emotions you become subject to them

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When fear leads you're at the mercy of every anxious thought

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Every worst-case scenario every chemical fluctuation and that is not freedom. That's a different kind of bondage

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So you've got

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suppression you have

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surrender and

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neither one works

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This is why I wanted to talk about this today because again, we're talking about cultivating courage and

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We we need to know that suppressing emotions

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Does not produce courage it produces performance

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Surrendering to your emotions does not produce courage. It produces

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paralysis

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so if we're gonna cultivate courage

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we need to find a third way for dealing with fear and anxiety and I have really good news because

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Scripture offers us a third way and it's not a formula to simply manage your emotions better

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It's an invitation to lead your emotions in wholeness

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Instead of being led by them wherever they choose to lead you day after day

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In Matthew 26, we see in Gethsemane Jesus tells his disciples something really interesting

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He says my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death

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Jesus felt it and he even talked about it. Can you imagine doing that in a religious circle?

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He even named what he was feeling. He even asked father God if there was another way, but then he says something that's so key

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Not my will but yours be done

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He felt the fear. He did not let it lead and this is really important

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He did not white knuckle through it alone. He brought it to father God

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David modeled was something very powerful and very similar in Psalm 42. He asked three times

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Why are you downcast oh my soul why so disturbed within me

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He's not ignoring his soul. He's talking to it. He's acknowledging the turmoil

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But then he says to his soul put your hope in God

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He's not letting his soul lead. He is leading his soul to wholeness

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Here's what you and I have that David didn't

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We have the Holy Spirit permanently living inside of us John 14 17 says the Spirit is with you and will be in you

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Not visiting not temporary but permanently in you

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This is the spirit led life that Paul talks about in Romans 8 the Holy Spirit leads us

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Your spirit is united with Christ and responsive to the Holy Spirit and from that place of union with Christ

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You exercise authority

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Leadership over your soul and body you're not suppressing what you feel

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You're not being ruled by what you feel

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But you're bringing what you feel under the leadership of the Spirit who lives inside

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you. And here's what I want you to hear today. This is not about managing fear better. This is

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about true transformation. 1 John 4, 18 says, perfect love cast out fear. Fear does not get

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defeated by fighting it. It gets displaced as you grow in your knowing of who God is and who

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you are in him. When you're consistently bringing your emotions to God, instead of burying them,

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instead of being led by them, something actually changes. You're not stuck with fear forever. This

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is really good news. Romans 12, two talks about this transformation process that says you're

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transformed by the renewing of your mind. And it's not just this nice idea. It's a promise

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that you can put the full weight of your life on. Now here's how I learned this. Cause I remember a

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season where I was facing something so excruciatingly hard and painful. And I kept telling

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myself things like it's fine. Everything's fine. It's no big deal because I trust God. And I

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remember after doing that for a while, God gently stopping me and saying, Linds, if this is no big

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deal, then what are you trusting me with? And that question broke through the facade of this external

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calm I had learned to perform while trying to suppress my fear and anxiety and pain that was

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all stirring up within me. I realized that by suppressing my fear, trying to suppress my fear,

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I was not demonstrating faith. I was actually bypassing it because faith requires something

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to trust God with. And if it's no big deal, there's no opportunity for him to show up as my

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refuge and my fortress and my God. I was using trust language as a way to avoid actually

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trusting. It's really easy to say I trust God. It's harder to actually do it. And I was saying

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it by refute, but refusing to admit that there was something I needed to trust him with.

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That is self-reliance dressed up in spiritual clothes. So if you, if you, you know, resonate

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with that story, you're like, okay, I can relate to that. Here's what I want to leave you with

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today. Your emotions are not your enemy, but they're not your guide either. They are designed

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to be led and you have a Holy spirit living inside of you to do exactly that. So this week,

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wherever you are, whatever option you're dealing with, I want to invite you to do something really

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simple. Be honest with God about what you're feeling, not cleaned up, not spiritualized,

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just honest, because here's, what's true about our God. He's not intimidated by fear and he's

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not disappointed by anxiety. He's not waiting for you to get it together before he shows up.

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He's with you right now in the middle of it. And he's big enough to hold whatever you bring him.

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That's not weakness. That honesty with God is not weakness. That is actually the beginning

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of courage. And in our next episode, I'm going to continue talking about this. We're going to get

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even more practical. I'm going to talk about what it actually looks like to take your fear and

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anxiety to God and not walk away, still carrying it. But because I think that's where most of us

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get stuck, but I wanted to just first start with this one step. It's not all the steps. It's just

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steps. It's just the first one. Courage isn't about managing your fear. It's about being anchored

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in God's presence. And the source of your courage is not your ability to push through. It's his

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promise to never leave.