Perfect Love Drives Out Fear

Perfect Love Drives Out Fear
Are you anxious? Full of fear about politics, or your health, or your family? Did you know there is a love that casts out all fear? His love is all we really need to rid fear from our lives. On that cross, we may have thought the story was ending, that evil had won, but that was just the beginning! We have victory now and forever!

With a country divided, the Republican risk and morality being redefined, it’s time to gather round a camp fire.
Get back to basics and spark the revival that this country so desperately needs.
This is the American Camp Fire revival with Cook Cameron.
I’ve got a fire that’s burning very hot here this evening.
and, uh, got a special message that, uh, has ministered to me today as, uh, as as I’ve been thinking about some of the things that you’ve been commenting about, you know, instead of being on the defense and being, um, paralyzed by fear, we we wanna get on the offense and we wanna be fueled by faith, not paralyzed by fear, and it’s gonna start with with praising god and worshiping him for who he is the blessed controller of all things, the author of life, and we’re going to to look into what he’s done for our country.
and see if we can’t rekindle and and and have a rebirth and a re founding of this nation on the principles that it that that it was built on.
So, uh, let’s pray. Father, we thank you that you are so good to us.
You invite us to bring everything to the table.
Lord, we don’t have to hide anything when we come to you. You know it all anyway.
You formed our eyes and you see everything.
And so, dear god, we we thank you that our failures are not final and that you don’t place the judgment upon us, and you don’t treat us according to our failures.
But, lord, you give us opportunity for new life.
and that’s what we’re asking you for personally and corporately as a nation.
Start in us, start in our homes, lord. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
Well, some of you have been commenting in and and last night, I was reading through your comments.
And some of you are saying, please pray. Please pray. I’m feeling overwhelmed by fear.
Some of you are afraid of cancer.
Some of you are afraid of what’s going on politically in our nation.
Some of you are afraid for your children.
Some of you are afraid for your financial situation and you’ve lost your job or your business has been decimated or you haven’t been able to go to church in so long and you’re wondering what the future holds And listen, I I understand. I wanna talk tonight about fear.
Because fear can paralyze us.
Fear is like a like a like a roaring lion with its teeth buried in its in its its claws
ready to pounce on us and can paralyze us.
Often it comes worse in the middle of the night.
And I I want you to know that that fear is not something that’s unique to you.
Uh, I think everyone is naturally born with certain fears where fearful of dying. We’re fearful of pain.
We’re fearful of of of an uncertain future. And I’ll be honest with you.
I have struggled with seasons of fear and doubt, uh, producing anxiety. Uh, the kind
of anxiety that wakes me up in
the middle of the night, it often seems to be worse in the dark than it is in the day.
And it and and it and it’s like worst case scenarios go through my mind.
And during these seasons, I find that I can’t sleep.
And so I get up in the middle of the night. I go out to my living room.
I light a candle, and I I I I play some music and I get my Bible and I start to pray.
I get down on my hands and knees, and I and I pray to the god of heaven.
Fear can be paralyzing. And I wanna talk with you about god’s antidote for fear tonight because we all can use it.
I wrote down a few notes from what you had said in the comments.
And, uh, one of the things that that I’ve I’ve I’ve learned about fear If you’re struggling with anxiety and fear that produces depression and despair, listen, part of the a big part of the fear that you are feeling is the anticipation of the feeling of future fear.
And here’s what I mean by that.
You know, like, maybe right now, you’re not feeling fear, but you know how in the middle of the night, you you you know what it feels like and you’re scared of that feeling
of fear that you’re going
to have. So when you fear the fear you’re going to have, it produces fear in you now.
And it’s this crazy cycle that actually makes fear worse. So fearing fear produces fear. It’s awful.
It’s terrible. And so what do we do?
We try to run from it and hide from it, and we try to distract ourselves. What do you do?
Some people say, well, I’m just not gonna watch the news anymore, or I’m gonna pray, or
I’m gonna fast. or I’m gonna I’m gonna try some something. I’m gonna I’m gonna exercise.
I’m gonna I’m gonna do something
to try to get away with my fears or I’m gonna try
to just put it out of my mind. But all the while it seems to
make it worse because we’re hiding from the the the the the lion or the bear or the monster of fear and it’s actually producing even more fear.
And so tonight, I want to look into god’s antidote for fear, and it’s found in the Bible.
And the truth is is that if fearing fear produces fear, if I’m scared of of of of being afraid, that’s gonna produce fear in me right now.
Actually,
Not trying to stop fear stops it. Hear that again.
not trying to stop the fear stops it.
Well, how does that work?
God says this in his word in the book of 1st John chapter 4. I believe it’s verse
18.
God says perfect love or mature love Complete love casts out all fear. Think about that.
Perfect, mature, complete love. casts out all fear or drives out all fear.
So there’s our model for defeating fear. rather than running and hiding from
it and trying to stop it instead, devote yourself to trusting in the one who loves you and cares for you, and cares for me with a perfect complete and mature love.
That changes everything.
You see, I know that god loves me, not based on my circumstances because my circumstances could be very poor.
I could be sick. I could be broke.
I could be scared about a 1000 things that are going wrong in my circumstances.
I’m convinced of god’s perfect love for me because of his commitment he made to me at the cross.
Think about it. He
He went all in.
He put all the chips on the table, so to speak.
He put all his in in the game when he sent his son to die
on the cross 2000 years ago to pay the price for for my sin and my failures so that I could come to him and bring everything
to the table and say, oh god. Save me. Rescue me.
And Jesus died in shed his blood so that I could be forgiven and brought into a relationship with the god who loves me with a perfect unfailing, mature, and complete love.
That’s how I know that he loves me has nothing to do
with my circumstances. And if that’s my standard, if that’s my marker for his perfect love, then circumstances are no match.
They have they have no bearing on my understanding of god’s care for me.
because he already proved that
he cared for me at the cross.
So now when I think of the thing I’m afraid of, when you think of the thing that you’re afraid of, what
is it? Is it COVID? Is it cancer?
Is it, uh, Communism, socialism, the current political system?
Is it Is it fearing that you’re you’ll lose your children, the safety of your kids?
Is it you’ll that your children will lose their faith? Is it that you’ll go to hell?
Is it that uh, you’ll be broke and and not be able to pay your bills.
Whatever that fear is, if you
have confidence in the perfect love of god for you, you can then turn to those fears and say bring it.
Bring the cancer. Bring the COVID. Bring the Communism.
bring the atheism, bring the rebellion, bring the the the the losing of my job because guess what?
There is nothing that will come
to me without first going through my perfect loving father And anything that makes it to me will first have to come through his loving hands.
And if it comes from his perfect, mature, loving hands for me, that means that it’s for my good and to accomplish his purposes.
That’s what he says. He’s causing all things to work together for good
for those who love him.
He is the blessed controller of all things. I’ll give you an example of this.
I have a friend named Jay. Jay is
is is he’s he’s one of my mentors. He’s he’s he’s my Gandoff. He’s one
of my my my wiz my my wisdom wizards. And Jay loves god, and he loves his wife.
and his wife was diagnosed with brain cancer.
And it was a real blow to get the news from the
doctor, and she set up a
meeting with her mother. Jay’s wife set up a meeting with her mother to
give her the news. And Jay watched from
the other room while she sat down with her mother and told her that she had this cancer.
And what Jay saw blew him away Her mother turned to Ruth Jay’s wife and said, isn’t it wonderful that god, before the creation of the world, knew that we would be sitting here at very moment, and he has promised his perfect care for you and for me, and that we have nothing to worry about and nothing to fear.
Isn’t that wonderful? And that belief
led to them praying together, to them thanking god together and even laughing.
And Jay in the other room is thinking, my wife, she’s either lost her mind or She has found the mind of Christ.
She has found the peace of god because she understands that perfect love for her casts out all of her fears.
And she never once asked, why me? She trusted in god’s perfect love for her.
And all she wanted was to be near him, and she prayed more.
And it caused her to seek god more and read god’s word more. And it drew
her closer and closer to him until he finally
took her home to be with him in heaven.
And Jay knew that she got her heart’s desire, and that was to be with the god who loved her with a perfect love, and then guess what?
Jay himself contracted throat cancer. And Jay was able to cast out all of his fears by taking a cue from his wife and said, my god
is gonna love me with the same perfect
love that he loved my wife with. and Jay had no fear. And today, Jay, I spoke to
him today. He is doing well. There’s no cancer in his body.
God decided to heal Jay here, but heal his wife in heaven. And Jay’s okay with that.
In fact, he’s thankful for that because he knows that god knows how to
write the script better than he does.
Isn’t that amazing?
I’m in awe of that kind of faith and trust, and that’s the kind of confidence
I wanna have in the perfect love of god so that I can say, fear you can do nothing to me.
You have no grip on me.
I can tear your talons out of my mind I tear your teeth out of my heart that tries to grip and paralyze me
and say, no. No. You can’t
you can’t you can’t scare me. with disease. You can’t scare me with politics.
You can’t just scare me with poverty. You can’t scare me with anything.
because I have a god who has a perfect love for me.
So let me ask you a question right now. What is it that you’re fearing? What is it?
Does it have a name? And I wanna pray for you tonight and pray that your confidence and god’s perfect love for you will drive out those fears so that you can just say bring it It’s all for my good.
It’s all producing character and hope and courage in me, and it’s accomplishing god’s purposes.
And remember, you and I are terrible script writers.
If if we took the story of Jesus on the cross and we freeze framed right at the point where he had been uh, arrested.
He had been falsely accused. He had been nailed to a a Roman torture poll.
A crown of thorns put on his head, banged into his his flash bleeding, beaten, stabbed, and you freeze frame right there.
You’d say, oh, this is horrible. It’s over. This was a terrible, terrible thing that happened.
The problem is that would miss the whole end of the story.
The end of the story is he rises from the grave he defeats death and the power of sin, and he purchases eternal life for you and me when we come to him by faith.
And here we are 2000 years later worshiping him. praising him and thanking him and committing ourselves to
his purposes. God is the excellent script writer, and he’s writing a script for for your life and mine.
I’m gonna read this passage out of scripture to you right now that I think will be a comfort to you.
Here it is. It’s Psalm 23. You probably know it. The lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures. He lie he leads me beside quiet waters.
he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his namesake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
That’s what we’ve been talking about.
Are you in the shadow of the valley of the shadow of death?
You need not fear any evil. For you, god, are with me.
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows.
Surely, your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the lord forever.
If that’s the goal, that you dwell in the house of the lord forever?
That’s my goal.
Then let’s let god write the script on how we get there.
If cancer is your ride home, to dwell in the house of the lord forever, let him use that to drive you closer to him in your prayers and in your reading of his word and through the doctors and the treatments and through your the comfort of your friends and and the comfort you’re able to offer others through empathy with for others who are
going through the same things. If it’s if it’s COVID, if it’s finances, if it’s parenting, if it’s your marriage, let god write the script that draws you closer to him.
and causes you to dwell in the house of the lord now and forever.
God bless you. I hope this has been encouraging to you tonight.
I know what I’m gonna be saying to my fears in the middle of the night tonight.
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