Excerpted from yesterday’s sermon at Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church in Lincoln, NE. For full audio, click here.
…Fear. A natural and necessary survival mechanism. And a natural process that is easily manipulated. We live in a fear based culture because we’re bombarded with crisis after crisis, or so we are led to believe. The problem is that yesterday’s crisis isn’t even news when today’s crisis comes up. I checked some of the major news websites and ebola apparently isn’t nearly as important as it was a week or two ago.
Rick Steve’s wrote in yesterday’s Lincoln Journal Star, “Commercial television news is hammering “the land of the brave” with scare tactics as never before. I believe the motivation is not to make us safer. It’s to boost ratings to keep advertisers satisfied and turn a profit.”
So what should we do amongst all this scare tactics…?
…There comes a time when we have to say enough is enough with this fear business. When it comes down to it, there are very few things we actually need to fear. There are things we need to pay attention to and be wise about but much of our fear these days comes from an unrelenting onslaught of crisis mentality fueled by media outlets more interested in advertising revenue than giving actual information.
It has been said that the opposite of faith is not unbelief but fear. Fear can immobilize us and distract us from God, which is exactly what the king of Assyria is attempting today and exactly what happens far too often in our fear culture today. When we’re frozen in fear, when our thoughts are focused on things we fear who are we not thinking about?
That’s the danger of living in fear. It gets in the way of our faith. It distracts us from God and it is in God where we find hope. Hope that tomorrow is a better day. Hope that next year is looking up. Hope that our sins are forgiven in Christ Jesus. Hope that when our life is done, we find out that it really isn’t done but we’ll continue to live on in Jesus Christ.
When that whisper of fear is shouting today’s clever words into your ear, remember that God has always been there whispering, “I got this.”
Thoughts on the Edge (of Town) 