What Are You Afraid Of?

I'm really excited about today and- and I'm going to- I'm going to dive right into the message with an invitation for you to be engaged with it. So I'm You know what engagement means? Right, Just make sure we're good. Okay, cool, So, if you've ever been scared before, won't you just stand up on your feet?

I know, I just had you sit down.

Get over it, If you, If you have, We're testing emotional maturity in this room. All right, I hope everybody's standing up. If you can't, All right, cool, If, If you know, good job, Have a seat. That's it.

I just wanted to.

I think we've all been scared. If we're honest with ourselves, We might have someone who's a toxic male in here. I don't say that from the term that you guys hear it on the news stations or whatever. I just say it cuz some of us are toxic.

You know, there were several years of my life-, some of it's still prevalent once in a while- where I get a little, get a little toxic masculinity in me.

You know, just want to hear some preaching toward me as a man. You got to love your wife better. Yeah, sometimes you need that as a dude. But you know, sometimes we struggle with our emotional intelligence.

And we're sitting in here, I tell you to stand up and you're like, Never been scared in my life.

No, you're just responding with your amygdala the whole time, but you don't even realize it. I, I'm going to help some men, I'm going to help some women. Today, We're going to talk about this idea of fear. My sermon's title of the day is: what are you afraid of?

But before we dive into that, I, I want to reintroduce our series.

I, I told you guys, the sermon series title for this is AI and the Christian witness, And really for me, AI is just kind of a launch point in order to get to the deeper issue that is causing, the symptom which is our response to things like AI, new technology, and, and our fears about the future. There's something deeper to it and it all roots back in the fall of man in Genesis, chapter 3. And so what I want to do is I want to take you through today, the reality of fear and the a to fear that we, we run into all the time. I will start with a little, a little bit more engagement.

It's, it's a, it's a risky game, but I'm.

I like risks. So I want to ask someone: if you can just give me any time period in the human history, won't you give me one? And I'm going to tell you. Tell you, cuz I think we struggled.

I think we look at our day and age and we think something like AI or what's happening in Israel right now.

Every, every generation has had their this is the end of days, stuff. You know what I'm talk. Do you know what I'm talking about? Just kind of shake your head.

You know, like back in 2000, everybody [clears throat] thought 2K2 or 2K was What do they call it?

Whatever, They thought that was going to be a thing. And now it's like AI, It's going to be the end of the world or the stuff going on in the Middle East. End of the world. I'm not saying it's not, I don't, I don't predict the future.

I was talking to a group of guys yesterday and they asked me what I thought about it and I was like: you know, Jesus's response, when they asked him about the end of time, was like I Am I wrong?

I mean, that was Jesus's response. The son of man doesn't know the times or the epochs or the seasons. You know, depending on the translation. So anyways, it's interesting because every generation.

So I want you to give me a generation.

I'll tell you how they had the end of the world in their sight: 700 AD, 700 AD. Vikings, right, Or is that a little bit? No, Vikings were later. 700 AD.

I think that was the year of the antipopes, or at least the papacy became the center of everything and there were probably people all over the Holy Roman Empire thinking that things were going to you know where, in a handbasket, because the power and authority was seated in Rome at a level that it never should have been right.

But then you've got the barbarian hordes. They're coming in still. There were several barbarian invasions and if I lived in Rome at the time, you got all these people who spoke a different language and wore different clothing than me. It's like, oh my gosh Buckeye is coming to tackle me right now in Rome.

Just crazy people from Galilee and Germany.

It's just craziness. They thought the end of the world was happening for sure, with the barbarian hordes. Right, There's probably other things happening. Well, give me one more.

Give me another one.

1960s, I was telling the first service. The 1900s is so easy, cuz you just get started with World War I and then you move to the Great Depression and then you move to, you know, 1940s, World War II. Then after that Israel gets its own place in the Middle East. That starts that entire issue and situation.

In the '50s, '60s and '70s you've got Vietnam, the Korean War, hippies, And not that they're wrong, I just don't know.

That's when Gen Z started to be a real issue, Just kidding. That's when boomers left. Definitely things happening in the '60s. I didn't live back then, but the civil rights movement was there.

People were just praying that the Lord would return.

One more Just is fun for me. 1500s, Oh my gosh. The Protestant Reformation. They went crazy.

The Catholic Church thought they were the end of days.

You got John Calvin, Martin Luther and King Henry VIII, which was like the biggest reformer ever, literally, I mean he had a bunch of wives, killed them. And then the Church of England is formed. 1500s, 1600s- it's just crazy. The, The Catholics, thought I mean the Inquisition was the 1400s.

Through the 1600s, Like crazy stuff has been happening all throughout human history.

I'll give you a couple examples. It starts back in Genesis, chapter 3. Yeah, the first time fear is mentioned in the Bible is when Adam and Eve take from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes are open, They realize that they're naked.

They clothe themselves in fig leaves and they hide in the bushes when God was coming to chat with them and walk with them in the cool of the day.

He says: "Where are you". And they come out of the bushes and he says: "We were afraid because we were naked". Right, This is the first moment where fear entered into the garden. And since that moment of sin, fear has encompassed our psyche.

And I'll just.

I'll just walk you through it as briefly as I possibly can. Genesis 3:10 is on the screen. He answered: "I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid". Genesis chapter 6, you got the flood.

That really the end of the world for them.

The Israelites were fearful of the Egyptians. Now, you remember a couple weeks ago when I taught on that? They saw the Red Sea in front of them. They saw the Egyptians, horses and chariots behind them.

David writes in the Psalms talking about this.

He says: "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord, our God". Like these guys were looking at weapons back then. Chariots and horses were weapons of mass destruction. Like chariots were a big deal.

They were a new technology And when people in the Bronze Age saw chariots it stressed them out.

And what David's saying here is: some people look at that and they get stressed. If they're on the opposing end of it Or if you're on that side, you trust in that. But I fear the Lord God. Until around 200 BC, everybody had their own like mini pantheons of gods.

They were scared to death that if it rained a certain way, if there were bad omens or if someone like bit the head off of a bird and it looked a certain way that the world was going to end.

I mean, have you read any? Maybe you haven't read any of that. That's just weird, crazy stuff. And, if it wasn't that, it was famine.

Y- Y'all are worried about all that.

Oh, AI's going to cause a famine. It's going to take all the food sources from us. That's what I've. I heard someone say that.

I'm not saying it's not, I'm just saying I'm not overly stressed about it because God's in control.

Then you have invasions. In the ancient world. We've never been invaded in any significant way here in the United States, so we don't understand that. But in the ancient world you have the Assyrian invasion.

You know what they did to people.

They captured. They skinned them alive. Now that's crazy. If your kids are in here, I apologize.

There's kids church, It's.

It's Yeah, Babylon. You read Daniel. They put them in fiery furnaces and lions' dens. It's jacked up.

End of days for these guys.

Persia impaled people and trampled them with elephants. If you read some of the Greek literature, their armies were so large they were like locust swarms. I bet there are people thought the world was going to end Greece. They had a brazen bull.

I'm not going to tell you about that one.

That's crazy. Rome, remember Gladiator? Just crazy stuff. Like you could be captured, enslaved and then put into a thing tied inside a, a burlap sack and they sicked lions and tigers on you in the middle of, in front of everybody.

Well, that's crazy.

That's a crazy world to live in. And in Rome for Christians for the first 400 years of the faith, people were so stressed out about persecution from the Roman Empire. There's a, a Greek historian- it's either Tacitus or one of the other ones. I think it was Tacitus.

He mentions that Christians would often be put in-, they would be covered in wax- and put in his household as lamps So they would light them on fire.

End of days. You know what I'm talking about. That's end of days type stuff. We're stressed out about ChatGPT giving us too good of advice.

Then then the barbarian invasions, the collapse of the Roman Empire, Islamic expansion- which was extremely violent, by the way.

Do some Do some history? The Vikings, the antipope, the Crusades, the Mongol annihilation, where millions were killed, The bubonic plague, inquisition, heretics- We're not stressed about that anymore. They're just all on TikTok, Just talking, talking, talking science, art, Protestants, Puritans, Catholics, civil wars, Great Depressions, World Wars, Asian Wars, Nuclear Wars, Cuban Missile Crises, AIDS Crises, Financial Crises, Climate Crises, Identity Crises, COVID Crises, Election Legitimacy Crises and presently Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland. In Buckeye, you're stressed out about your job, your friends, family issues, future concerns Point us.

There's always something to be scared of, Always, Since Genesis 3.

Always something to be scared of For me. Like I don't I, I was thinking here- this is why I was sitting down- is I was feeling convicted about my own personal state of fear in my everyday life, and now I know I'm still called to communicate this message to you, but there was like a pain within my bones. It was like like I don't feel like I'm, I'm, I don't feel like I am good enough to communicate this message to you all today. But then I thought for a little bit longer.

The Lord was kind to me and it was like there's nobody else in the room to do it.

So you should do it. And it's like I'm going to communicate. . I'm going to communicate this message to you, but I want you to know I'm sitting under the same conviction that maybe you'll sit under in a few moments.

I.

[clears throat], . I woke up fearful this morning. I woke up fearful for something. It's it's small, it's significant, but it's small in the grand scheme of things.

I woke up because, cuz we're we're really short on our trailer logistics team right now And- and I'm thinking like I don't- I don't want the few people we have on this team who have to get up at 4:30 in the morning to go pick up the trailer, to bring the trailer over to here and then take it back.

I don't want them to be so like stressed out about this that that then they burn out. And so, like I'm like man, I got to figure out how to do this. I'm just freaking out at 4:30 in the morning about trailers. Now, that being said, if you have a truck and you can pull a trailer, I'd strongly encourage you to join the team.

Like.

But then I think about some of the stuff I stress out about and I don't want you to leave the church because I, I, I struggle with superficial stressors. Don't get me wrong. I, I, I know how to turn it and I'm going to talk to you about that today, But I do, I struggle with this stuff. It's like I was talking to someone last night and I was like: yo, I've been praying for some more electric guitarists.

Isn't that crazy stupid?

Like I'm not saying we shouldn't pray for an electric guitarist, BUT I'M LIKE, WHY AM I? WHY is that the stressor? 8 billion people in the world don't know Jesus and I'm sitting here stressing out because we don't have an electric guitarist. I had to remember, Well, we have one, but we need more, you know.

And so I'm sitting here like thinking about my message last week.

It's like I'm trying to fight for a vibe with all these electronic equipments when we should be able to stand here and worship God in spirit and in truth, without anybody who can even stay on key. And so I'm like: what am I? What am I worried about? And I feel, under the same conviction of the Holy Spirit, that I have so many superficial stressors and it's frustrating to me And I don't want to just tell you to not fear-, that would be unrealistic.

And also I believe fundamentally that God's creation is good.

Your physiology, naturally, is good. God created your body From the beginning. He created you with an amygdala- You're going to hear amygdala way too much today. He created you with your seat of emotions So that when something bad is about to happen to you, your brain shifts, things are activated, cortisol's released and you are able to engage very quickly with a scenario that could be dangerous.

Right Like You wouldn't be grabbing your car out of.

I forget I was in New York City and we did a bad thing. I got a bus instead of a plane, which was a horrible move. It's a gross. Anyways, we get there, bus stop and now I've got these giant suitcases.

I got to tote around New York City and we're walking and then I hit a big crack in New York City cuz the sidewalks are terrible.

And then my kid. I forgot to tell him It was just Lucas, no, Mike. At the time Lucas was what? 1 and 1/2?

1 year old.

And he's sitting here on right on top of the thing cuz I'm trying to carry two suitcases sitting on top of the suitcases. I'm holding on to him hold on. And then I hit this crack and he pops off. He's flying in the air Very quickly.

I grab him and everybody, like I, Did they clap.

It was something crazy like that. He's hanging upside down. It was the craziest thing ever. YEAH, LIKE God PUT THAT in you.

That like that's what.

Like fear, a moment like that. It triggers it. Like your swift reaction and heightened awareness. That is a thing from God.

So what I want to tell you is: fear is good.

There's something on the screen behind me. Fear is good. It is a God-given physiological response to threats to your livelihood, your status or your authority or agency. Again, this is your physical, your relational and your control.

This is good.

Fear is good. It is our brain's response to external str- threatening stimuli. Like I said, the amygdala quickly determines fight, freeze or flight. This is good.

It's created by God.

That then activates the sympathetic nervous system and enables you to have that cortisol released and adrenaline to help your body then respond to the scenario. That's good. I mean, we'd all be dead if we didn't have that. I'm just going to be honest with you.

Like, like you, you know people who don't have a really good like quick responsiveness.

That's like, don't walk into a road. Like It's, it's true, Like there's some people. I'm like, if you did not have someone helping you, you would be in big trouble, but [clears throat]. But God placed that within us.

Fear is good.

It also gives you heightened awareness, narrows your focus, gives you faster reaction through this physiological activation and it, it, it reinforces and creates new neural pathways to help your memory remember the triggering or dangerous event. This is- This is good stuff. But also the Bible says so many times: do not fear. I pulled it up- I utilized AI, by the way, to give me a graphic, cuz I don't know how to do charts in Excel very well- So I got the information, inputted the information and found out where in Scripture it tells us: do not fear.

It says it 350, more than 350 times, All the way through Genesis and Revelation 350 times.

The Bible tells us: do not fear. Make this make sense that you gave me fear in my physical infrastructure. Yet you tell me not to fear. And I think it goes back to Genesis, chapter 1.

And we talked about this last week, but I'm going to read it again, cuz I know how some of you guys attend infrequently: , All right.

Genesis, chapter 1, verses 26 through 28. Let me read it for you. Then God said: "Let us make mankind in our image and our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky". What are we going to do with the fish of the sea, birds of the sky?

Say the word: Hannah's with me.

I'm going to rule. All right. Every time I hear rule, I want you to say it with me. All right, Okay, cool, .

So God created mankind in his own image, In the image of God.

He created them, Male and female. He created them And God blessed them and said to them: "Be fruitful and increase in number, Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground We are called to rule over God's good creation, And when we get that order wrong, that's when fear, a creation, can be bad. It's.

It's an order thing.

Again. Some of you are scared of change, scared of AI, scared of, new friendships, scared of old friendships, scared of change, scared of all of this stuff And. This wells up in you, creates a physiological response, and now you're allowing creation to have authority over you. Fear can be bad when we feel threatened by created things Because ultimately- and again taking you back to what fear is for, it's for your livelihood, status and authority.

When you allow created things to impact your views of these areas, you're in a really bad situation.

It's like who, when you fear creation? Who controls your livelihood? Who's in charge of it? Like, is your boss in control of your livelihood?

Is your friend group in control of your livelihood?

Is? Is someone threatening your physical safety in control of your ultimate future? If, if creation rules, yeah, What about your status? You stressed out cuz someone views you a certain way and you're freaking out about it.

I'm not saying you're, you're bad.

Again, I struggle with the same things. But who controls, Who determines your status in the first place? And then, ultimately, who has authority? If?

If it's these created things that stress you out- I'm talking about little things, like someone commenting on your Facebook post- to big things like your boss putting you at risk or on a personal improvement plan or professional development plan, Like, regardless of what it is- if they're threatening your status, if you're letting them have authority over you in a way that is unfit for a ruler, an authoritative being in the in the world that got created, then you're missing the point, Like we were called to rule.

So, in other words, fear is both good physiologically, but it can be bad. So what's the solution? I've got a few Scriptures that I want to give you. It's not going to be a really surprising thing, but as we go further into the sermon, I think I've got a.

I've got a construct that I think will be helpful for you as you walk through your life.

I'd even encourage you take some pictures or ask someone for the PDF copy of these slides that you're about to see. I think it could be really helpful for you. I've been like scrolling through it in my brain all week and it's been helpful for me. Here's the first Scripture: Isaiah 8:12 and 13.

Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy, And going to pause here- just too many tin hats these days.

I don't know if you know what tin hat is. Tin hat. You know what tin hat is. If you don't, I'm just not even going to explain it.

But too much conspiracy theory everywhere.

It's like so-and-so is behind this and so-and-so. I'm not saying right or wrong, I'm just saying: does it help you to be involved in that If I have to hear another thing about? I'm just I'm going to be very careful. I'm tired of hearing about the Epstein files.

Quit it, I'm.

I'm tired of hearing about stuff overseas that you ain't- none of y'all- been there for. I'm tired of hearing you telling me what's behind this when you ain't done the scientific research. Right or wrong? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying like, does it help you or the people you're around to be involved in this conspiracy theory?

Bible says you not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy.

Here's what people hear from a Christian who claims conspiracy. It's like I thought you had a bigger authority. Why are you so concerned about this, Like if you know God's in charge? Why is this stressing you out?

I don't know I'm going to be careful, though, cuz there's real stuff that happens in there.

I've turned into a little bit of a conspiracy theorist. I don't trust anybody anymore. But he says: do not fear what they fear And don't dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you're to regard as holy.

He is the one you're to fear.

He is the one you were to dread. I love that imagery there, cuz often we say revere- Revere is another word for fear. I want to be clear, But at the same time, things- things I almost forgot to like- we're scared of this person, but we revere the Lord. It's like nah Dude, he.

You're hanging on a thread, and that thread is you trusting in Jesus Christ.

That's the only way you have eternity with God. I don't know if you've ever read that thing that they made us read in high school that stressed all of us out about going to hell, sinners, in the hands of an angry God, But it's such a grace-filled poem or sermon. He's just like "No, no, the grace of God stands as a dam does and it's holding off the flood of God'S WRATH". LIKE, OUR NATURAL STATE HAS GOTTEN us into a position where we are deserving of the wrath of God because of our unrighteousness.

And it is the grace of God, this thread, that we get to walk this narrow path, that we get to walk, walk the way, the truth and the life, that we get to invest into the blood that covers our door.

It is only that that gets us into eternity WITH God. WE SHOULD be fearful in the hands of our God, Not just revering. I think it's important to revere God. Revering is interesting.

It's an interesting shift in the terminology because because when we say fear, we're scared.

When we say revere it, it takes on more of a worship connotation. But here's what Matthew 10 says: Says: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell". But let me simplify it with the easiest one to remember, Proverbs 9:10, : "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And knowledge of the holy one is understanding".

So what am I trying to tell you?

Let me show you a couple more charts for fun. I'll show you the amount of times it says fear God in the Scriptures. More than 300 times it tells us to fear God. Let's put them together: Do not fear and fear God- 600 references- Says "Don't fear, Fear God".

I think the issue isn't the physiological response of fear, The issue is the order.

And we're not called to fear man, We're not called to fear things, We're not called to fear this world, We're not called to fear lack of control, We're called to fear God. And when you fear God, that that understanding and posture shifts every aspect of your life. [snorts], . And.

And here's a couple things I want to show you- And this is super helpful, because fear and reverence are essentially the same thing- And what you revere you ultimately worship, Cuz it gets your attention, It gets your reactions And it establishes your pathways.

And I'll break this down a little bit more, but, like, if you worship creation, let's just say that you, let's just say a super innocuous one, cuz your kids are amazing, right, They're given to you by God. If you love your kids, just say amen. That was so non-enthusiast, enthusiastic, Like dude. Say amen in the way that you would like freak out on somebody if they did something wrong to your kid.

Amen, Come on, I love my kids.

I'm not called to worship my kids, but a lot of people like they, they, they worship the ground that their kids stand on. And so what does it do It? It gets your attention, It gets your reactions And it forms your pathways, And so a lot of you. You're worshipping your kids.

You're worshipping your spouse.

You're worshipping your job. You're worshipping your career. You're worshipping the American dream. You're worshipping all these conspiracy theories.

You're worshipping CNN.

You're worshipping Fox News. You're worshipping the people that are sitting down the row from you. You're worshipping this hobby that you started that cost a lot more money than you could afford currently. You're worshipping your credit cards, because you owe them and try to pay them back in a way that you ignore God.

You know, Like there's so many things, You're lifting creation above you and you're letting those fears take control.

You are worshipping created things- Romans chapter 1 type stuff. Fear is worship, But while when we fear creation, we're incapable of worshipping God, when we fear God, we're almost incapable of fearing creation, And so, for the people in this room, you're scared of anything created. I want you to know, and I, I'll show you, but I want you to know that the way you can shift that is not by trying to not be afraid of whatever's in your closet. Metaphorically, It's by looking to God, Recognizing that he's worthy of all worship, all reverence, all of our dread.

The Scripture say: We look to him first, knowing that he has all authority over all things.

All of it bows at his feet. And when I recognize that God is the one to fear, everything else finds its proper order. And guess what? It's underneath my feet.

And so let me show you how this works.

I want to break it down for you, practically, physiologically, scientifically, But before I do that, I just want to dispel any myths in the room that this means that science is more valid than the Scriptures, Cuz a lot of people, when I give them science, they're like: "See, science proves this. So you know, the Bible doesn't have to be true, This is just how things work". And I want to tell you up front that the 600 commands from the Lord to fear him and to not fear anything else became way before your contemporary brain scans where we understood what the brain does. God was commanding this 3,000 years ago, And so I'm going to give you the science to it.

But it proves that God is right.

It proves that what he created and what he commanded are valid. It doesn't disprove them. I just wanted to tell you that up front. So I'm going to show you two cycles And I'm contrasting two different types of fears that we hold.

The first is the fear of creation.

The second is the fear of God. Let's talk about the fear of creation cycle. Here's what happens in your body. You start with this posture where you fear created things.

You might fear somebody, You might fear a thing.

We all start off this way because of the result of sin. We're all stressed out because we're naked innately and we're scared that someone's going to view us in a particular way. It started when I was sitting in my room after I saw Jurassic Park for the first time and I needed to close my closet door every night for 3 years. Like, it is natural for me to fear and what I slowly learn to do is shift my patterns.

But as an adult, we're still living in the same place.

You just look at Facebook and Instagram for about 2 seconds. People are fearful. This is why you go buy toilet paper when it doesn't make sense. But what happens in the fear of creation is you start fearing creation.

So when a threat comes to you, you appraise that threat and you default to your biological functioning And what happens is it activates a stress response.

Okay, so let me break this down a little further. There's a trigger or scenario, something that happens. It hits your brain And the first thing it hits, no matter what cycle you choose, is the amygdala. This is the seat of fear, not the seat of reason, And what that does is it incites your, your nervous system, your sympathetic nervous system, and it activates a stress response.

This is why you get triggered and flip out on somebody when they come in and you.

Or when you walk in and the dishes aren't clean, or the dog's pulled the toilet paper off your guest's bedroom bathroom and then they got it all over the place, and it's also outside, but it was windy, so it's all over the place. You know, this is the, This is what happens. You look at it and you look and you look and you, You got to freak out. Or when your kids come in and they're screaming after a long day at school and you had a long day of working, and they just na, na, na, na na and you just want to, but I can't right, You know.

You know what I'm talking about.

I don't do anything, I just, But I do flip out sometimes. That's your amygdala, activating your sympathetic nervous system. And then what happens is- we've all learned this- is we cope. Now the way that we cope is different And, in the fear of creation, coping looks radically different than the way that I want to promote today.

Your coping looks like punching something.

Your coping might look like putting on a Netflix show to forget about your pain, fears, and like issues and dysfunctions It. It might look like going and talking to all the wrong people. You got to call five people in order to feel better about this scenario and hopefully one of them will give you what you want to hear, but the other four maybe they don't. So you got to go until you find the right person.

Like your coping mechanisms could lead you to medicating And some people: oh Xanax, you don't even need Xanax, you just need a better system.

I'm not saying I'm not a doctor. Can I be Did? Did I say it, Ted? I'm not a doctor, I am.

I said I'm not a doctor.

I washed out of PhD And that's not even the type of doctor we're talking about. Right, Like I, I am not a doctor, But you and I both know that some of us default to medicating or coping when there's a better solution present if we would choose it. And then we moved from Xanax to edibles, cuz they're legal now. And maybe you medicate with, with drink, And you keep doing it because you'd rather avoid your issue.

Right?

These are all coping mechanisms to reduce the difficulty we're having. In our sympathetic nervous system, We get triggered, so how do we get untriggered? Just dose up on something that'll make me chill. This is, This is the system We cope, And here's what that does: It reinforces the neural pathways that were formed when you were triggered, And since it reinforces those pathways, then you're more sensitive to future threats, And so when a future threat happens, you're ready for it and you do the same thing, and the same thing I can.

I can illustrate it so simply by utilizing Facebook.

Someone says something You don't like what they said, So you comment on their post. You comment on their post and you think you're reasonable and, you were in your amygdala and you probably shouldn't responded at all, cuz that's the wise thing to do on Facebook is to not respond to anything that could be potentially contentious, because there's no nuance on Facebook. But in your amygdala you responded And then they respond back to you and you look at the response, and the response is probably just as reasonable as yours. And then you're like: how dare they?

And then you do it again.

That happens again and you both think you're being logical, but what you're doing is you're reinforcing these neural pathways all the way to the point where all they got to do is post something innocuous and you're triggered. THIS IS WHAT'S HAPPENING ON BOTH SIDES. IF I WERE TO SAY something moderately Democrat, moderately LIKE, IF I USE SOME LANGUAGE that's very similar to what a Democrat would say, people are like. And then, on the other side, IF, IF I MODERATELY SAY something that could be perceived as Republican, somebody's like: is your church MAGA, .

And I'm like I got, get, get over your amygdala into alignment WITH God.

THERE'S GOT TO BE, THERE'S SOMETHING BETTER THAN THIS. THIS IS THE FEAR OF CREATION TALKING. Every time I hear it, I'm just like: can you just get over the sun a little bit? LIKE, GET, GET HIGHER, GET TO THE PLACE WHERE YOU'RE NOT FALLING into the same fears and the same threats and the same system and the same coping, the same reinforcing neural pathways that get you triggered every single time someone says something moderately offensive, .

[gasps], .

This is not the life of a Christian, The- The life of a Christian is different- Starts with the fear of God, And with the fear of God you have this posture that says God's above all. And so when the same trigger hits my amygdala, I don't let it inside my sympathetic nervous system. It starts, and then I'm like: nope, nope, nope. I'm called to rule over a.

I'm called to submit to God.

I'm called to fear him first. I'm called to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I'm called to think on the proper things. And so, when this trigger comes in, what I do is this cognitive reappraisal.

This is a scientific term.

It's two things that I've blended into one. The first is prefrontal- all right, PFC, the seat of reason. It's prefrontal modulation. The second thing that happens is your amygdala starts to down regulate.

In other words, the moment I start to reassess the threat in light of my fearing God, my amygdala chills out and my prefrontal cortex starts to reason a little bit more.

It shifts your brain immediately. And so here's what happens next. What happens next is you step into that and you embody it. You can't just say stop fearing, stop caring, stop being frustrated.

You actually have to embody some practices in order to get there.

And so, rather than coping with medication, what do I do? I meditate. I meditate on his word day and night, that I'm not going to sin against God. I, I open up my eyes to the things of God and I start meditating on what his precepts are, rather than what I'm feeling in the moment.

And so what do I do is I take vocabulary from God and his word and I put it into my brain.

What happens is I down, regulate my emotions and I increase the capacity of my reason And I continue to meditate. And what does that do? It doesn't reinforce the old pathways, It rewires them. This happens in your brain.

It's called neuroplasticity.

So neuroplasticity is where you re- like. You are reinforcing old ones, when you keep in the same cycle, but you can actually create new ones. This is how you form a habit. You start something new.

It takes certain amount of weeks to get to that place, And now, because of neuroplasticity, you have rewired your brain.

This was like Paul was, way before brain scans. But that's why he says: think on the things that are true, right, honorable. He says: "Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, with meditation, make your requests known to God, And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, WHATEVER IS TRUE, RIGHT, HONORABLE, PURE, LOVELY and of good repute, THINK ON THESE THINGS, AND THE peace of God will be with you".

I don't think he was a neuroscientist, but he had that down.

Maybe it's because the Lord had helped him understand a different cycle. And then what happens is, as your attention is trained, your neural pathways are rewired. You default to safety signals rather than stress signals- That's the scientific term. But what I put here is pretty obvious.

It increases your capacity to align your thoughts to God's thoughts.

It's a beautiful cycle. It's a cycle that I'm still figuring out, still trying to learn. It took me like a full day to figure out how to articulate this to you in a way that makes sense, and I hope it does. But if you want to get your stuff together, you got to start with a posture of fearing God.

If you want to be who God called you to be, start with fearing God, Because when you fear God, your fear of everything else begins to dissipate, Cuz when you fear God, your life will radically shift and your brain's rewired to think on positive things rather than negative things.

It's so different Like. Your life will be so much better if you get out of that. You know, I don't even want to call the fear of creation a cycle, I'm going to call it a spiral, The fear of creation spiral versus the fear of God cycle. I think this could be helpful.

But 2 Timothy, verse 1, or chapter 1, verse 7, says this: "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind".

Power, love and a sound mind. And here's where the rub comes in. It's because even in the church it feels like we get equally triggered with the world. Yet we're supposed to live in the fear of God.

600 plus times we've been called to not fear and to fear God.

What Make it make sense? Why are we living in fear when we have a God who sits on his throne? What? What are we living in fear?

This is what 1 Timothy says.

He says: "If you understand what God is, where he's at and what he's doing, you wouldn't have a spirit of fear. It'd be power, It'd be love toward one another, cuz perfect love casts out fear. It would be a sound mind". Discipline, a thought process.

The big Hold on.

The Proverbs verse says: "Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom". We've not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind. Sounds like the prefrontal cortex, doesn't it? It's almost as if God is showing us how we are biologically built, And if we can live in the biology that he has built by submitting properly to him first, then our life will be radically different than the rest of the world and we might actually be the witnesses we've been called to be.

But the church struggles.

It struggles. From the moment they heard that Paul lost his sight on the road to Damascus, they started flipping out. I don't know about this Paul guy- I got to call him, but I don't know. And when the Enlightenment happened and people started to say that we're not the center of the universe- but there was actually a sun, cuz we're heliocentric, right, Like We're not the other, centric, I don't know, World centric, I don't know what it's called, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a scientist or anything like that-, Church freaked out about that Age of AI.

People flipping out, What?

What do we have to fear? We have a God who sits on the throne has all power and authority, has given us the opportunity to rule, and we got to recognize it's under our feet. Because, ultimately, fear of creation has consequences And that consequence is ultimately withdrawal- Withdrawal. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, they hid in the bushes Like people.

When life gets busy and chaotic, they isolate Like the church. When new tech comes along, they put these fingers up and they stand back until God convinces them that it's okay to utilize normal technology. Like that, fear causes us only to see issues. It.

It's stuck in the seat of the emotions.

It's It's your fears that cause you to medicate. It's your fears that got you to the place where you're on the verge of divorce. It's your fears that have you scared to death to let your kid do anything It. It's your fears that cause you to withdraw.

But we've been given a spirit of power, love and a sound mind, Because while fear of creation leads to withdrawal, fear of God leads to witness.

It leads to witness Why? Because when you choose to fear God, guess what happens: You see God. I'm not just talking about witness, of going to talk to people, though I am. I'm talking about you fearing God first.

And when you fear God, you start to see his power, his authority, his goodness, his loving kindness.

You see what he's done for you. You see that while you were dead in your transgressions, he made you alive in Christ Jesus. When you, When you fear God, you witness all of his attributes. So I want us to be a church that that witnesses God's power, not withdraws from new things out of fear.

[sighs], . Yeah, I don't know. I feel like. I feel like, if you want to look just like Jesus, which is what our theme is this year- when you look at Jesus, you would see that he didn't withdraw.

No, in fact, while we were in our withdrawn state, he came down to witness to us.

He came down to express his love for us, to show us that the God on high that we were disconnected from actually wants a relationship with you and me. . He, He, He came to boldly to tell us about a new cycle And- And some of you in here- you, you're stuck in fear. You're paralyzed by fear, And maybe you've been moderately paying attention to this because you've heard people tell you not to fear.

But I need you to know.

The solution is not fearing. The solution is fearing properly, And some of you need to make a choice today to fear God. And the way that you fear God as a new, as a New Testament person, the way that you fear God is: you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, seek forgiveness of your sins and allow him to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And so I want to give you the opportunity right now to fear God with your whole life.

So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, we're going to pray a prayer right now for the benefit of those who are believing in God and fearing him for the first time.

Repeat after me: Say [snorts]: "God, I believe that Jesus is your son. I believe you died on the cross and rose from the grave. God, help me follow him, Help me fear you, And I will follow you for the rest of my life". Heads bowed, eyes closed.

I want to encourage you not to be fearful in this moment.

In fact, a step is one of the greatest things you need. It's going to help you start to see alignment in your life. So if you just made that decision to fear God for the first time and trust in Jesus. I want to encourage you to look at me in the eyeballs right now.

Just let me know, Just make eye contact with me to show me that you made a call, to follow Jesus today.

Hey, can we celebrate those people that are looking at me right now, So excited for you?