Barry Meguiar 00:03
Hi everybody. I want to talk to you for a few moments about fear. Apparently, it’s a big issue. Karen, I have had no fear for decades, so I have to go back and actually remind myself what it’s like to be fearful. But I was reading a study the other day that said that over 70% of all Christians now, I don’t know what they mean by Christians. There’s Christians and there’s Christians. It didn’t stipulate, but it did say that over 70% of Christians are living in fear. How is that possible? You have Holy God Almighty all over you, directing your steps and protect you and doing everything and you’re living in fear. Do you know that it’s been said, I actually have a sign in my house that says 365 times in the Bible, the Bible says fear not. Now, I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, but it’s certainly in that area. It’s a lot if there’s anything that God says to us is, don’t fear. Fear not. I thought about that a bit. And you know when, when you’re living in fear what you know what you’re saying to God. You’re saying to God, I don’t trust you. What does that say to God? I mean, what does that really say to God? How does that hurt God? How would you like your child to say, Dad, Mom, I don’t trust you. It stabbed you to the heart. And according to this poll, where 70% of Christians are doing exactly that.
Barry Meguiar 01:45
You know what’s worse, the author of fear is Satan. You do know that, right? And when he traps you in fear, he’s laughing at you. Now, now think about those two things, one, you’re telling God you don’t trust him, and the other hand, Satan’s laughing at you. I don’t think either one of these are good options. So how do you get out of fear? How do you get how do you escape fear? And the more you want to escape it, the more you have, right? And there’s so many things to be fearful about, my health, my marriage, my kids, my schooling, my job, my country, the world. You know most of that we’re worried about stuff. I’d be really worried about things we can’t change anyway. So why are we worrying about them? It doesn’t matter. But that’s, that’s where we are. We love to fear. Satan is the author of fear. I think fear is his number one weapon against Christians. There’s about 10% of us in America, 30 some odd million of us that actually know God are born again believers on our way to heaven, and our goal and our ministry is to ignite that 30 million and we ignite American revival one person time. We can do this. Over 70% of the of the church already have a Christian friend of their life. We can do this. We can actually do this and spend no money. I mean, we just need to do it. But, but we’re not. Why? Mainly because of fear, because he has paralyzed the church in fear and laughing at us, I would go beyond that. He’s sterilizing the church. He sterilized the church. You know why? Because if you’re living in fear, you can’t share your faith. You just can’t how do you share your faith out of fear?, you don’t have faith yourself. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. I mean, the scriptures are overwhelming on this subject, and yet we practice it. I’ve heard it from the pulpit. Pastor is talking about how they’re struggling with something, and they’re worried about, what are you worried about? God’s on your side. If God’s in it, God’s ahead of you. How do you get to that place of no fear? It’s very easy. I guess, explain to you right quick, but, but this thing of God dealing with your fear is the scriptures are, are plentiful in explaining what it means when you have fear, he also explains what it means when you don’t have fear. Okay, let me give you a little bit of a contrast here. James chapter. Don’t you love James? I mean, it’s the only book in the Bible I’ve actually memorized. I memorized last year James, the one book I memorize in its totality, there’s it’s so rich. And the first chapter of James, he says, I’ll answer your. Prayers. I will Holy God, I went to your prayers, unless, you’re unless you’re wavering, unless you’re mixing fear with faith. And you know what he says? He says it’s like; you’re like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and toss you’re, you’re a double minded man, unstable in all your ways. And then the killer shot, I mean, the debilitating shot, the thing just wipes you out and tells you, you can’t live there. He says, Don’t let that person expect to receive now, God can do anything. Thank God he’s answered my prayers when I didn’t deserve it. He can do that. He’s sovereign, but he says, don’t let that person think that I’ll answer their prayers. Believe it, trust that I’ll answer prayers, because there’s no reason for that trust. That’s where it would sound like most Christians are today, walking around in fear because they don’t believe they can’t have they don’t have a status to believe that God is going to direct their steps. Oh, but when you have wholehearted faith, when you have faith, then everything happens. Everything happens, that verse you all know, Proverbs 3:5 trust in the Lord with your whole heart, right, not halfhearted. When you love God, you love God. I mean, there’s no, there’s, there’s, there’s nothing, even remotely close. Love God fills your life. It pushes the darkness back when you trust God, it pushes fear back, and fear is gone. It’s banished from your life. You can live there. Would you like to live if you if you’re literally, you’re struggling in fear right now, and you can’t imagine how to get out of the grips of fear with all the stuff that’s going on. Would you like to know how to escape? I got to tell you right now. So simple, and you never would have guessed it. It is the solution. Is doing the one thing you don’t want to do and may never have done. Share your faith. What? What is sharing my faith have to do with getting rid of fear? I’m afraid to share my faith, and that’s part of it, or afraid to share right? Oh, I don’t have the right words. I won’t know what to say. I’ll embarrass myself. I don’t have the right person. We have all these excuses. Do you know we actually have a place at our website most frequent excuses that takes every one of those excuses and destroys them? He didn’t say, go into the world. All you who are gifted, or all of you who quote eloquent scripture. Do you know the most, most, most aggressive face sharing Christians are new Christians, and they don’t even know scripture. You know who they know? They know God, and they’re open, and God is overwhelming them, and their heart is so big, and God’s filling their life, and the God flows through them out to everybody else around them, that should be you, that should be all of us for the rest of our lives. And that pushes back fear. There’s actually a promise to that. If you’ve watched me very much, you know the promise, but I’ll bring it more pointedly now, and that is the Scripture says, All things work together for good. Do you understand if you could really believe that God is promising you to make everything in your life work together for good? That’s the end of fear. There’s no more fear. There just isn’t but how do you get there? Oh, I know that scripture, but things don’t work together for me. That must be for somebody else. I don’t know. I know that scripture, you know? No, no, it’s God’s promise. God didn’t play around. God is God. Is God? Do you hear me? God is speaking to you right now, and he’s saying to you right now, I will make everything in your life work together for good. He’s saying that to you, if you follow the two provisos in that scripture, you know we’re not good at quoting all scriptures. We paraphrase. We don’t like to paraphrase, but we do. Oh, all things work together for good. We leave it there. Oh, some sermons will say, when you love God. I grabbed a hold of this scripture 50 years ago, and I’ve heard it preached 100 times since, and maybe four or five times I’ve ever heard him preach. Quote the entire scripture, which says, I’ll make everything work together for good to those who love me. And that’s all out love just fly down. I love you, God, more than anything else, I just love you. I love you. God, you owe me totally everything, to those who love me. And then he, he gives it to Scripture, what that means to. To those who live for my purpose. What’s God’s purpose? Well, you don’t have to question that. You know, there’s a lot of theological arguments going on. I can’t even figure out how theological can spend a lifetime. Hung up on a certain scripture that’s meaningless as far as getting saved. But people do listen. They don’t. You know what God’s purpose is. Everybody knows what God’s purpose is. God made us for heaven. He didn’t make us heard. He made us for heaven. And his, his purpose to those who live for His purpose, His purpose is to seek and save the lost. We say that so freely. We say it so often. Leverage its men, its meaning. He said that when you live your life to seek and save the lost, it mimics what he said earlier. It duplicates what he said earlier, when they asked him, What’s the most important commandment, if you love God, you keep His commandments. What’s the most commandments. What’s the most important commandment? He says, when you love your neighbor as yourself, it is just as important as loving me. In fact, the two go together. You can’t love God without sharing your faith. I got to tell you, if you love God, you’re going to share your faith, whatever you love, whatever you’re excited about, you’re going to talk about, guaranteed. I had a great hamburger last night. I’ll just say this, but I had another one last night. It was, it was crazy good, and I’ve been telling people about it. Whatever you’re excited about and love you’re going to talk about, it’s natural, it’s human, it’s what you do. You can’t stop yourself. How often are you talking to people about God?
Barry Meguiar 11:44
The degree to which you’re talking to people about God is the degree to which you love God. I’m not saying you’re not on your way to heaven. I’m not saying that. But does he? Does he hold your heart? Are you excited what he’s doing in your life. Holy God lives in you and has a plan for you and is taking you to heaven, and he’s giving you the opportunity to lead other people too. Are you excited about that or not? If you’re not, you need to do an inventory check. You need to start thinking about what’s the priority of your life. Yeah. But when you do the bottom line is, it’s so simple. I think it’s the second most important promise of Scripture in the entire Bible, after John 3:16 because he says, John 3:16 of course, is you accept the Lord Jesus, Christ, your Lord and Savior, and he gives you eternal life. But after that, he says, from now until you get to heaven, I’m going to make everything in life work together for good. If you do two things, love me, and when you love me, you’ll share me. And when you’re in that mode, nothing can hurt you, nothing can stop you, unless God allows us. And that’s freedom. It’s freedom. It’s unbelievable. I told this story often, but it bears repeating right now. I had a joint venture partner. My family sold to a joint venture partner, and after five years, he took over my board, and I found out the next way he’s gonna throw me out of my business. I was 65 years old. It’s my family business. My grandfather started in 1901, and now I’m 65 years old, and my joint venture partner owned half the company, took over the board and tomorrow morning to throw me out of my business. Okay? And this is my response that night. I’ve heard the surest part of my life. You’ve heard this story probably many times. It bears repeated, because some of you haven’t heard it, but, but it proves the point. I’m living proof. I’m 82 years old. I live, I live the life he talks about. I’m a product of the promise he’s given to all of us. And I say, God, I ask you for nothing, nothing. Because, you know, I live for your purpose. No, it’s not a gray area. All day long. I’m focused on moving everybody closer to you all day long. There’s no gray area here. You know I live for your purpose, and I know you under your word. And you said all things, you make all things work together for good, for those who do what I do, and I went to sleep, here’s the proof positive. And I often say, God strike me dead this moment, if it’s not exactly what happened, because it is. I curled in bed. I went to sleep immediately. I did not toss and turn. I never got up. I woke up fresh the next morning and went to my attorney’s office. We’re taking this conference call. Everybody was in their conference rooms, and I won’t go into the details now, why, I can’t tell you this. Within eight minutes, he turned, God, turned my joint venture partner upside down to the point where he was cussing at me. He and his team were there saying G to this and F this. And I went, they couldn’t see me. And I Billy laughed, but I just couldn’t believe it. I just, I just said, when all in I said, God, I had nothing. I was toast, but I had you. That’s all I needed. And you came through for me as I knew you would. This is the promise. When you have the promise, when you’re sharing your faith, it’s no fear. Do you get it? I brought this book Ignite Your Life. It will ignite your life. This is the message of our ministry. It will ignite your life, when you share your faith, when you share God, that’s the only thing he’s asked for you to do for the entirety of your life. When you do that, it ignites your life. And the byline of our book is defeat fear, effortlessly, effortlessly, automatically, just by living the life and the promise and the direction he’s given you. He’s called the Great Commission to move everybody, every day, closer to Jesus, starting right now. God bless you.
