The Culture of Fear

Episode notes:

This program was made from the following series:

"Living Beyond Fear"

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Dannah Gresh: Is it always wrong to feel afraid when you face a difficult situation? Here’s Steve Canfield.

Steve Canfield: The question is not, Do you have fear? It’s not, Don’t be afraid. It’s, When I am afraid, I have a solution. I’m going to fear God more than I’m going to fear the culture, my circumstance, or whatever it happens to be. It’s not wrong to fear some things.

Dannah: Today, we’ll talk about fear.

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh. 

Fear can tempt us to do all sorts of things. It can lead us to make bad choices, it can cloud our judgment and make situations seem bigger than they really are. Fear can also drive us to be self-reliant. It can make us want to stick up for ourselves, shut people out to avoid vulnerability—or (here’s the big one) fear can drive us to God.

Steve Canfield is going to help us choose a healthy response to fear. Steve is one of the senior leaders of Life Action Ministries, the parent organization to Revive Our Hearts. He heads up one of the Life Action teams that travels to churches around the country, leading them through a time of seeking the Lord for personal and corporate revival.

Steve addressed the staff of Life Action and Revive Our Hearts about the topic of fear, and it was so good we wanted to share it with you.

Usually on Revive Our Hearts Weekend we bring you several messages on a theme, but today let’s just focus on this one message and let God’s Word show us how to take all our fears to the Lord.

Here’s Steve.

Steve: Because heaven rules, we can move beyond fear. We live in a culture today where fear is just overwhelming us, and the problem is that we have not dealt with fear God’s way. The most oft-repeated command in the Word of God is what? If you think about it, if you didn’t know the answer to that, and you thought, What would it be that God put down and said in His Word more than anything else? What command would it be?

Would it be “pray”? We see all kinds of direction about prayer. Would it be that God tells us that we’re to forgive? That’s an important thing. Would it be that God tells us to love? The Bible says the greatest of these is love. What is the command that God gives over and over? To give thanks? To witness? To give money? What is it God has said over and over and over again, “This is my command to you . . .”?

The most oft-repeated command in the entire Word of God—what is it; do you know? “Fear not.” There has to be some significance to that. Why did God choose, “Don’t be afraid, fear not,” as the thing He’s going to say over and over and over again?

Now, the beauty about preaching on fear is there’s such a plethora of verses. I want you to just listen to a few as the team shares. Just listen to these verses about fear.

Man: “Be strong and courageous; do not fear or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you; He will not leave you or forsake you.” (Deut. 31:6)

Woman: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.” (Ps. 46:1–3)

Man: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Don’t let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)

Woman: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not perfected in love. We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:18–19)

Man: “Then you will walk in your way securely and your foot will not stumble. If you lie down, you will not worry; and when you lie down you will sleep in peace.” (Prov. 3:23–24)

Woman: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps. 27:1)

Man: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (Ps. 56:3–4)

Steve: We could go on and on and on, because the Bible is filled with promises and commands and instructions about fear.

I was thinking this through, and I thought, Who was the most fearless person in the Bible? As you would make your list of fearless people, we see it modeled in life over and over again. I made a short list of people. 

I thought of Jael. Do you remember her? She was the first volleyball player in the Bible—she spiked Sisera. He was a Canaanite leader. Anyway, she was pretty brave.

I thought about Esther. I mean, Esther practiced civil disobedience. Walking in on the king was a sentence of death unless he gave the thumbs-up sign. That was pretty fearless.

I thought about Daniel, again, practicing civil disobedience to pray when he was told not to. And his buddies Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood for what they knew was right. That took a lot of courage. They were fearless.

I thought about Gideon, who with overwhelming odds attacked an enemy. I thought about Joshua. What a ridiculous battle plan God gave him, to march around the city and then blow their trumpets? What kind of battle plan was that? What courage did that take?

I thought about Paul and the disciples. It sounds like a sixties rock group—Grooving in Gethsemane! But they had a lot of courage in all the things that they did.

But as I made my list, and as you would make your list, probably you can’t go wrong as you think about David. I mean, here David was a study in fearlessness. As a teenager, he’s the guy out there facing the giant. Here’s what David wrote in Psalm 27. “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v. 1)

What did David have to be afraid of? I’ll tell you what he had to be afraid of: the whole world was against him! You’re going to go through your day, in our culture today, and half the people you meet disagree with you on about everything. At least half. David was in a situation where the whole world disagreed with him. I mean, everybody hated Israel; they were the superpower of the world. They all hated them. 

Then, David is kicked out of his own country. Saul tries to pin him to the wall with a spear, so David’s on the run. He runs to his enemies; he flees from them; he ends up in a cave someplace with just a few rejects. Here is a man who has the whole world against him.

He had all kinds of things to fear. Whom did he have to fear? The whole world! But instead, he said, “I have no one to fear but God.” 

You sit there in your situation and say, “Yes, but I have some difficult situations.” I know our country is so divided, and people are disagreeing right and left. But David . . . maybe he was fearful. Actually, here’s what he didn’t say. He didn’t say, “I’m not afraid.” What did he say? He said, “When” in Psalm 56. “When I am afraid . . .” The reality is, David did have fear. 

The question is not, Do you have fear? It’s not, Don’t be afraid. It’s, When I am afraid, I have a solution. I’m going to fear God more than I’m going to fear the culture, my circumstance, or whatever it happens to be. It’s not wrong to fear some things. In fact, there are some healthy fears. It’s not a problem to be afraid of situations that are going to be dangerous. The question is not, Are you going to fear? The question is, What will you fear? How are you going to respond to that fear?

Dannah: That’s Steve Canfield, challenging our hearts on the topic of fear. He’ll be right back to help us better understand how we can respond to fear. But before he comes, I want to invite you to study this topic further. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has written a booklet called Facing Our Fears. Maybe you’ve been listening to Steve and thinking, I want to handle fear better. Going through this booklet would be an excellent way to follow up.

When you support Revive Our Hearts this month with a gift of any size, we’ll send you the booklet Facing Our Fears. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on the pink “Donate” button. That’s ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. 

Steve Canfield is back with two questions for us.

Steve: Number one: Who or what are you going to choose to fear? (These are two questions for our consideration.) Who or what will you fear? Then, what are you going to do when you have fear?

My father-in-law is going in for surgery today on his kidneys. He has some apprehensions. That’s normal! But he is not fearful, because he knows God, and he trusts in God. He’s choosing to go in apprehensive of surgery, which is understandable, but he’s choosing beyond that to know, I have a God who’s in charge of that.

Are you going to respond to fear with boldness or cowardice? The Bible doesn’t say, “Don’t feel afraid.” God never condemns us for having emotions. God created those emotions. We all have things we’re fearful of.

I heard about a little boy whose mom was tucking him into bed one night, and there was a big thunderstorm outside. He was a little bit tense. As she got ready to flip off the light, a big thunderbolt hit, and the noise rumbled, and the windows shook. He said, “Mommy, Mommy! Would you please spend the night in my room?”

She flipped on the light and walked over to him and comforted him and said, “Honey, I have to sleep in Daddy’s room tonight.” 

He thought, Why is he such a big sissy?

We all have fears, okay? Maybe yours is not of thunderstorms or lightning or whatever. We all have fears, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the question for us has to be, As we look at those fears, are we going to see them from God’s perspective or from ours?

I don’t fear weather. I do have some fears. I fear being smothered by all the pillows my wife has put on our bed. That’s one of my biggest fears. (laughter) I said, “Honey, why do we have all these pillows?” 

She says, “Well, they’re for decorations.” 

Are we giving tours of our house, giving tours of our bedroom, so people can say, “Look at all those pillows! You must be doing really well.” I guess I’m saving them for the apocalyptic pillow fight at the end of the world, or whatever.

But there are certain fears all of us have. There are things we all wrestle with, and that’s not a problem. Fear is an emotion, however, that can control you, and that’s where fear becomes a problem. The problem with fear is its ability to control, its ability to encapture us. So we have to make sure that we’re fearing the right thing. If you fear God, it will motivate you to live in personal revival and godly, kingdom living. If you fear the wrong thing, it’s going to motivate you to worry and anxiety.

What is the opposite of fear? What’s your definition of the opposite of fear?

Some might say, “The opposite of fear is peace.” That would be a good answer. One of the evidences of living a revived life is living in peace. Jesus said in John, “My peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives give I unto you. Neither let your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).

What does that look like? What does this revived life look like? We are in a revival ministry. We’re calling the nation, the world, churches, individuals to revival. But it starts with saying, “God, start in my life.” We want to see the world revived, but we’re not taking care of our own lives. We’re living unrevived lives, asking the world to do something we’re not willing to do ourselves. 

We were talking about churches and the size of churches. Why? Because so many people we’ve been putting in our churches aren’t even close to the circle. They don’t even know Christ. They just know some country club they’ve come to all of their lives.

As we’re going into churches and saying to the nation and the world, “We want you to have a revived life,” we better be modeling it, first of all, in our own lives. What does that look like?

Take your Bible and turn to 2 Timothy 1, if you would. Second Timothy is part of what we call the pastoral epistles. Timothy was a pastor; Paul was his mentor. So Paul is writing to Timothy in this epistle, giving him some advice about the days ahead. Paul commissioned him to the normal Christian life. The revived life is really the normal Christian life. If we live the normal Christian life, then we’re living the revived life.

What did Paul expect Timothy’s life to look like? Here’s what it says in 2 Timothy 1:3. 

I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience, the way my forefathers did, as I continually remember you in my prayers night and day, longing to see you, even as I recall your tears, so I may be filled with joy. I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I’m sure is in you as well.

For this reason I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 

Now, we can’t do that in our culture; you can’t lay hands on people. But in that culture they would lay hands on people to kind of commission them for ministry. Then he says this in verse 7:

For God has not given us a spirit of [fear, your version may say “timidity.”] but of power, of love, and of discipline. (2 Tim. 1:3–7 NASB)

That is what Paul expected Timothy’s life to look like. God’s not given us a spirit of fear, but of courage, of power, of love, and of self-control.

This is a four-point message, but I’m only going to preach on one of them. I don’t have time to preach on all four. I’m going to talk about one. Look really quickly at these four things.

If you want to know what the revived life looks like, here’s what we’re asking you to look like, because this is what we want the church to look like. We want people to see in us the courage, the power, the love, and the self-control that says we are living in that circle.

Now, in Scripture there are three spirits. There’s the Holy Spirit, and when you see that in Scripture, it will be capitalized. That’s God’s Spirit. There are evils spirits—we’re not talking about that right now. Then there’s our spirit. 

When we talk about the spirit here we’re talking about our attitude. Somebody says, “He has a bad spirit.” What he’s saying is he has a bad attitude. When we are converted, when God comes to indwell us, something changes on the inside, and the new man. The new spirit that we have is one of courage, one of power, one of love, and one of self-control. 

So Paul says to Timothy, “Rekindle that new man inside of you, that courage and power and love and self-control, so the world, so your church can see what the revived life looks like.” If we’re not modeling that, if we’re just talking about principles and facts and not modeling that, then we really have nothing to say to our church.

I believe the church and many believers have been crippled by timidity and fear, because we’re worried about everything! Why? Because we watch the news, probably. People say, “Well, I have to see what’s going on in the world.” I’ll tell you what the news is going to be tonight: it’s going to be bad. It was bad last night, and it will be bad tomorrow night. You already know. So people live glued to their social media. If you’re getting your view of the world from social media, you’re foolish! We live on social media, and we let that form and mold our attitudes and our response to life.

A revived life is not characterized by worry and timidity and fear. Stating it positively, we need to live in boldness, courage, and fearlessness.

The middle name of one of our grandsons is Bold, Josiah Bold. I thought that was interesting when Ben named him Bold. Well, he was born on the way to the hospital in the parking lot, so he came out bold. We want that. Ben said, “I want my son to be bold for Christ.” We all need to have that be the word that characterizes our lives. We’re not going to move beyond fear if we’re not willing to live courageously and powerfully.

I’m going to talk about courage and boldness, but look at the other three really quickly. Power—when the Holy Spirit works in those of us to whom He is given, He works in power, in strength, to fight the good fight of God; power to patiently endure, but also to fight good blows for Christ. Power, for instance, to be steadfast in resisting temptation. One of the characteristics of saying, “God, start with me,” is the power of the Spirit in you.

The third one is love. Love is basically defined as self-surrender. That’s what love is. When we get fearful, we stop living, we stop ministering. We’re told to isolate and insulate and hibernate in our culture right now. We need to commensurate, to participate, to accelerate! We shouldn’t be living in a cave! We need to be out there, investing ourselves and volunteering and being involved in people’s lives.

The problem is we have let our culture tell us, “No, you just need to hide away someplace.” That is not what God tells us to do. In 1 John 4, “There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out all fear. For fear has to do with punishment.” You heard this verse earlier. “Whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (v. 18). If you’re living in fear, you’re not living in the love of God.

The reality is, fear is about what we love. Fear is about what we love, and if you are fearful—listen, it’s right to fear God in a good sense of reverential respect. If you’re fearing God and who He is, then you’re going to be doing the right things. If you’re fearing the wrong things, if you love yourself, if you love your comfort, your convenience, your health (whatever it is), then you’re going to be a mess. We fear something that we love, and so we fear losing it. We fear losing our status or losing our position. Love for others leads us to deeds of self-surrender, love which draws its strength from sacrifice, which may benefit a friend or a neighbor or a stranger.

The fourth one is self-government or self-controlled. We need to be self-controlled. That’s the power which a man or a woman who lives—mixing with the world, yes, exposed to temptations and pleasures—is able to regulate or keep themselves in subjection, to keep those passions and desires and impulses where they need to be. Victory over fear is a choice.

Some of us are making wrong choices. I want you to start making a list of your fears. This is not to hand in, not for anybody else, just for you. But I want you to start writing down, what are the things that make you tense up? What are the things that freak you out? I want you to make a list. All of us have those; I have those. I want you to start writing them. It may be things as simple as the dark. 

Some people are just afraid of the dark. I used to be afraid of the dark. I still don’t like the dark. I’m not totally in fear of it, but when I was a child I was, in grade school. I remember I had two younger sisters, and I was in late grade school. The light switch to the hall that was in our house was about three steps down the hall, and it was dark. I remember having my little sister go turn the light on for me. I was afraid to walk three steps into the dark.

We understand that with children. I heard about a young boy who was about five, and his mom said, “Honey, go to the pantry and get me some tomato soup.”

He said, “Mommy, it’s dark in there!”

She said, “It’s okay; Jesus will be there with you.”

So he walked up to the door, and he just didn’t want to go in, so he opened the door and said, “Hey Jesus, if You’re in there, can You hand me some canned soup?”

That’s kind of the way we are. We believe it, but we’re still not going to live it, we’re not going to practice that.

The fact is, you can be afraid . . . I’m not saying you’re apprehensive about dark things. But some of us are in the dark about our jobs. “What’s my job going to look like?” We’re in the dark about what’s going to happen with our family. There are fears that we have about things we’re in the dark about.

Maybe your fear is the fear of death. I believe this: a person’s attitude towards death tells you something about their theology. 

There was a John Hopkins’ doctor who said, “We don’t know why it is that people who worry die sooner than non-worriers, but we know that it is a fact.” People who worry die sooner than non-worriers. It’s something I’ve said throughout the entire pandemic. The reason we are so fearful is we have a poor theology of death. Why would we fear death? I mean, death has driven us to such unhealthy extremes, not even during the pandemic, but before. People live in such unhealthy fears about health. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be healthy, but it’s unhealthy the fears we have.

Dannah: That’s Steve Canfield, reminding us to take all our fears to the Lord. To hear more from Steve, go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, click on today’s episode and there you’ll find a link to Steve Canfield’s teaching on fear called “Living Beyond Fear.”

Song:

How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word.
What more can He say than to you He hath said?
To you who for refuge to Jesus hath fled.

Fear not I am with thee, oh be not dismayed.
For I am thy God, I will still give thee aid.
I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by My righteous omnipotent hand.

When through firey trials the pathway shall lie,
My grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply.
The flames shall not hurt thee, I only desire,
Thy dross to consume and they gold to refine.¹

Did you happen to catch a phrase from Steve that our friend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth uses a lot? Steve said we can face fear with the knowledge that heaven rules.

That will be the theme of the True Woman '22 Conference: Heaven Rules! We will be meeting to remind ourselves that God is in control over the entire world. The conference is coming September 22–24 in Indianapolis. I hope you’ll join me and Nancy, along with Kay Arthur, Karen Ellis, Mary Kassian, and many others for the True Woman '22 conference. For more details visit ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on the Revive Our Hearts logo.

The team that helps put together Revive Our Hearts Weekend helps me not to fear. I know I’m in good hands thanks to God working through them. That team includes: Hugh Duncan, Blake Bratton, Rebekah Krause, Justin Converse, Michelle Hill, and for Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

Song:

That soul though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I will never, no never forsake.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is a production of Revive Our Hearts, calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

Fernando Ortega. “How Firm a Foundation.” This Bright Hour ℗ 1997 Myrrh Records, a Division of Word Entertainment, Inc.

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