Fear and Desire (Revised)

The past week was a busy week for me. Lots of reading and preparing for yesterday. Yesterday, Bill was outta town, so it was up to me to preach the Word and lead the adult Sunday School.
The services went very well, and as usual my sermon in the second service was better than first...I need to really work on that more than anything with my sermon deliveries. Not that it was overly noticable, but I'd like to see more consistancy in my sermon deliveries. I preached on Mark 2:1-12, where Jesus healed a paralytic. I hit home on the desire aspect of the four men that brought the paralytic to Jesus and used that as a transition to talk about our own desires.
Some would say that desire is bad. I am going to have to disagree. Now, when I was in college, I probably would have said that desire was bad...I was also a bit of a puritan at the time, thank God that changed! I think that God has given us desire to see beyond the walls of this life. When we desire, we believe that the same old thing is not enough and we would also say that "getting by" is not right either. But in the Christian life we should desire more! If we didn't, and even looking back at our Christian forefathers and if they hadn't desired, would we be saved? This is not a question of our own merit, but would have the Gospel spread without desire? Shouldn't there be a desire in each heart of the Christian to want the world to know about our Lord and Savior? I think so. And desire is what makes the faith grow. Desire to see a changed world, desire to see our children and children's children growing up in the faith. God desired for us to be a part of His Kingdom and He works that in and through us through the Sacraments (Baptism and Communion) and through His Word. When we look at how or why some churches grow, isn't it the desire of the people that worship there that their churches grow? And when people desire that, when they don't stop at the door of the church to welcome people in, God's family grows...He uses His instrument of the Church to bring into His family those whom He desires.
This idea/talk of desire I got from John Eldredge's book "The Journey of Desire." Some might call him a heterodox guy or a flat out heretic, but couldn't some of his stuff provide learning opportunities? Yes. From this book, I'm not so sure that he would have either of those two labels. It is a very Christ-centered book, looking to the desires that He has put into us. (And a whole lot more than that!) One quote, that I used in my sermon yesterday, is this: "Christianity has nothing to say to the person who is completely happy with the way things are. It's message is for those who hunger and thirst--for those who desire life as it was meant to be. Why does Jesus appeal to desire? Because it is essential to his goal: bringing us life." I don't think that it hits any bit closer to home than that. Jesus restores our life, sure not completely as it were before the fall, but our standing before God as most certainly changed. Jesus even said that he came to bring us life. (John 10:10) There are many people out there who think that they are happy with their life, but deep down they are hurting and have patched over the hurt with "things" in their lives to make everything seem okay, but the reality is without Jesus, no one can truly be happy. Heck, the Christian life isn't easy nor always happy, but Jesus does restore the life of a Christian

For Adult Sunday School yesterday, I contiuned the series from the book, "If you want to walk on water, you've got to get out of the boat." It's a pretty good book...I've only read the chapter that I taught, well and the one before that. I taught chapter six, which is all about fear. Before reading this book, I had an idea of what some of my fears were, but afterwards, I was able to pinpoint where some of my greater fears are and what they really do to me! There are 5 areas that fear effects- loss of self-esteem, loss of destiny, loss of joy, loss of authentic intimacy, loss of availability to God.
With self-esteem, the issue is fight or flight. If you fight, you will boost your self-esteem, if you take flight, you will not.
With destiny, in fear you will never experience the potential God has for you- if we are always running from the challenge, how are we to grow? Growth always takes risk and risk always involves fear.
With joy, fear destroys joy. One of the issues that arises here is the "what if" factor. "What if I get hurt...what if I get rejected...what if, what if, what if...?!" This is where I am the worst! In the book, and I used this in class, it talked about those who have higher than average IQs, those who are then more creative, have a huge issue with this...which is me (not to sound like a jerk, but I do have an above average IQ...about 144). So, yeah, all week long I was thinking about how to present this part of the book...instead of doing it in a good way (?), I decided to open mouth and insert foot...I made an ass out of myself! I pretty much said that I have a high IQ...oh, man, it was more funny than embarassing. So, I actually said it twice...the second time after I said it, I was like, "I need to go repent!" Everyone got a good laugh out of that!
With authentic intimacy, it goes back to Adam and Eve and really we've been hiding ever since then...behind smiles and greetings we don't mean and holding back on things that we really want to say.
With availability to God, we get tricked by fear in thinking that God won't really be there to help us. And if we never trust God and take a step of faith, many "what ifs" become "what may have beens." The class went very, very well in my estimation.
So, going through this whole lesson, brought one of my biggest fears to the surface that I just needed to attack head on. Which I was able to accomplish this past weekend. For keeping things a little anonymous here, I'm not going to dive into what I did...you can email me (or comment me and I'll email you) about that one. But let's just say that some words of wisdom that were Jason Berbs' blog pushed me to do what I needed to do: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain. I've done just that...

Ed. Note: I was having some diffuculty with the pictures on the first go around...this one obviously has them!