How Love Wins Over Worry [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Perfect love casts out fear.

It means that you don't have to spend all your time trying to rebuke fear and develop strategies against fear that all that's really needed is a baptism and the perfect love of God the Father. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, No Worries, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

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That's 877-544-4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news? Perfect love casts out fear. It means that you don't have to spend all your time trying to rebuke fear and develop strategies against fear that all that's really needed is a baptism and the perfect love of God the Father.

We are in a new series called No Worries, and today we're going to go the deepest that we've gone to the very root of our fears, and we're going to see how it is that the love of God displaces those fears. And this is in 1 John, the little epistle that's at the very back of your Bible just before you get to Revelation, 1 John and chapter 4. I think it's the apostle, and I think he's near the end of his days. He's wise, he's old, and unlike so many of the others, he's lived long, wasn't martyred early, and he summarizes so much of what he knows to be true of the gospel and of God, and he keeps returning to love. And here we are in this beautiful and powerful text, 1 John, chapter 4, beginning at verse 15. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

We love because he first loved us. A little boy woke up in the middle of the night frightened, and he went into his parents' room, tugged on his mother and said, Mommy, can I sleep in your bed? And she said, Darlin', no, sweetie, there's nothing wrong, and no need to be afraid, and you need to go back to your room. Besides, Daddy needs to sleep in my bed.

And the little boy turned around and muttered under his breath, the big sissy. Scientists tell us that babies are born with only two fears, fear of falling and fear of loud noises. One scientist did a recent study of 500 adults, and they identified 7,000 fears. So this means that we've learned 6,998 fears since we were babies.

Sometimes you just need somebody to remind you that the things that you're worried about aren't even going to come to pass. I was reminded this week of Larry's story of Stuart Stephanie Hipp in our church there. Boy, Nathan, when he was three, they heard him over the baby monitor. He had wandered into the nursery and had taken his little guitar and was singing a song to his baby sister Abigail. They heard him singing over the lyrics were very simple. He was singing, there's nothing scary under your bed. I wish I knew the tune.

I'd like to have that one. There's nothing scary under your bed, nothing scary under your bed. There's nothing scary under your bed. There's nothing scary under your bed.

Sometimes you just need your big brother Jesus to remind you there's nothing scary under that bed. Most of the things that you worry about never happen. And that's a real important way to deal with our worry is we need to be a little bit more aware of just how much God's for us. And most of the things we worry about don't happen.

You know, I think it'd be better off for us if we just said, I'm not going to worry about any of it. And if every now and then something that we could have worried about does happen, well, we missed that one, but it's better than being the other way around where we miss it all the time by worrying about the things that never do happen. But today we're going to talk about something that's a lot deeper than just there's nothing scary under your bed because sometimes there is something scary under the bed, so to speak. Life does have some scary things, right? And sometimes there are very trying things that take place in our lives. So it's not deep enough to me to just say, oh, don't worry because it'll never happen.

And you're probably the same. We know that down underneath it that there's some deeper sense that we might indeed face difficult things. Now, what do we do with that kind of fear? And this is what John says at verse 18, there is no fear in love. So fear and love have nothing to do with each other, but perfect love casts out fear. One translation, one scholar translated it, perfect love flings fear out of doors. That love and fear cannot cohabit. And today we're going to see why and pray that God would baptize us in His love.

Our tendency to deal with the deepest problems and our deepest fears is just too often superficial. You know, our daughter, Abby, she just loves animals. She loves horses. She loves all animals and she loves dogs, loves dogs, loves all dogs. She loved our beagle Recy.

So, I mean, you just can't have more love for animal than she had for Recy who's now in beagle heaven. But she loved Recy so much that when she was little, one time I said, Abby, your birthday's coming up. What do you want for your birthday? And she said, I don't want anything.

I just want presents for Recy. One time there was an occasion where everybody was out of town said for me and Abby were home alone. And I said, tomorrow, it's just you and me, Abby, all day. I got the day off.

And what do you want to do? She said, I just want to have a Recy day. We spent a Recy day. We just played with the dog, went to the pet store, bought the dog some treats.

And it's like, if you want to bless me, bless Recy. She loves dogs so much. She's the kind of person that if she sees a dog that's roaming around the neighborhood, she's like, daddy, you got to stop. We got to go get that dog and save that dog that's on the loose. I'm like, I grew up with dogs wandering all over the place.

That dog's going to be fine. But she just loves dogs. She'd go up to any dog, big dogs, little dog, every kind of, which, which made me very surprised when some years ago I stumbled upon some old sermon notes. And in these old sermon notes I happened upon the introduction was me telling some illustration about Abby when she was two and a half being afraid of dogs.

I couldn't even remember if she was ever afraid of dogs. I, if I didn't have such detailed notes, I wouldn't even believe it, but I had the whole story recounted there. It was February of 2001 and it happened to be just a balmy February day. And we were in the backyard in our shirt sleeves and we were playing and Abigail and I were just swinging on the hammock. And these were my notes said that Abby heard a dog barking in the distance several houses away. And she said, daddy, hold me, hold me real tight.

The dog was in the distance. My wife was in the backyard and she overheard this fear of dog statement. And Abby said, I want to go inside. And I heard Ann mutter under her breath, a little girl ought to be able to enjoy playing in her own backyard.

This is ridiculous. And then she looked at me with that look. That look like I was to blame and I better fix the fear of dogs in the two year old. Well, how do you fix a fear of dogs in a two year old? I don't know how to fix a fear of dog in a two year old. And so I tried some different strategies. And the first thing I said to her was, I said, Abby, I said, those dogs are a long way away.

They're in a fenced yard, far away, several houses away. She was not being comforted. And I realized why, because I was teaching her essentially, yeah, you probably ought to be afraid of dogs unless they're far distance away from you in a fence. But I wanted more than that for her. I wanted her one day to be able to, to enjoy petting the soft fur of a dog, rolling around with a puppy of her own, maybe one day.

So I had to change my strategy. And I said, well, Abby, dogs are, dogs are nice. Dogs are sweet. Puppies are so cute. Dogs are so nice. And she said, sometimes they bite.

And I got ready to say, no, they don't. But I remember my brother Mark getting bitten by the mean dog in the neighborhood, bitten right on the shoulder. Granted, he had sort of jumped in a dog fight, but that's a different story. But I couldn't tell her that dogs never bite.

I got ready to say, no, sweetie, no, you misunderstand. They don't bite very often, just sometimes. I didn't think that was a very good strategy either to say dogs are unpredictable biters. So I decided to move over to a strong, powerful scriptural confession. And I said, Abby, God's not giving you a spirit of fear, but of love and power and a sound mind. And, and he didn't make you to be afraid of anything, not afraid of dogs.

Just say this with me. I am not afraid of dogs. And she said, I don't want to.

I said, why not? She said, because I am too afraid of dogs. So finally I said, well, let's just pray. And I just thought first, Lord, I want to just pray, shut those dogs up so I can play with my daughter in the backyard. But eventually I prayed something like, Lord, just help her not have a fear of dogs. And I really don't know what it was that delivered her from a fear of dogs to being a lover of all dogs. She'll go up to any dog now. I've almost feel like, you know, you ought to be a little bit afraid of that dog. Except to say, she grew up in love and perfect love casts out fear.

That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly? Envision it being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection. If you mess up, people don't roll their eyes, make fun of you or love you less. Imagine no more of that anxious feeling that you get deep down in your gut that makes you feel like the pressure is always on.

So you can never really relax. What you're imagining and longing for is a life with no shame. In Paradise, before sin came into the world, the Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship.

They were naked and felt no shame. Ever since the fall, the human heart has been riddled with shame. It's a lie that says, until you measure up, you can't be truly acceptable. Shame causes some to say, I'll try to be perfect in order to be accepted and others to decide, since I'll never measure up, I might as well rebel.

Either way, the heart is poisoned by shame and there is only one antidote, the grace of God in Jesus Christ. In his highly acclaimed book, Free Yourself, Be Yourself, Pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame, he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul. Discover freedom, joy and destiny as you shed performance-based living and let God take the shame off you for good. It's a life-changing, full-length book from Alan Wright.

Free yourself, be yourself. The Gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. Perfect love casts out fear. I think that we tend to deal with our fears in superficial levels and we maybe get a little more bold in facing them. But the first way that I would say that we try to deal with our fear is what I would call just hiding it.

And this is not dealing with it at all. Hiding our fears is denial or repression. You know, there's so many ways that you can cover things up, hide it, and just not deal with it at all. We human beings are just experts at finding a way not to deal with our own stuff. One of the things we do is just blame other people. If you can turn the attention to somebody else, then you don't have to look inside.

It makes me think of the Israelites when they got in the desert and they got a little thirsty and they started getting so worried that they were going to die in the desert. So what did they do? They turned all of their attention to Moses. Why did you bring us out here?

What did you do this for? This is all about you. Instead of saying, God, we're really afraid and we need to bring our fear into the presence of your perfect love. We deny things by pushing it down and pretending it's not there, not just by blaming other people, but sometimes by just getting angry.

I think Ed Welch, counselor and author, is right. He said, you look at your anger and think on it deep enough, you'll probably find behind it a fear. Sometimes as a parent, you get really angry about something and you realize, it's really my fear that if they continue behaving that way, that things won't go well for them and I'm really afraid. You can find a thousand different ways to kind of push it down, not deal with it. Detachment, I'm not afraid. I'm just not emotional. Controlling, I'm not afraid.

I just keep trying to keep people in line. But underneath it, there's our fear. And until we can acknowledge what we're afraid of, it can't get healed. The second level, I would just call it hushing our fears.

And this would be what psychologists might call masking it, covering it, anything to cover up. So that, see, anxiety feels awful, y'all. It just feels awful. And especially that gnawing, unidentified type of anxiety that comes with shame that just would just feel like, I don't measure up and yet I have to measure up and yet I don't know if I'm going to be able to measure up and it just makes us anxious on the inside. And we just hate that feeling.

We just hate it. We'll do almost anything to not feel it. And so substances and behaviors and any kind of way we can avoid it.

A third level I'd call handling, meaning like just managing it. And here's where it starts turning positive because this means learning to cope. And listen, beloved, coping is better than not coping. And coping, so coping is not a bad thing.

I mean, there are a lot of strategies to learn to cope with your fears. And sometimes you just need to get some new ways of thinking. That can be really helpful, right? What you might think of cognitive therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy, you start thinking differently about it. Sometimes it's good to get somebody to help you with that.

And that's good. I think that it's good to get medical help, medication. I think you need to think about that sometimes, especially if you continue to have certain fears.

I think you can help with that. Sometimes you can find some help by getting increased exposure to the thing that you fear incrementally. And then the more you get exposed to it, the more you learn to handle it until eventually it doesn't debilitate you. All of these different things. And they're wonderful.

They're coping, but they're still just coping, right? It's kind of like you say, Alan, can you see? Can you see well? And I'm like, are you talking about with glasses or without glasses? Without glasses, all I can tell is there are people out there. With glasses, I can see 20-20. I'm very thankful for my glasses. Glasses are a good thing. It's how I cope with my nearsightedness. I wish I was just cured of the nearsightedness, but it's a very fine way of coping.

So coping is not a bad thing. Let me mention a fourth thing that may sound strange at first, but I've seen this in many, many lives. And I think I saw it in my own life, probably more than I'd care to admit. And I would call it harnessing our fear. And by this, I mean that fear is like a wild stallion.

And some people find a way to put a bit in its mouth and just ride it. And just like, you know, if I'm going to have to have this anxiety, I might as well use it to my advantage. I mean, be totally unconscious. I think I sort of did this with fear of failing. I think a lot of my life, if I'm really honest about it, I look back, it wasn't so much that I had such good feelings about myself and I felt so full of faith that I just wanted to make a difference and that's why I tried really hard. I think a lot of my trying really hard has been because I was so afraid of failing that I just couldn't stand the idea of failing. And so sometimes I just out study everybody else for the test or out hustle everybody else because I just didn't want to fail.

But ultimately it's a very destructive thing. One of the most famous celebrities of all time, Madonna, was interviewed in Vanity Fair and she said, and all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I'm always struggling with that fear. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and I think I'm mediocre and uninteresting. And if I find a way to get myself out of that, then again and again my drive in life from this horrible fear of being mediocre and that's always pushing me, pushing me.

What's she saying? She's saying I've taken my fear and I've just harnessed it. But here's why it's bad. Fear is the opposite of the will of God for your life.

It is the energy resource of hell and eventually it destroys. So God has a different way, the final and the God's way I'd call healing our fears. And the reason I call it healing is because really in order for our fears to be healed, we need the perfect love of God to come to the wounded places of our souls. Perfect love casts out fear but apart from Christ, we don't experience perfect love. And if perfect love casts out fear, beloved, what does imperfect love do? Imperfect love introduces fear, right?

Think of any relationship where there is love. The greater the love, the greater the assurance of the love, then the less fear that there is. But the more imperfect the love, the more fear there is, right? If there's a relationship and someone is unfaithful in the relationship, it's the ultimate expression of the imperfection of love.

You say I love you but I have thought about leaving you and I have been unfaithful with someone else. What is introduced into the relationship is fear. How can you have trust when there is imperfect love? And nobody in this world has received from this world perfect love. The very best parent doesn't love perfectly. The very best spouse doesn't love perfectly. The very best friend doesn't love perfectly. People in this world don't experience perfect love. And so what happens is that all of us have had some imperfect love that has introduced fear into our lives. And when that imperfect love has been severely imperfect, it can be utterly debilitating. Alan Wright. We'll place a bookmark right here on how love wins over worry.

In the series No Worries, Alan is back with us in the studio sharing a parting good news thought before we go today here in just a moment. Can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly? Envision it. Being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection. If you mess up, people don't roll their eyes, make fun of you or love you less. In his highly acclaimed book, Free Yourself, Be Yourself, Pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame, he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul. Discover freedom, joy and destiny as you shed performance based living and let God take the shame off you for good. It's a life changing full length book from Alan Wright.

Free yourself, be yourself. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

So Alan is a preacher of God's word. I imagine this is one of those, the whole series really on Do Not Worry. It's both very simple and yet so difficult to process. Just don't worry, stop worrying. But then how do you do that?

Yeah. And that doesn't work. And that's one of the things we're dealing with today in Amara is just the superficial answers to worry don't work. And what John has touched on there in his little epistle is the deepest, deepest answer to our worries. Perfect love casts out fear. So Daniel, we're looking really at five different ways that we tend to try to handle our fears.

And only one of them is ultimately God's way and that's love. And that's what heals the fear. So instead of just trying to manage our fears, what we need is more and more experience of the perfect love of God. Yes, there may be strategies for our listeners that are dealing with specific fears. There may be a variety of strategies for dealing with that.

Certainly recommend counseling, medical help. And there are different strategies for managing our fears. But ultimately, what God's answer is His love, the assurance of God. So draw near to God and His perfect love. I think it will fling fear out of doors. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.