Obedience on the Other Side of Fear

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Okay, so we have been preaching through the book of Acts over the last few months. We're going to be there this morning. We're actually going to preach the second part of kind of the full story that we talked about last week in Acts chapter 9. I want you to take a moment. Most of us don't have to think very hard about this moment or about this thing. What I find is that it is usually not so much in the background of our thoughts. Sometimes it kind of sits to the back burner, but often it comes forward to think about the last time you knew. Not that you thought, not that you had a sense of, the last time that you knew that you knew that you knew exactly what it was you were supposed to do in this specific moment or with this specific thing or in this specific instant, and you didn't do it. Like, yeah, I know. The shame inside of me reminds me all the time of the thing that I was supposed to do, the word I was supposed to say, the action I was supposed to take, and I didn't

Do it. And we didn't do it, not because we were uncertain about whether or not it was the thing that we should do. Not because we weren't exactly sure if it was God speaking to us or not. Not because we were confused about His will in this particular instance or situation. The only reason that we did it or didn't do it was not because of any uncertainty that we had. It was just because we were scared. We're scared. Maybe you kind of heard too many things, too many opinions from too many people about this particular thing and you got in your head and it got in your head. Maybe the risk felt too real. Maybe the outcome felt too uncertain, like, "Oh, I think, but maybe not. I don't know if I should." See, we remember past failures. We live out of insecurity a lot. We can get paralyzed in kind of this loop of dreaming and thinking about doing something. Dreaming and thinking about starting something. Knowing that we should, but being too scared about what will come so we don't and we get paralyzed. Listening chiefly to the sound of the insecurity within us rather than the God that's calling us.

We have a word for that gap, that gap between knowing what it is we should do and doing it or not to do it. In the Christian experience, we can call that gap a lot of things. We're really, really good at calling it the things that it's not. I was going to do that, but it just didn't seem like the wise decision. I'm just taking a little bit more time to discern God's will in this instance. And certainly there are things that we need to do in wisdom and there are situations where we need to truly discern whether or not this is God's will or not. Maybe we call it patience or wisdom or waiting for God to open the door. I'm waiting on the Lord, but the reality is as we know, we're not waiting on the Lord. The Lord is waiting on us. We're not having any issues discerning what he's calling us to do. We know it, we feel it, we sense it. The Holy Spirit has impressed it upon our hearts and we, if we're honest with ourselves, should name the gap as being not wisdom, not prudence or patience, not discernment or waiting on the Lord. We can just name the gap honestly

And say it's fear. We're just afraid. No baptizing it in Christian language to make us feel better about ourselves, to impress the person next to us who sees the paralysis and insecurity, but to just name it for what it is. I know God is calling me to do this. I am like fairly certain that God needs me to do that. Say this, be there. I'm just too afraid and I don't know how to step from fear to faith. See, if we let it, if we let it, fear will steal both the joy that we can have in the present and can steal at the same time the hope that we have for the future. Fear can steal not just from you, both in your present and your future, but it steals from those that would be blessed and benefit from the thing that God is ready to do in your life and through your life. Anyone ever, don't let me down please, anyone ever hear the name Emily Dickinson? Okay, thank you Jesus. Emily Dickinson, one of the most famous and influential poets in the English speaking world, has

Over 1800 poems published and 1790 of them were published after her death by her sister. Because Emily was convinced that her writing was trash that no one would want to read it and that it was, it could not benefit anyone else. And so we all are getting the benefit of the beauty of her writing, but she never got to experience the joy of seeing the way it blessed others because she was so fearful of stepping from into this like faithful position. Here's what I want you to know, what I think we should know this morning before we open the text today is that you're not the first person to stand in the gap between your fear and the faithful step. And the God who meets people there in scripture is the same God who's standing in the gap with you and for you this morning. Acts chapter 9, the first part of Acts chapter 9 is where Saul, the great persecutor of the church and hunter of Christians we talked about last week was encountered not by another piece of knowledge or information about Jesus. Oh, if I just would have known that, then that would have

Changed my whole opinion. Now he had all the information that he could possibly ever want and it hadn't transformed his heart. It was encounter with the resurrected Jesus that changed him and changed him radically. And he was struck with this blindness that had no real rational explanation other than the glory of God coming upon him in a significant moment. But that wasn't the end. That's not the end of the story. So in the rest of Acts chapter 9, we meet kind of the other character in this little chunk of Saul's life and his name is Ananias. Obviously not the same Ananias from Acts chapter 5, right? Different Ananias, different guy. But I want to read to you what happened or how Ananias was kind of a part of the story of Saul, especially in the midst of like his blindness. So in Acts chapter 9, verse 10. Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias, and he said, here I am Lord. And the Lord said to him, rise and go to the street called straight and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold he is praying. And he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay hands

On him so that he might regain his sight. But Ananias answered, Lord, I've heard from many about this man how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. And here he has the authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name. But the Lord said to him, go for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and Kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. So Ananias departed and entered the house and laying his hands on him. He said, brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight and then he rose and was baptized and taking food. He was strengthened. I want to talk for a moment just about the way in which Ananias responded initially to the Lord's voice of the Lord's calling on him. Right at the beginning, he, you know,

The writer of Acts says that Ananias heard his name, Ananias. And he responded very simply, here I am, Lord, very succinctly, without really any like, give me a second or was that the voice of the Lord? I don't know if that was him. That was just my own, like, here I am, Lord, available, listening, attentive, ready. You get this sense with the brevity of which Ananias responded that he was kind of like always on the edge of his seat to hear from God. He was like always like just like locked in, ready to know, ready to hear, ready to be attentive. And what I want to say is like Ananias is a great example of like what it means to be attentive and listening to the Lord. You see, we all want to be used by God in significant ways. I think you do. I hope you do. Right. I want to be used by God in a significant way. The first step in being used by God in any way at all, let alone a significant way. The first step in being used by God is being available and being attentive

To his voice when he calls your name. It is, this seems like a, kind of like a captain obvious moment. I understand that, but we cannot respond in faith to what the Lord calls us to do if we never position both our hearts and our ears to hear from him what he wants us to do. If we are consistently and constantly filling our lives, filling our ears, filling our schedule, filling our, our, our face, right? Fill, filling every, ask how many here need something else to do? Like you need a hole in the head. Yeah, I do. How many here, honestly, I'm going to raise, I'm going to raise my hand already. I'm going to affirmatively answer this question. How many here get a little uncomfortable when you're forced to, or you slow down a little bit and life gets a little quiet? Yeah. I don't like this. I don't like this. Why not? Why? Well, we have trained ourselves to go at Mach 10 100% of the time. We have, we have, we have conditioned ourselves to, to always be consuming something to be active, to be listening something, to be looking at something, to be scrolling through

Something. There are times in my life where like I couldn't go to sleep without the TV on why you're sleeping Cameron, right? Or I can't drive from here to my house without the radio on why it's too quiet. Heaven forbid that we take an intentional active step towards quieting the noise of our lives so that the voice of the Lord gets magnified amongst the silence. Most of us have an experience of saying like, I have a difficulty hearing God's voice knowing what he's saying to me. And to be honest with you, like hearing God's voice, knowing God's will is a, it's a little bit of a large topic, probably for another sermon. Okay. But if we take from a fundamental level, the idea or the question in hearing the Lord, the, I think the one of the questions, kind of the, the searching questions of ourselves that we can ask is, if we're having a difficult time hearing or discerning, maybe like Ananias did, we have to ask the question, is God not speaking? Or am I not hearing? We have to ask that. We have to ask that question to do, to at least begin to move forward.

And in most cases in my life, when I turn off the noise that keeps me busy and occupied, it's like, Oh, the spiritual noise, the sound of the Lord's voice, the truth of God's word comes like jumping out at me. All right. You begin to hear the spirit of God speak through other spirit filled people to you and beginning to affirm and confirm what you knew God was saying all the time. Guess the question is, do you ever quiet your life long enough and deeply enough to hear him whisper to you in the silence? The Lord almost always speaks in the silence. It's very patient or he's very polite in that way. God, God rarely interrupts requests to have our heads filled with noise. He will wait patiently. And when we are quiet and when we seek him out in the secret place, shows up in glory. See Ananias, I think kind of displayed in this moment that he had, he had in a lot of ways already cultivated the discipline of hearing from God and making himself an instrument of obedience to God. Ananias, yes, Lord, here I am. Like it was like instant. And what was the thing that

God was calling Ananias to do? He says, rise and go to the street called straight and at the house of Judas, look for a man of Tarsus named Saul for behold, he is praying and he's seen a vision of a man named Ananias come and lay hands on him so that he may regain his sight. This is a really, I love the detail that the Lord gives Ananias here because I think some common wisdom, it would be to say something like this. Well, I know the Lord is calling me to do something, so I'm just going to, I'm going to sit back here in my chair and everything that the Lord needs me to do, wants me to do, all the people he needs me to talk to, all of the places that he needs me to go, he'll bring all of that to me. And that's how I'll know that it's God is if everything comes to me, like I don't got to do, I'm just here just receiving from the Lord all of the ingredients needed for the step of faith that he's calling me to do. I'll be over here God, when you need me to act, just bring everything over here and I'll be ready. But what, at least in Ananias's situation, was the complete

Opposite. There was no passive reception of the things necessary in order to take the step of faith into what God was calling Ananias to do. There was a responsibility placed on Ananias to get up out of his chair, to lace up his boots and to go searching for the man and the place and the time that God had called him to. Like, no, you're not going to just passively receive the thing, go work hard for it. When you have a confidence of, like, here I am, Lord, yes, rise and go, Ananias. Gonna go to Straight Street, you're gonna find a house, there's gonna be a man there. Don't worry, I've already prepared him to receive you. He's seen a vision of a man named Ananias come and lay hands on him. There was no passiveness here. Obedience looked like stepping into something that was relatively unknown in that moment, where initiative and searching was required as a measure of faith. It wasn't just a highway of receiving God's blessing and ingredients to do the thing. It was a really narrow path that Ananias had to walk. It wasn't wide, it was narrow. Go

Do this really specific thing at this really specific place for this really specific purpose. So what I've recognized is that we often get ourselves into situations where we are kind of negotiating with God, wrestling with him maybe, so that we can experience the perfect set of circumstances that our heart and mind need in order to take the step of faith to move forward. Expecting God to put kind of everything before us on a silver platter. But Ananias' example shows us that even when we hear something very clear from God, we often have to get up and work for it. We got to go for it. Now, Ananias, even though he said, "Here I am, Lord, " and God's like, "Great, game on, bet. Here it is. Go find this guy named Saul. Pray for him. He's blind. He knows you're coming." And Ananias was like, "Ah." But, you see, Lord, I have, this is so interesting. This hit me personally with so much conviction this week, this particular point. It's like, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man. You know how much, you know how paralyzed I have been with fear over

What other people have said? Over other people's opinions? Over the way that someone else talked about what God was calling me to do? About the way in which I interacted with the opinions of men and women?" He said, "Are you sure you're going to do that? That doesn't seem like the greatest idea. It's not wise. It's not discerning. It's not good stewardship." Listening to the voice of Ananias was like, "Lord, people have said things, Lord. I don't think I should go. People have said things about this man named Saul." I often get myself into this habit now of when I'm experiencing fear, asking the question, "Where is this fear coming from? Where is this coming from?" Is it coming from the heart of wisdom that God is speaking into my life, saying, "Be cautious here." Or is fear bubbling up in my life because I have been listening to too many people? Maybe the wrong people, maybe the wrong situations, maybe the right people who have not heard from the Lord. But when I am in a place of confidently, like Ananias, "Here I am. Yeah, Lord, I get it. I hear you.

I just don't want to." That fear begins to bubble up. What is beautiful about this passage is that if I was the King of Heaven and the Creator of all that there was ever, and I told someone to do something, and they were like, "Yeah, but I'm probably not going to do it." I'm like, "All right, you're done." Don't tell me you're different, right? The fleshly heart is like, "No, when I say tell someone to do something, they need to do it because, like, charge." But the Lord is so gentle and kind and forbearing with us as he was with Ananias, because in the midst of Ananias' fear, "Lord, I have heard many things about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and now he is here. He has the authority from the chief priest to arrest us all, all those who call on your name." God did not chastise, did not punish, did not bring judgment upon Ananias in this moment. The Lord just kind of received it. Doesn't really say anything. Negative or immediate. He just, it's like, "Oh, there's no, like, hey, don't say that.

Don't believe that. Change your thinking. Fake it till you make it." You know, "Come on now. Get with the program here, get with the plan, Ananias." He just simply receives it, listens to it. And so often, like, I feel like we hold in out of fear, our fears to the Lord, as if somehow he doesn't already know what's, you know, internal to us. But like, "Well, I'm a Christian. I can't be like I'm afraid. I can't be like I don't understand. I can't be like I don't know what to do. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't." And what Ananias is displaying here is the way in which his relationship with God has been cultivated with intimacy in absolute honesty. That he, Ananias is like, I am so stinking comfortable being 100% honest with the Lord because I know that he is gentle and he is kind and that he is only good and only loving towards me. And that even if he corrects me or rebukes me, it is for my good. So Ananias was like free to be honest with

The Lord in that moment. And in his honesty, does God chastise him about that? Not at all. He receives it because that's the heart of the father to his child. He receives it. This example shows us, should show us or display for us that we do not have to be afraid to bring our fears, our hesitations, our uncertainties to God. At the same time, it wasn't just that God didn't chastise Ananias. He also didn't do the other thing. He didn't, if chastisement is on one end of the spectrum, the other end of the spectrum would be coddling him. Oh, I'm sorry that I asked you to do something hard. What was I thinking? I shouldn't have done, that's not very polite. I'll tell you what, it's okay. It's fine. Well, we'll just, we'll overlook this. We'll go past it. God did not coddle Ananias's fear. He isn't that, God's not the type of person that asks things like, yeah, you know, tell me if you'd ever heard like something like, do you, would you mind like if it's not too much, if it doesn't take too much of your time or too much of your schedule and not too much of an inconvenience

For you, if you really like wouldn't, if you wouldn't totally hate it, would you mind helping me with this today? If not, it's totally okay. No pressure whatsoever. In fact, I'm sorry I even asked, you'll never hear from me again. You been there? Felt it, said it, I've said it and I felt it, right? This is not God. God ain't like that. God is like, well, if you want to kind of no pressure type of thing, you know, God doesn't coddle Ananias in that. God hears the fears, doesn't call Ananias faithless, but he also does call him to move forward. Notice what God did not guarantee Ananias. God did not guarantee that as Ananias went to this murderous man named Saul that he would be safe. He did not guarantee that it would work out in the way that he wanted it to. There was no, you will be safe and okay in the promise. The only thing that God said was, Ananias, I need you to go. This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles. What God does in the

Midst of that fear is to help us get our eyes off of what we're experiencing in that moment to say, Ananias, Cameron, there is an eternal purpose that I have in mind here. And if you are willing to step forward through a moment of fear, you will see the ways in which I'm going to work now and in the future through this thing. God was like, I hear your fear, but this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name to the Gentiles. In the hands of God, fear is always redirected towards an eternal purpose. Christians have done kind of a good job of saying over the years, well, God would want me to make wise choices and decisions and discerning and good stewardship and all that. We've talked about that. I've got a family to provide for, et cetera. And again, like I would say, I agree that God does want us to act in wisdom. I think God is wants us to be obedient before he wants us to be wise because sometimes obedience is pretty foolish to the world. There's a story I told you last week that I love World War II history. There's a story from the World War II era. A movie was made about it. The movie is called A Hidden Life.

You have a picture of the screen, A Hidden Life. It follows the story of an Austrian farmer named Franz Jagerstader. I won't be saying that again today. Our man Franz lived in Austria when World War II broke out and he received his orders to be drafted into Hitler's army. And we all know that what ended up happening, he chose not to go. He decided, I'm not going. Now you might think, well, that's a good, easy decision. We all know Hitler was evil. But what makes Franz's decision so remarkable is that the people, that there were people in his life telling him to simply comply with the draft order. Just listen Franz, you know what they're doing to people who are refusing. You know what's happening. For the sake of your family, for the sake of your daughters, for the sake of your future, just go and do it, man. Just go and do it. And you would think that this is just some like idiot friend that was saying this to him, but it wasn't. Franz had went to his Catholic. Franz had went to his priest and his bishop and said, hey, look, here's the situation I'm in. This man is evil. I do not want to serve in this war, but I'm like this legal document and you go do this. I know what they're doing to people who refuse. And this priest

And his bishop were like, yeah, you know, I think it's better to just kind of comply in this instance. You'll stay safe. You'll be able to go home to your family and your daughters and Franz was like, I will not do that. I will not give up my safety. Or I will not, I will not beg and borrow and negotiate for safety to the detriment of the conviction that I know in my heart. He was executed in 1943 by the Nazis for refusing to report. His village for years thought he was a fool. What an idiot. Just go. But decades later, the Catholic church recognized the significant conviction that it took Franz to make that decision and they'd beified him as a martyr. Now here, here was a man whose own spiritual leaders told him that wisdom and family obligation gave him every reason to stand down. And he looked at all of that and said, I don't think so. I know what God is asking me to do. And that is what I'll do. You see, Ann and I, as the story tells us what to do with fear

At the moment of decision where we already know what needs to happen. But Peter's story, the apostle Peter tells us what to do when fear comes back after we've already said yes to God. Because you know that you can push through the first bit of fear and step with faith and be like, ah, okay, I got through that. And then you start walking. And then what happens? You look back and you're like, oh, yeah, I don't know why I'm doing this. And security, right? Everything starts to just come back. What do we do in that moment? We've said yes in the initial moment, but now fear is coming bubbling back up. Well, Peter's example, probably the most famous story from Peter's life is what? Not his denial, but his walking on water, right? Peter walked on the water. And the story from Matthew 14 goes really simply just like this, is that the disciples were out in the boat, the wind, the waves, the storm crashing against the boat. They were all afraid. Jesus was on the shore still, but all of a sudden, maybe out of the corner of their eye, they recognize this man who's walking on the water towards him. And the gospel of Matthew says they thought

It was a ghost. And Jesus calls out to him, it is I, and Peter, he was like, Lord, if it's really you, if it's actually you, tell me to come out to you right now. And Jesus was like, knock yourself out, like, let's do this. And so what does Peter do? He takes that step. I mean, like, you know, it was not, you know, at that moment that there was no fear, like, that there was fear there, but faith overwhelms his fear in the midst of his savior. And he took that first step expecting what I don't know, but what he found was his feet were on solid ground. I've been like, let's go. Right? He starts walking towards Jesus and then what does Matthew, Matthew 14 says, and then all of a sudden he saw the wind and he saw the waves and he remembered, oh shoot, I'm in a storm. And Matthew says, when he saw the wind and waves, he began to sink. They called out to Jesus, Jesus saved me and Jesus did. You see, when fear surfaces, after the initial decision of obedience, the pathway through fear is to again, refocus our eyes on the one that called us through

It to refocus in our eyes upon Jesus and to keep moving forward. When Ananias got to that house on that day, he walked into the, walked into the home. It says, and he, how does he initially address this guy who was there to originally arrest him? He says, brother Saul. I can think of a lot of words that Ananias probably could have addressed Saul as, murderer, thief, criminal, persecutor, and some other ones. But what, Ananias had a vision for something different for Saul's life because the first words out of his mouth were brother Saul. Brother was a term for those who were of the same family and of the same father, right? Brother, Ananias believed God to the extent that Saul's whole identity was now changed and different, even though he was not there to witness any change or difference. He wasn't an enemy or a Pharisee or a persecutor. He was a brother. And I wonder in that moment, what it did for Saul to hear the word, the first words, brother. What it did for Saul in that moment, he'd been blind for three days. He hadn't eaten. He had his entire identity demolished on that road. And the first human voice he heard after that was to call him

Brother. See Ananias was the first person to tell Saul, you're different from this moment on. Things are changing. He was no longer what he once was, but he has been transformed. You see, before God could send Saul out into the world, change his name to the apostle Paul, plant all these churches, raise up all these leaders. Before God could send Saul, God sent Ananias. See, we have, we all, each and every one of us, every single one of you do not ever believe the lie that you're the exception to this. Each and every one of us has a part that God is calling us to play in his mission to redeem the world to himself through Jesus Christ. Every single one of you has a part to play in God's redemptive work through Jesus Christ to all of creation. The way that God is calling you and sending you is not like the person that's sitting next to you. It's not like the person that's sitting behind you. It's not like the super Christian that you know from the other church. Before sending your calling is not your neighbor's. Don't get into the habit of comparing to someone

Else what God is calling you to do and be in life. How many people here know of the rest of the, like the story of Ananias in the early church after this moment? You know why we don't know it? Because there is none. It's not there. We don't know the story because it doesn't exist, but Saul's story can't even start without Ananias' obedience. He had to play his role and although we not, although he may not be cited a bunch in church history, I bet you that Ananias is really, really, really popular in heaven. Like super popular. What is the thing? What is it for you? What is the thing? Not that you're trying to figure out if God is saying it to you, but that you know that God has said it. What is the thing that you can name? Maybe it's the person you've been meaning to reach out to and reconcile with, but the longer you wait, the harder it seems to be. Maybe it's the family member that you know needs to hear the gospel from you specifically and you've been avoiding

It for years because you don't want to damage that relationship. Maybe it's the friendship where you know that you need to say the hard thing, but you keep telling yourself the timing just isn't right. Maybe the thing for you is the business, the nonprofit, the creative work that you've been almost ready to start for years. Maybe it's the calling to a specific mission or outreach or ministry, but you've just been waiting for someone else to lead it first. Maybe the thing is a sin pattern, something that you've been managing in private rather than bringing it to the light with accountability and repentance. Maybe it's a financial decision, a matter of generosity, a tie, the commitment that you just keep deferring until your budget just looks a little bit better. See Ananias' story is not about figuring out God's will. It's about moving forward with faith and obedience when we know God's will, when we have heard God's voice, but don't know what to do with that fear. I don't know what your thing is, but I know you have one because I've got one. I got more than one. Okay. I've got things that I have been paralyzed in fear through over. I got things

That I've negotiated with God, the perfect circumstances to do, but obedience and moving through fear doesn't need to look always like a big grand overwhelming series of decisions and steps. As you've heard me say before, and I'll say again, I'll quote one of the great theologians of our time, Olaf from Frozen 2, when he says, "What do we do in this, in this, what do we do in this instance?" He's like, "You just got to make the next right decision." You see, we think of these things and these steps of obedience in like these huge, big, I can't, I can't tackle all of that. And you're right. You can't, but God's not asking you to tackle all of that. God is asking you to take one step. And then when you plant your feet in the place of new found faith, then he's going to tell you when to go up, take the next step. And often what happens is that when we take a step in fear and we go like this and we realize, oh, God's here too. And then we go like this, oh, yeah, he's

Still here. And then we go like, and one kind of like tender step turns into more steps until now you're kind of like, now you're kind of jogging along in faithfulness. And then you get to the point of you're like, "I am sprinting because the million steps behind me God has shown me, man, he is faithful to be there. So I believe that he's going to be at the next one. I can move forward." So that's the question I want to leave for you this morning is what is one step that you're going to take this week? One step, not a million. You're going to take one step. What is one step that you're going to take this week towards the thing that you already know God is calling you to do? One phone call, one conversation, one business decision, one thing to start, one thing to quit. What is the one thing? You will find solid footing even if the waves and wind are blowing all around you. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. And so Lord, in the midst of a maybe fearful and

Unknown time, Lord, we pray that you would make us like Ananias, instruments of obedience, Lord to you. Yes, Lord, maybe with our own fears still, but surrendering our fears to you knowing that there is eternal purpose, Lord, behind what you are and in what you are calling us to do. And so Father, we pray that you would give us by your mercy, even a small glimpse into the eternal purpose of the places that you're calling to us so that we may move Lord with confidence that you have called in Jesus name. Amen.