I didn't know how many of you are interested in learning how to be fearful. So I'm going to start just listing all these interesting current events that you could be worried about. And by the time you're done with this class, you'll be particularly scared. Now, of course, what we want to do is address this from a biblical standpoint, the issue of fear, anxiety, worry. There's a number of different ways we could describe it. Let me begin with a quote by John Flavel, who wrote a book or wrote what appears almost the size of a book, a treatise on fear. I will be referring to him as well as quite a few others as we go through this four-week series. He says this, among all the creatures God has made, devils only accepted, man is the most apt and able to be his own tormentor. And of all the scourges with which he lashes, lashes, that's a hard word, and afflict his mind and body. None is found so cruel and intolerable as his own fears. Fear inflicts the deepest and most dangerous wounds upon the mind of man. One of the most powerful emotions that you can experience outside of perhaps infatuation is that of fear. And if you are human, you have faced this foe or you will face it at one time or another. At times it can just seem so overwhelming that it seems like it's just beyond your capacity to face it. Sometimes it's so subtle you don't realize how much you're being controlled by it. But it is affecting you. If you are fearing, it is affecting you and the others around you. It comes in various colors, perhaps beginning as stress. Growing into worry, developing into fear, and then perhaps morphing into panic attacks or phobias that you'll read about. People that are afraid to get in an elevator, cross a bridge, go outside their house. And you can be so locked up that you can barely function. We're seeing more and more of that in our culture. It is a big issue. And we can look at what the unbelievers say about it, perhaps we'll touch on that over the series. If you go to the DSM-5, the Diagnostic Statistic Manual, which is the Bible of the non-believers in regards to psychological ailments and issues, you'll see this page after page after page in phobias and fears. There are all kinds of variations of it. So it is a big issue, but we are going to primarily focus on scripture. I will be using a number of resources that are listed below, which I'll get to in just a second. The basic approach I want to take is to spend a couple of weeks thinking more in terms of description of fears, the different types of fear and then what it is, what are the Bible terms related to fear, an overview of it, and then talk about some of the complications. We'll talk about that today. And then as we move from the description chapters, which will be this week and then next week, Lord willing, we'll get into the prescription. And of course, I can only just touch the tip of the iceberg here. But I'm going to, as you see, there's a list of resources here of which I will refer to, I will draw from, and I will quote over the course. Oftentimes, I will give the citation, or if I don't, just know that's, on one of the radio shows, one of my favorite lines is when they say, if you steal it from us, it's been stolen twice. That's pretty much true of me. I try to glean from all the wisdom of other people, of course, reading my own scriptures and things. I try to glean from others who have spent time in it, and from the collective, come up with something that I think will be helpful to you. Some of the resources I had, besides just a number of articles, which I can, any one of these, by the way, I can make available to you pretty easily, but I just want you to see just some of the examples. Books such as Elise Fitzpatrick's book, Overcoming Fear, Anxiety, and Worry, Lou Priolo on fear, Why I'm Afraid by Ed Welch. John MacArthur's book, Anxiety Attacked. Trusting God is one that we'll talk about the fourth week, and this is one the men are gonna be going through, again, Lord willing, starting Tuesday. And then another book, this is actually a workbook by Wayne Mack called The Fear Factor. I've been through all of these, this and the last three or four months. And I'll just say by way of testimonial, it's been an interesting last six months for me because And for the first time in my life, I experienced what they're talking about. I've never experienced something like an anxiety. Four or five months, there have been a couple of times where I've had this just overwhelming sense of fear, and I couldn't figure out why. And I'm thinking, what in the world? So that started me on this journey. And it was kind of interesting when Carl said to me, I'd like you to do a J term on fear, anxiety, and worry. And I said, perfect. I'm there, and I'm already studying it, so I will look very much forward to doing more studies, and I will tell you a little bit more of a testimony as we go through it about some of the things that I've done to address it, and hopefully that will be a help to you. So again, you can see all these different resources down here. I'm sure there's others as well. It's interesting. Sometimes, as you read the resources, you'll find many of them are going to one common one, and one of those is the one by Flavell, or Flavell, Treatise on Fear, the only thing I could find on the internet, you have to buy it if you want to get it, but on the internet I did find a copy of it that you couldn't download, but I was able to copy every page. So I cut and paste it into a Word document. So if you want it, I can send it. I don't think it's copyrighted as far as I know. It's pretty, you can read it online. So, if you would like that, you can just email me, I'll attach it and send it back. It's old English, but it's, I read through it and say, oh man, this guy has really hammered this subject. This is great. And you'll find a lot of these books are saying, as John Flavell has said, this and that. So, I find them to be very helpful. But again, these others bring it to modern day. The Elyse Fitzpatrick has good material on that. The other ones do as well. Each one has its own benefits. So again, if you want to know more about that, I'd be happy to talk to you about it. Now, what is the definition of fear? I'll give you Fitzpatrick's definition to begin with, and then we'll look at a couple more as we just try to get a handle on this. The first one is it's a felt reaction to a perceived danger. Felt reaction to a perceived danger. So what I want you to see is there's two parts to this. The perceived danger, that's a perception is a mind issue, right? But the felt perception is something that's a body issue. And so what you're going to have, this is my one illustration I'm gonna have for the whole class, but hopefully this will stick in your mind. If you can see the little guy right here, or little person right there, and what you were talking about when it comes to fear is something inside of here, anything that's bigger than you, that causes you to have some kind of a physiological reaction. And we're talking mainly in terms of fear here in this context. Another definition comes from the dictionary, and I've modified it some, but it puts it this way. An unpleasant emotion, that's thinking physically here, caused by the belief, thinking, that someone or something you cannot control may bring trouble, embarrassment, pain, or death. There may be some other things you can put in there. But the basic idea is there's some threat. There's something out here that you perceive is not under your control and it has the potential to harm you. And so when you are thinking about that and perceiving that, you have a bodily reaction if you get, you know, a little bit nervous about it, like what's going to happen? And so this is what fear is. Now, of course, we'll talk about how this can become not just something that's just a normal fear. There's, we're going to see next week, we'll talk about types of fear. There's natural fear, which is appropriate. It's appropriate to fear, you know, the burglar comes in with a gun, and if he's in your house, you should be afraid. That's normal. But then there's sinful fear, and those are the ones we particularly want to address. Ken Sandy wrote this about it. He said that a fear is a, or he's describing emotions, but in this case, we'll think in terms of fear. physiological experiences that involve measurable, neural, muscular, respiratory, hormonal, and cardiovascular changes that impact our thoughts and move us to action. It's actually interesting, the original word, which we'll talk about again in a minute, the word actually comes from fright or flight. The word fear comes from the original word of flight, that is get away. Because that threat, that thing out there that is coming after you, at least you perceive it to be, potentially threatening you, is something you've got to get away from. And so the idea is to run away. So you see here, he says, this physiolytic, when you feel that fear, and those thoughts are flying through your mind, one of the things you're thinking of is, I've got to get out of here. I have to protect myself. I have to get away from that thing that threatens me. And so these are experiences, whether you're watching a scary movie, You just turn it off, or you hear a noise in your house. We've all had those kinds of things. You hear something under the bed. Boys and girls, have you heard something under your bed? There's nothing there, trust me. But actually, my roommate did that to a guy once. He hid under his bed. And then when the guy went, this is in my dorm. And when he went to bed, he's laying there. And my friend is underneath his bed. And he took his arm around and went like this. And he screamed. So that's fear. But kids, you don't have to worry about that. But anyway, we have these ideas that, again, and so what that does is it motivates you to action. I gotta do something about it. You'll find when it comes to panic attacks, one of the things that, one of the emotions you're gonna feel, one of the sensations is, I've gotta get outta here. I've gotta just, I gotta run. I had that similar experience. I thought, I gotta get outta here, wherever I was. I gotta just run, and then I realized, what am I running from? what's inside of me, wherever I go is going with me. So I gotta address it here. So, kind of an interesting thing. Let's think about some of the complications of fear, some of the things that make it more and more difficult. First of all, fear is in the mind, but it's connected to the body. As we said, it's physiological and emotional. The question is, the difficulty could be, where does it start? Heath Lambert, who is the new president of the ACBC Counseling, group that I'm part of, he put it this way, the complex interaction of mind or body and soul combined with our limited knowledge of human beings may make it complicated or even impossible to identify a singular genesis of a given problem as physical, spiritual, or both. Did you get that? It's a little bit heavy language, but he's saying that because, you know, we tend to think, at Woodrow, we tell you that you're a duplex, you're an inner man, outer man, you're a mind and body, right? Greg Bonson, when he wrote his Systematic Theology, one of the things he said, he says, even that is not really fair. You're really, you're a human being with a mind and body, but you're one person. And these things are just so integrally connected, your mind and your body. We don't want to think of them as two separate things that maybe just have a little touching point, but as two things that are just really wrapped up in one another. That's why the Bible describes us as being naked when we're in that state where we don't have our body. before our bodies are resurrected, that's not the way we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be connected. And so you see this interaction like this, and so as Lambert says, it's hard to tell. So when you're afraid, where did that start? It is possible to have physiological feelings that are consistent with the feelings you'd have when you're afraid. And then you start to look around and say, well, what am I afraid about? And you try to latch on to something. Ever heard about those people with panic attacks? I'll get into more details on that later. But they tend to all of a sudden just be afraid, and they don't even know why. All they know is they have this overwhelming sense of fear, and they can't connect anything to it. Or what they'll do is they start thinking around and say, what is it I'm afraid of? And they try to lock on to whatever it is that identifies itself to them. And they say, well, that must be it. I must be afraid of. I must be afraid of getting sick because my friend was sick. I must be afraid of dying because another friend died. Whatever it is, you're looking for some kind of explanation. Anyway, all of this to say is that it's a mind and body issue. So again, part of the difficulty is going to be how do you address it? I will say that even in my own time when I was having some of this stuff going on, one of the first things I thought, which is probably going to be true of so many people, is I need to get the doctor to get a prescription. because I'm just anxious. I just take away the anxiety so I can. Reaction and many people run there. And I'm not saying it's a sin to do it. I think that we need to think about what is the body side of it. We'll talk about that Lord willing next. We're actually about three weeks. But anyway the two of them are connected. Now another reason another thing that can cause fears to grow is if they're not addressed. So. One of the things for example is one of the ways in which we do this is by. By acting out your fears, you can create what you have feared. For example, if you are very afraid of rejection, and you walk into a party or wherever it is, into the fellowship hall back here, and you're really afraid like this, and so you're sitting like this to say, I'm just really intimidated by this, what is a good chance that could happen is people going, what are they doing? That's kind of strange. people may not be as attracted to you because you're acting in such an abnormal way. So you're actually fulfilling your own fear, right? You're saying, I'm afraid to interact with people. I'm afraid they're not going to like me. And so you act in a way in which is not a likable way. It's just a way of, it could be self-fulfilling. This could happen with your kids, those parents who are tight with their kids and saying, well, I'm trying to keep my kids from being exposed to the world, from being exposed to any kind of danger. And so that fear is going to eventually get into the minds of the kids themselves. That's a very possible, very likely thing to happen, is the kids will adopt the fears that you have. And so you end up creating, so I don't want my kids to get hurt. And in the process of protecting them so much, you're hurting them, because they're not getting exposed to the things they need to be exposed to. You know, where's that line? Well, of course, that's a parent by parent, you know, family by family thing. And so, but that's something that, again, is something that can exacerbate the problem and multiply it. I think of Job when Job said, for the thing I greatly feared has come upon me and what I dreaded has happened to me. And very often, again, that can happen. You can make that self-fulfilling. Another thing we can do is we can fixate on whatever it was that caused the fear. So let's just say that, you know, Well, let me just give you an example. Robinson Crusoe. If you remember, if you ever read Robinson Crusoe, I remember reading the book and I thought, someday I'm going to get to use this as a quote, and it's here. I'm so glad. But it's the chapter, and I don't know, there are probably different versions of it, but there's a chapter, and I think in one of them, the chapter is entitled The Footprint. Now, you have to think about Robinson Crusoe is on the island, he's deserted, he's made this nice little life for himself. He's converted. Great chapter is his conversion. And now he's living life and he's kind of, well, okay, here we go. So he's making stuff. He's got little palaces set up for himself and all this stuff. And one day, he's thinking he's all by himself, and one day he walks down the beach and there's a footprint. And that just messes his mind so much. Let me give you a couple quotes. He says, it happened one day about noon going towards my boat. I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened. I looked around me. I could hear nothing nor see anything. I went up to a rising ground to look farther. I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one. I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if it were any more and to observe if it might not be my fancy, but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the print of a foot, toes, heel, every part of the foot. How it came hither, I knew not, nor could I the least imagine, but after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes may have frightened my imagination. represented things to me, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange and unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts, by the way. When I came to my castle, for so I think I called it after this, I fled like one pursued, never frightened hare, fled to cover, that's a rabbit, never frightened a rabbit, fled to cover, or fox to earth with more terror of mind than I to this retreat. So it's just, I think it went on for quite a while, too, if you read the book. I'll just mention one other thing he says down at the end of this. There's obviously more to it. Let me just give you two or three more sentences just to wrap it up. Then terrible thoughts wrack my imagination about their having found my boat, and that there were people here, and if so, I should certainly have come again to greater numbers and devour me. That if it should happen that they should not find me, yet they would find my enclosure, destroy my corn, carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at least for want, mere want. Then my fear banished all my religious hope, all that former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experiences I'd had of his goodness, as if he that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not persevere by his power the provision which he had made me by his goodness." So you see how that one thing, that footprint, just completely sent him into a tailspin. Something else that could increase or complicate our fears, this is one that will and increase it by a present valuing of future events. One of the things that I did when I was an accountant, when I was with Florida Power and Light down in Florida, was we would look at these projects. And one of the things that we would do is we'd look at, say, buying a building, leasing it, filling it up, and then selling it. And what you would do is you would set out a 10-year paradigm. So you say, for 10 years, OK, the first couple of years are investment, get some new people in, and you keep doing bottom line, bottom line, bottom line, and then you sell it over here. And then you, what we do is we call, we present value it. That is we take all that future income, bring it into right now and say, is it worth it? It's a pretty interesting process. And so, but we can do the same thing with fear. If you start thinking about what's going to happen tomorrow, what about Thursday? What about next Saturday? What about next month? What about, and you see where I'm going with this? I can start thinking about all these events in my life and I can present value them right back to now. What about, I'm 60, and I've got four kids going into college. I'm not in my, you know, your big wage earning years tend to be the 40s, 50s, where you're really going for it. 60s, you're starting to, you know, say, well, you're getting kind of old. You know, maybe you should, you know, go out in the field or something and graze or something. No, I can't. I've got four kids going to college. Well, if I think about that, I think, oh, I'm 70, and I've still got one in college. I can present value that to right now, and I get nervous about that. I've done this before. I remember seeing a TV show where a kid gets kidnapped. And so I'm laying in my bed that night, and I'm just kind of laying there picturing, and I'm thinking, yeah, some of my kids are out playing, and here's one. A car comes down the street, and somebody jumps out and grabs my kid and jumps in the car. And what's happening? I'm starting to go like, I'm starting to sweat. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Well, we do that in terms of event, future events. We bring them back to right now, and we just And you multiply the fears by fixating on them, or in this case, the present value. Flavell says this, if the face of things to come be threatening and inauspicious, fear gains the ascendance over the mind. So if things to come be threatening, it gains ascendance over your mind. And unmanly and unchristian faintness pervades it. And among the many other mischiefs it inflicts, this is not the least. that it brings the evil of tomorrow upon today and so makes the duties of today wholly unserviceable to the evils of tomorrow. Pretty interesting. Flavel gets it. Another way that we can complicate it or we can increase our fears by the overfocus on the quantity of current events. So you can just think about what's going on in Iran right now? Will we have to send troops over there? What about North Korea? He's got a button. And our president's got a bigger button. And they're both threatening their buttons to push their buttons. And how many of these can I multiply? Those of you who are, and I'm kind of among them, news hounds. It means as soon as you read the news, it's old, right? So you've got to look again in five minutes because there's something new. That's why they call it news. And so you have to keep looking at it. Well, if you think about that, I remember a family relative of mine, oh, Danny, do you know What's going on in the world today? You know what could happen? And she was like a 24-hour CNN kind of person. I'm like, well, no wonder you're nervous. You're watching this stuff that's very nerve-wracking. Why do you fill your mind with these things? So we can over-focus on the quantity of all the current events and problems in the world. Another one is we can overestimate the size of the potential problem. The doctor calls and says he wants to talk with you. And you say, oh, and I've done this. They say, we need to talk to you about something. And you think, you need to talk to me. It must be cancer. I'm going to die. What's going to happen to my kids, my wife? And then, you know, it's probably going to be painful. And I'm, and you, and you go there and he says, I need you to take this medication for a couple of months. You have an infection, whatever it is. Have an infection, take this, that's it? I used all that energy on something that wasn't real. Yeah, that's exactly what can happen. But that can certainly make it more difficult. So you can overestimate it. Spurgeon said this, such strange creatures are we that we probably smart more under blows which never fall upon us than we do under those which actually do come. That's pretty interesting. Another one, the fear of fear. This is a fascinating thing to me. Those who have ever had panic attacks will tell you it's like this, and maybe those who haven't had it but have feared before, you've had some very scary event. If you can actually begin to fear the fear, you say, that was a horrible experience to go through. I was just so afraid. And then it starts to think about you, I hope that never happens again. That was scary. Being scared was scary. And then that starts to play. So it's another complicating factor. So you can be afraid of the fear. We also have another thing can play into this is personality differences. Fitzpatrick mentions it, Flavell mentions it as well. Some people are more prone to this than others. Have you seen the people, I know somebody like this. He was an unbeliever. He went to death and he never, he just went straight to hell. And it just didn't phase him a bit. He went, yeah, I'm sick, I'm dying. So, yeah, this stinks and well, whatever, you know. Okay, so rah, so rah, that's what happens. He dies and I'm thinking, that didn't bother you at all? I mean, you went right to the grave and it didn't seem to bother you a bit. And other people can have the smallest thing happen and they come unglued. Is that because one's a greater sinner than the other? Well, we all are different kind of people, different personalities, different physical bodies. And so, these things can play upon some people more than others. I've seen people that just seem unfazed by conflict. They just push right through it like it's no big deal, and then they, you know, let's move on to the next thing. And the other person's just like, you know, like this for days trying to get through all the conflict that they've just gone through. So people are different. So again, another complication. What does the Bible say about fear? It's got a couple of words that are used most commonly. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word is yare. There's other words as well. But listen to some of the ways that it's translated. Afraid, awesome, awesome things, become, became afraid, become frightened, dismayed, fear, feared, fearful, fearing, fears, frightened, revere, revered, reverence, showing reverence, stand in awe, terrible, terrible things, terrifying, it's all there. So this is what is the word for fear is translated. One of the, it's interesting to me, by the way, it's interesting to note that as I read this, that the word fear and reverence are the same word. Okay. Some of you are already going there and you say, Dan, you should quote this first. I am, don't worry, I'll get there. But just understand that that word can be translated both ways. The first one, I just, I started reading Genesis just in early January here. And as I was reading through it, I thought it was interesting when I came across Genesis 3.10 after Adam sinned. Adam and Eve, and God's looking for them. And he says, so he said, I heard your voice in the garden. That's Adam saying, I heard your voice. God's in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. What do you do when you're afraid? You hide yourself. You run. That's the natural reaction to it. So as I go through the Bible, I'm seeing more and more of these occasions about fear. It is throughout the scriptures. The Greek word that's often used, in the New Testament is the word phobos. It can be defined as a fear, terror, alarm, the object or cause of fear, reverence, and respect. There's that same tie again. The same word can be used in two different ways. So again, we have fear and reverence by the same word. The meaning of it as described in one of the lexicons is fear, dread, terror, that which strikes terror, reverence, and others. And so again, and there are other words we could use as well, but the main thing I want you to see is that this word can be used two ways. Now, what's interesting in the Bible is that the Bible does not tell us not to fear. The Bible tells us what to fear and what not to fear. So it's not like you're supposed to go through life and never have any fears. It's appropriate to have some fears. It's inappropriate, sinful to have other fears. And so, When we look at the scriptures, what do we see? And this is what I want, the thought I want to leave you with today. We will expand this further in a few weeks, Lord willing. Exodus 20, 20 says, Moses said to the people, do not fear, for God has come to test you that his fear may be before you so that you may not sin. Isn't that interesting? He says, do not fear that his fear may come upon you. So he's saying, I don't want you, if you can look here, he's gonna put all our, whatever it is in here, I'll just put troubles just for one or something else. Whatever it is you're fearing, whatever that thing is there, God says, I don't want you to fear that, I want you to fear me. There's your picture. So whenever you're dealing with fears, you realize there's something here. You can think of it almost in terms of proximity. This is stuff that's kind of close to me. And I feel it, and I'm feeling it physically. And God says, you need to think past that up to here. That's the one you need to fear. If you're going to fear anything, fear me, not if. You need to fear me. A great verse for that, and again, some of you I know are already thinking of this one, is the next one, Matthew 10, 28. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. That is just kind of a mind-blowing verse to me. He says, don't be afraid of the person that could kill you. Are you kidding me? I'm afraid of a person that's about to kill me. And he says, don't be afraid of that. Be afraid of the one that can kill your soul. And that's me. I can put your soul in hell. I'm the one you need to respect. So again, the fear is not, we don't want to think of it just in terms of like this in front of God, but there is a part of that. There's a reverence that's born of that sense of, if you think this is bad, this can be much worse. It's a fearsome thing to fall in the hands of the living God. All right, so we want to be in a place where we are walking with him, and he's our friend, not as our judge. And we can do that, of course, through the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have other verses we can look at here. Mark 4, if you remember when Jesus calmed the sea, and it was fascinating how they were so afraid, they were so fearful, and then he told the storm to be still, and what does it say? Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith? And what did they do? They feared exceedingly. Think about the storms. Are you ever afraid? I mean, if you've been in a hurricane, I have down in Florida, or had the threats, and you're kind of like, oh, this big thing's coming at me. Andrew was the one that I dealt with down in Florida. And thankfully, it went a different place from where I was. But, you know, what do we do? We tape the windows. We, you know, put our stuff away, get water, get money, get whatever. And you're sort of afraid about that. And here we have a case, he says, where you have the very one, Jesus, in the boat with him, and he makes that storm go away. And they're thinking, if we're afraid of that storm and he can control that, if that storm could kill me, if that storm has that kind of threatening presence in my life and he's got control over that, whoa. And so that's part of their lessons they had to learn. He says, why are you so fearful? And they feared exceedingly, and that's appropriate. We'll look at more examples of that. I think another example, and we'll just end on this one, 2 Kings 6, 16, if you remember when you had that example of Elijah and the servant, and they were surrounded by the armies. And the servant was so feared, he said, what's going to happen? We're surrounded by the bad guys. And so Elijah asked the Lord, he says, let him see what's going on. And he had spiritual eyes now to see the armies of the Lord surrounding them. He says, he needs to see that. Now, again, you can imagine if you're the servant, and you're looking at the physical world of this army coming, and they're all coming to get you, that's a very scary thing. You've got nowhere to go. You're surrounded. And you think, what are they going to do to me? These people will do anything, poke out my eyes, pull off my fingers. Who knows what they'll do? This threat is so frightening. And then all of a sudden, you see these angels and flaming chariots and all this stuff around them. And what does that do to you? Whoa, wait till they find out. Look behind you. There's a confidence that comes with that. And that's exactly what God says. He says, those who are my children, he says, I want you to look beyond these things here. Whatever that threat is right there, he says, you have to look past that to me. If you don't see me as sovereign over that thing, you are going to succumb to it. That's where your fears come from. Stop it. Stop being afraid of those things. and fear me. Now, again, we'll have to talk about what that fear looks like. What is it to respect and fear God? We'll do that again, I think, the fourth, third, fourth week. But right now, what I just want to see is to leave this picture in your mind. And next week, we'll talk a little bit more about the types of sinful fears that we can have. And then, Lord willing, in the weeks after that, we'll talk about how do we address those and try to give some real practical ways of addressing fear. Let me close in prayer. Father, once again, we thank you that you haven't left us without hope, even without instruction and wisdom in how we are to face the different threats that we come across in life, whether they're financial, relational, physical. Father, any different number of ways in which we can become afraid. I pray, Father, that as we walk through this time, that you would bless our time together. May those who struggle with this be encouraged. and learn how to apply the truths of your words so that they can address these in a way that would bring honor to you. For those who don't fear, we pray that they would even learn from these and be able to encourage others with the truths that they hear. Thank you again for revealing these to us. We pray for your Holy Spirit's work to work them into our heart. We pray in Christ's name, amen.