Fear Not: Faith So Strong That The Chain Keeps Snapping - Louie Giglio

I was doing an impromptu survey with everybody I met. So if I ran into you and we have five seconds, I would have said to you, what's your greatest fear? No warning just we're talking and then I would just say, what's your greatest fear? Working on this book fear not, thinking about fear a lot in the last little window of time. The first person I asked that to without even thinking said, my greatest fear is something bad happening to my kids. I asked another friend and he's without even thinking that friend said, losing my mom. I asked somebody else what's your greatest fear and they said, that I won't have what it takes to be a good dad. Didn't see that one coming. I'm looking at him like, you're going to be an amazing dad. But somehow fear had gotten in there and fear had gotten into the equation and fear had convinced them that they might not have what it takes to be a good dad. Someone said really quickly, I'm afraid my greatest fear would be my kids making the wrong decisions. Anybody? No. All right, awesome. Great group of kids, fantastic. Somebody else said, my greatest fear, no doubt, is what's coming in the future. Not knowing what's coming in the future. Somebody else said and kind of went right into my heart, they said, they looked up and they said, my greatest fear is that I'm never going to have a family. Somebody else said, my greatest fear is that my cancer is going to come back. And I imagine if we asked that question here today, we would have as many answers as there are people in this room.

What is your greatest fear today? And the thing about it was that no one said to me when I asked that question, wow, that's a great question. Can you give me some time to think about it? And I don't think anybody woke up that morning. I don't know, but I don't think someone woke up that morning. The first thing they thought when they woke up was, man, I'm afraid something bad is going to happen to my kids. But that fear was running right beneath the surface. And when the question was asked, it did not take two seconds for them to have that answer. And what it said to me was, what I already knew about me, that we're all up against some kind of fear. And normally, it's not knocking on the front door. It's kind of working its way in the side door, kind of quietly getting underneath the surface of our lives and getting a grip on us and causing us to miss out on the fullness of what God has for us. You version Bible app, how many of you have it? Anybody got the You version Bible app? Okay, they know what we're doing. They know the reading plan you're doing right now. They know what scriptures you're in right now. And last year, they knew what was the most searched scripture in the Bible. Worldwide, a billion downloads. In the number one scripture, people on planet Earth went to last year, was found in Isaiah 41 verse 10. We've talked about this text a lot at Passion City. People wanted to find this text. And what does it say?

So this is the Lord speaking through the prophet Isaiah. So what? Say it with me. So do say it with me. So do not fear. The number one place people went last year across cultures and across continents was to this verse. Why? Because fear is on the mic and fear is talking. And people want to know, can I be free of fear? The Lord said you can. I'm encouraging you. Do not fear. This is what he's saying to us today. Do not fear. Why? Why shouldn't I fear? I don't know what's happening tomorrow. Why shouldn't I fear? AI is going to take over the world and kill us all. Why shouldn't I fear? I can't control this situation I'm in right now. Why shouldn't I be afraid? Here's why. Because I am with you. I just wonder today, is this sort of like background noise to us? Or is this the greatest news we've ever heard? Do not fear. Why shouldn't I be afraid? Because I am with you.

And not only that, I'm asking you do not be dismayed. Why? Because I am your God. And here's what I'm promising you today. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my 365 verses that say, "Do not fear," so we've been told all our lives, so I put that in the book, and when you write a book you've got editors and fact checkers, and the fact checkers came back and said, "Yeah, they're not exactly 365 verses," they'd say, "Do not fear." But if you put all of them together, do not be dismayed, don't be afraid. You put them all together. There are hundreds of places in Scripture where God is saying to us, "I know fears on the mic, but there's another option." I know fears on the mic, but fear doesn't get the last word, and he's encouraging us today even two verses later in this same chapter, "For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand." Can you just hold your right hand out for a minute? Just hold it out for a minute, and imagine what God is saying today, "I am the Lord your God, and I take hold of your hand." The creator of the universe, God Almighty, the one who's never been afraid, one second in existence, takes hold of your hand, and he says to you, "What does he say? Do not fear." Why? Why not? Because I will help you. I know it's hard what you're going through, but I'm going to help you. I know it's challenging not knowing what's on the other side of tomorrow, but I will help you. I know it's frustrating when you can't see how the pieces are fitting together, but

I will help you, and I can help you, and I promise you that I am with you, that I'll hold your hand, and I will help you." And we're talking, when he says, "Do not fear," he's talking about that sinister fear, not the good kind that says, "Hey, don't put your hand in a campfire. Don't walk out in traffic." The negative kind that gets a grip on our lives. I mean, studying fear was so fascinating for me this year. If you Google fear, by the way, and you should do this, it's kind of fun. It's Google instantly, top fears, number one's probably going to come back, arachnophobia. Anybody? Anybody know what that is? Hello? Fear of spiders. We got any people afraid of spiders? Okay, that's not my top one, because spiders are normally this big, the big ones, and on down, and you can just squash them, and so that, to me, that's like, I can squash you. A snake, different, and that one's up there also. And sometimes, number one or number two is glossophobia. Anybody? Glossophobia? For 400? It's what I'm doing right now. The fear of public speaking is number one or number two, and the things that people fear the most. Let's take a poll. Spiders, or this is between spiders and public speaking, spiders. Public speaking. Look at that. That's crazy. How about this one?

This one's hard to say. Arachnophobia, it's the fear. This is real. Google it. It's the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. So I'm taking a poll today. It didn't get anybody at the 9.30. Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. They say this is top ten. Okay. I don't know about that one. What if you were speaking in public and there were spiders on the stage? And you just eaten peanut butter. I found one that was interesting because this one almost took me out. When I was in that hole of depression that I've talked about so much, I had this sense that I was dying, that I had legitimately, I thought I had the symptom of something. Like I think I have a brain tumor, pretty convinced. And this doctor friend who was coaching me through this said, "Okay, man, I know a guy will set up a deal. We'll do the scan." Lo and behold, I didn't have a brain tumor. And I was like, "I think I have cancer, okay? I know a guy will go do the test, we'll find out the thing, we'll do the thing. I think I have this, I think I have that." Just every other week it was something else. And after I didn't have any of those things, the guy told me I really couldn't tell you this two months ago. I was like, what is that? He goes, it's a thing. It's a thing where you're convinced in your mind

that you have these symptoms that are real and that you're dying of any variety of things and no one can tell you that you're not. You have to go take the test and when you get the, you don't have that, you don't have that, you don't have that, and that's negative and that's negative and that's negative. All that finally goes down and goes away, but you have to go through it. And I was studying fears and I came across Sanitophobia. The fear of death syndrome is real. And I don't know, if you're afraid of spiders, we don't cover that in the book. We don't talk about peanut butter sticking to the root of your mouth, but we do talk a little bit about Sanitophobia and we talk about seven fears in this book. I can't cover them all exhaustively in four talks, but we talk about death. What happens to me when I die? Or how am I going to die? What is that gonna be like? We talk about the fear of missing out. We're gonna talk about that next week, a little bit FOMO. Not the haha laughed it off kind of FOMO. I had some FOMO when you all went to Europe, but the real FOMO that a lot of us are trapped with comparing our lives to the stories other people are living. We talk about scarcity, the fear of not having enough and some of you are up against that right now.

You just are living, clutching everything you've got, afraid that you're not gonna have what it takes to pay the bill or to do whatever it is that's coming next. We talk about the future, the fear of the unknown. We talk about my friend's fear, something bad happening to my kids and we're gonna talk about that for a few minutes before we close today. We talk about the fear of insignificance or obsolescence. You're like, that doesn't sound like a big fear. It's the fear that your life doesn't matter. It's the fear that when you're gone, nobody will care. It's the fear that your life isn't going to amount to anything and when it's all said and done you're not going to have made a difference in life with your life. And we talk about one that I think a lot of us in this room face up against although we don't love to say it and that's the fear of rejection. It's the fear of being left behind, not chosen, not picked, not good enough. And we come around these big seven fears and we ask the question that I wanna pose today. How do we extinguish these fears? Or do we just have to accommodate and like, hey, I don't know when you got in the car but you're in the car. So put your seat belt on and this is just my life. I'm a fearful person, my mom was a fearful person, I come from a family where there's strong holds of fear

and that's just kind of the way I navigate life. It's just part of what I have to do to get by and I treat it, you know, with different ways and try to manage it in different ways but is it possible we're asking today to extinguish these fears? And I believe it is, then how do you do it? And here's the hinge point of this collection, we extinguish fear with faith. That's not normally our first go-to thought but I remember when it hit me hard. Two summers ago, Crowder breaks his leg, we've talked about this, he's going into surgery. Forrest Frank has gotten healed from breaking his back and we're praying for Crowder. We're telling him, hey, I don't know if you saw today but Forrest Frank I healed. So we're praying you'll get healed right now before you go through that door into surgery or in surgery, the surgeon will do something miraculous and be brilliant and God will use him. Crowder comes out of surgery, post in recovery, tags, Forrest Frank, and lo and behold, something starts percolating and a collaboration is underway. And a few weeks later, there's a song called The Rock. Anybody, The Rock, hello, okay? Go check it out, thank you so much. Well, Shelley obviously works with Crowder, we both work with Crowder but Shelley behind the scenes

is kind of steering a lot of that. And so we're in the process, we're seeing the text go back and forth, the verses, the rhymes, we're seeing all of it happen and then it hits and then it drops. And when it drops, we were on Sabbath two summers ago and we're cranking that thing, man, and it is crankable. And there's a line in it that Crowder writes toward the end and the line says, devil tried to hit me with the fear. I'm laughing, faith so strong that the chain keeps snapping. You ever have a line of a song go somewhere down inside your psyche and just like pitch a tent? And when you're not actively thinking about Devil tried to hit me with the fear. I'm laughing. Faith so strong that the chain keeps snapping. If I'm not talking to you, I'm thinking about that line. If I'm not actively reading the instructions on something, I'm thinking about that line. Day after day after day after day, we're cranking it. I'm thinking it. I'm on a paddle board, minding my own business, working on a different book on a different subject, paddling. Devil tried to hit me with the fear. I'm laughing, faith so strong that the chain keeps snapping. Devil tried to hit me with the fear. I'm laughing, faith so strong that the chain keeps snapping. And then it hit me and I asked myself this question, am I laughing? 'Cause fear is on the mic.

Am I laughing? Or am I losing? And right on that paddle board, I said to God, I wanna have the kind of faith that is strong so when the devil comes with the chain of fear, that chain just keeps snapping. Got you, no you don't. I got you, no you don't. I got you, no you don't. And I thought, what kinds of fears need snapping? And I paddled back to the place we were staying and wrote down the outline for this book. And right in that moment, I said to myself, I want to have face that is greater than fear. The antidote to fear, I would have said probably is courage. I'm afraid so I need to be strong. I need to be courageous and that is true. But at the end of the day, courageous why? And courageous how? And then I began to see and understand that the antidote to fear is faith. And that's where courage is born. Courage is born out of me having faith in who God is and what God has said about my life. The antidote to my fear is faith in God. I love how this unfolds in this text when we were doing the collection around Joshua. He's installed as the leader to take the people into the promised land. And after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said, can you say that word with me?

The Lord said, come on, you can do it. The Lord said, God spoke to Joshua. And this is what he said, Moses, my servant is dead. Now he had to announce that 'cause Moses had gone up on a mountain, met with the Lord, then Moses was taken away and buried by the Lord. Now then, the Lord is saying, you and all these people get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I'm about to give to them. That could have been the end of the conversation. Tell everybody to get ready, I'm giving you this land. So when you go to the first fortified city, just remember that. When you come to the first huge challenge and don't know what to do, just remember that. When it looks like you're gonna get squashed and overwhelmed, just remember that. I'm giving you this land. I'll give you every place where you set your foot as I promise Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, from the great river to the Mediterranean Sea. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with, sorry, I'm preaching a little high octane, but this is firing me up. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I have come back to that so many times in my life. I'm not Joshua, I'm not leading the people in the promised land, but I'm called by God to do things for God and with God.

I've been given a calling and a stewardship to move with God, to see God affect things that change my generation in so many days I've needed to remember as I was with Moses, Louie, I will be with you. Same God, same God in your story today. You're not doing this by yourself. You are not alone as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. So now is where we see the word courage. Be strong and courageous. No kidding. How? Why? And the question today for you and me is, what has God spoken to you? And are you standing on that today? Are you standing on what God has spoken to you? Because fear, I had to define it eventually in the process of working around it. And this is where I landed. Fear is the fruit of abandoning faith in what God has spoken. If there is fear in my life, hello, it is my fault. Because I at some point abandon faith in what God spoke to me about the situation, about me, about His promise. And when I abandon faith in that, fear is the fruit that is on my tree. Fear is lying to you and me and trying to trump what God has spoken to you and me. You remember the serpent in the Garden of Eden, where there was fear, by the way, talking about that next week, FOMO and Eden in paradise. We're afraid God's keeping something from us. We're afraid that He's holding back and we're missing out. But it started with the enemy saying, "Did God say?" Because God said to them, Eve said, "If we eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil, the knowledge of good and evil, we'll die." And then the serpent said, "Surely you won't die." So we're going to be standing in a crossroads you and me, of deciding between what God said and what the enemy is saying. What God spoke and what somebody else spoke. And that's life in the flock of God. Jesus said, John 10, 27, "My sheep listened to me." Your Bible may say, "My sheep hear my voice." This translation says, "They listen to my voice, to my voice, my voice, my voice, my voice, my voice." I know them and they follow me. And that was imperative because

there was another voice. And you and I know that today, right? There's another voice. There's the voice of God and there's another voice. There was God speaking in the garden and there was another voice in the garden. And the question today, for me, is which voice am I listening to and which voice is shaping my confidence? Jesus said to them, "If God," this is John 8, "if God were your father," so we're talking about having a father, a good father, "you would love me, for I've come here from God." But verse 43, "Why is my language not clear to you?" I'll tell you why. It's because you're unable to hear what I say. Why? Why can't we hear what you say, Jesus? Because he's telling them, "You belong to your father." So we've got my father and now we've got you guys' father and your father is the devil. And you want to carry out your father's desires. So now he's going to describe the father. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar. I don't want to be dramatic, but come on, it's in the Bible. He's a liar. Fear is a liar because it came from the father of lies. And when he speaks lies, he's just talking his native tongue because he's a liar. And if that's not enough, he is the father of lies. And I wonder, he might be lying to you right now. He might be telling you that you don't have what it takes. He might be telling you that you're not going to make it through this. He might be telling you right now. Keep your hands on the wheel. You run it. You might be telling me right now that you've missed your moment. That came and went, you missed it. He might be telling you that God can't be trusted, been telling people that since day one. He might be telling you that your best bet is to take care of you. Let somebody else worry about taking care of everybody else. You just focus on you. You just take care of you. He might be telling you that more stuff equals more happiness. If you're out there grabbing more stuff, think and that's going to do it.

Chances are he's lying to you right now. And when we onboard his lies, we build a greenhouse for fear. And I know God is saying today, I know it. He's saying enough is enough. It is time for you to stop cultivating fear. And it is time for you to take me at my word. Paul was writing to Timothy. I love what he said. He made it so clear. And this is back to Jesus, two fathers. He said, for God has not given us a spirit of fear. Now, I don't want to get too far down into this, but just side note here, fear isn't like an emotion necessarily. Fear is a spirit coming from the father of lies. And he's telling you, you should be afraid, and here's why you should be afraid, where your heavenly father is saying to you, don't be afraid. Do not fear, and here's why you shouldn't be afraid and why you shouldn't fear. God hasn't given us a spirit of fear. God doesn't want you walking around fretting. He doesn't want us walking around in a pool of worrying. He doesn't want us to be bound up by the chain of fear. He, through the Holy Spirit, has given us a spirit of power and a spirit of love. And we're going to see this later in the collection, perfect love casts out fear, and of a sound mind. And what God is saying to us today, He's saying, I need you to take me at my word. I need you to stop cultivating fear from the lives of the enemy, and I need you to take me at my word, and I need you to start focusing on what I have said. And the good news about this is you can change your brain. I should have got at least one amen there, you can change your brain. Your brain right now, potentially, is changing you, but you can change your brain.

I studied both the spiritual aspect of fear, and I studied the biological aspect of fear, and I studied the brain in this book. And there's something about the prefrontal cortex that's in your brain that is the place where the decisions are made, that is the place where the schedule is kept, that is the place where your emotions are regulated. This is control center for your brain. Your amygdala is just sounding the alarm all day long, just sounding the alarm. Good and bad, good and bad, good and bad, but it eventually works around to your prefrontal cortex if you're mature enough, and your prefrontal cortex kind of makes sense of all the information. And here's what I discovered, which is fascinating. It's something called neuroplasticity. You're like, "Oh man, I did not come to church, so you get neuroplasticity." "Oh no, yes, you did." Because what it means is that your prefrontal cortex can be changed. How? How? How can it be changed? I'll tell you how. Through neuroplasticity, reading now, the brain's ability to form and strengthen new neural connections happens through targeted habits and repeated practice. In other words, I can go to God's Word, I can go to Isaiah, and I can find the promise of God over my life, I can believe in what he has said. "For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, 'Do not fear, I will help you,' written right above it, and my Bible is 2023." That was my verse for 2023, and I planted in it. I cultivated it. I built a greenhouse for it to grow in, and when you do that, you're doing what biology tells us, what neuroscience tells us, that your prefrontal cortex right now might be in a revolving door of fear, some of you fear that you've had in your life for 20 years, but you can change it by targeted habits and repeated action. So you go to God's word, and you say,

"If I'm afraid right now, that didn't come from you." So I don't want something that didn't come from you. So I'm going to stand up to fear, and I'm going to say, "You're a liar." Now, you're winning right now, but you're not going to win ultimately. I'm going to be honest, you're winning right now, but I'm about to change that, because God has not given me a spirit of fear, but He's given me a spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. And how do I get it? He told me how I get it by renewing my mind to the truth. That's how I get it. And so I'm going to find out what God said. I know what He said to Joshua, "I'm going to find out what is He saying to me." What's He speaking to me? What's He speaking over our family? What's He speaking over my situation? What's He speaking over my future? I'm going to find what is God saying to me, and I am going to camp out there. I'm going to build a house on what God is saying to me, and in the process of it, I'm going to build a new neural connection in my brain. And there's going to be a day where faith is so strong that the chain keeps snapping. I'm down to the end of the day, but I want to give you something practical, and not just to set up. Someone take a couple of minutes really fast, and I want to take on the fear that my friend had of something bad happening to their kids. Maybe for a year, that's not my stage of life right now. Well, if you're a parent, I'm guessing you never outgrow the fear of something bad happening to your kids. For me, and you'll laugh at this unless you had a London, for me, it would be the fear of something bad happening to London, which honestly robbed me of a lot of joy the whole time we had her. And I am working right now to build up a different kind of faith so that when the next London comes into our life, I won't live miserable for 10 years worrying about something bad happening to her. That's our golden doodle who went to heaven, by the way, so we're like, London, who's London? Maybe it's something bad happening to your friend, or happening in your business, or something bad happening to you. How do you break that chain with faith? How do you get free from that? Can you live free from being controlled by fear that something bad is going to happen to your kids? And the answer is yes, but you have to hear Jesus give you the setup. I've told you these things so that in me you may have peace. That's taking a big swing at fear right there. In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. We all know this first, John 1633, but this is the bedrock of how you break free. You build a greenhouse for that verse right there. And you know what that verse is telling you about something bad happening to your kids? It's telling you something bad is going to happen to your kids.

In this world, I can't promise you that nothing bad is going to happen. In fact, to the contrary, in this world, I'm promising you that it's going to be trouble. We could have 30 families come on this stage right now, 50 families, 100 families from our church come on this stage right now and tell you about when trouble came to their family. So what do you do? Well, you just admit that A because that is what breaks control. I am going to wrap my kids in bubble wrap. I am going to protect them and control them and control every situation so that nothing bad is going to happen. It breaks that when you go, you know what, we're living in a broken world and I got to come to terms with that. I have to come to terms with Jesus. We're going to have trouble. Well, look, that doesn't sound very encouraging. What do I do? Four words really quickly. In every way that you can, you protect them. You raise them up in the things of God. You teach them wisdom and not folly. You model for them what good decision-making and faithfulness looks like. You make the right decisions for them. When they don't know how to make the right decisions, you don't just let them go to that family's house for the weekend, when you don't even know that family. You protect them. It's your job. It's our job to protect the kids that we're stewards of, and so we do that. But then you'll realize, Mom's and Dad's backed me up on this, that there's a moment where you can't protect them. So what do you do then? Second word, you release them. And you're releasing them even while you're protecting them, but there's a moment where they turn 16 years old and they back out of the driveway and take a left turn into the neighborhood. And you're like, "Ha!" You know, Louie, I got all kinds of stuff, man, in that car. I can turn that car off.

I can make it turn right. I can make it go slower. I know where it is. I can get there and hurry. I can control that car. No, you realize when they back out of that driveway that you can't protect them. So you have to release them. Up to the ether, you're releasing them into the hands of God. And you're saying to Him, "I've done what I can do and protected where I could protect." I taught them how to drive good. I threatened them with an inch of their life. If they pick up their phone while they're in that car that they'll never drive another day in their life, of course, I was texting them all the way to school going, "Are you doing okay? Are you there? Where are you? Are you at the red light?" "Mom, you said no. Use the phone!" Put me on speaker. You protect where you can and you release where you can't. The third word is trust. You trust them to the one who loves them more than you love them. And you say, "God, you're the one who created them in your image for your purpose and your plan for your will to be done in their life on earth as it is in heaven." So I protected where I could. I still will as long as they'll let me, even though they're 42, I'm still going to start to protect them. But I'm going to release them where I can't and I'm going to trust you, God, that you love them like I love them, that you care for them like I care for them, that they're

not just free-floating in life, but they're on heaven's radar. And even my daughter right now, 22 years of age, who's in left field and doesn't even want to talk to me, I know she's on the radar of heaven today. And a God who loves her is still after her heart. And then that fourth word is overcome. He says, "But take heart, I've overcome the world." And if I could just be honest today, there are going to be some things happen. And when they happen, we find freedom in saying, "God, I don't love it. I didn't want it. If I could go back, I would change it. But I can't." And so I am believing that you are going to overcome it. I could bring another 30 families on this stage right now who have buried their sons and daughters whose lives we've celebrated in this very room and other rooms in our house. And they tell you today, "I don't know why. I can't explain how. It still doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand the bigger story. But I will tell you this six years later, seven years later, 15 years later, I'll tell you this. God was greater than what happened to our family. God is bigger than what we went through. God used even the hard situation we went through to do something in someone else's life that maybe wouldn't have happened any other way. And God does overcome, Christ does overcome. In the world, there is trouble, but I can release my kids. I can release my pet. I can release my parents. I can release my business. I can release what I'm fearful of because I know no matter what happens in this world,

God is going to be greater than it. And I read Isaiah 41, and I know for a fact that God said, "I will be with you." Well, what if this happens God will be with me? What if that happens God will be with me? What if it turns out this way God will be with me God will help me and God will hold my hand That's what I'm standing on today. I don't know what's coming tomorrow I don't know what the future holds. I don't know the ultimate outcome, but I know God will be with me And I know that he promised to help me and if that's not good enough for me I'm telling you then I just need to close this book and move on to like some Zen meditation some other path that brings peace If it is not good enough for me that the God of heaven Promise me that he will be with me and He will help me And he'll take hold of my hand That's his promise to you And that snaps The chain of fear When we stand on it and we believe it You you you you [BLANK_AUDIO]