I Have Decided To Walk By Faith, Not Fear | Pastor Adam Peterson

Hey, we're in a series called I Have Decided, and we're gonna get right to it this morning. We got work to do. Let me look into the camera and just show some love to all the people that did not wake up this morning because that hour of sleep really got you. And so you are watching from home today, or maybe you're not feeling well, or maybe you don't even live in our city. We're grateful for you, online family. All the people in this room are judging you because you're not in church right now, but not me. I love you so much, and I'm grateful for you. And then come on, to all the men and women in the correctional facility. Come on, you are our church family. We're so grateful for you. Today, we're just gonna jump into it. I have decided to walk by faith and not fear. With what's going on in our world right now, I just really felt like the Lord put this message on my heart, just to pastor you and lead you. The Bible would tell us simply this in 2 Corinthians 5-7, that we walk by faith and not by sight. So as followers of Jesus, what that means is, I'm not gonna live my life based on what's going on around me and what's going on in my world. I'm gonna walk by faith and trust in God that he is greater than everything

that I am currently facing and everything that is currently going on in our world. Aren't you grateful that you don't have to go off of what you currently see, because all the emotions that that would stir up, but we can put our faith and our trust in a great God. So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna have a little bit of a compare and contrast, if you will. We're gonna look at the devil a little bit this morning. And we're gonna become aware of who he is and what his goal is for our life. But then we're gonna compare and contrast and we're gonna look at God, come on somebody. And we're gonna remind ourselves of who he is and what he wants to do in our lives, what his purpose is. And so we're gonna do a little bit of a history lesson, losers go first, and so we're gonna start with the devil this morning. And we're gonna do a history lesson, because some of y'all are new to church. Some of you maybe have been in church for a while and you don't really know much about the devil. And when we read in the Bible, we don't get a lot of backstory on what happened with the devil and who is he and what's going on and why does he exist. And so we're gonna look at one place in scripture just to kind of get things going this morning that gives us a little bit of backstory about the devil. It's found in the book of Ezekiel. How many of you are reading through the Bible right now?

Come on, come on, you got to Genesis, you went to Exodus. Hopefully you didn't stall out in Leviticus. Come on, keep powering through. But eventually, if you read through the Old Testament, you're gonna get to this book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel's kind of wild, because he's just maybe like ADD or something, I don't know. But as he's writing, he will literally hop from the present back to the past, sometimes to the future. Like all of a sudden, like boom, he's in this moment, now he's talking about a whole nother moment. And that's kind of what we have in Ezekiel 28. At first, he starts this chapter just talking about the king and some things that are going on. And then he goes and goes, well, let me tell you about the devil a little bit and what happened with him. Ezekiel 28, he says, you were the model of perfection. You were full of wisdom and exquisite and beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Let's read on. It says your clothing was adorned with every precious stone. Maybe I should have said this just at the start. The devil used to be an angel, a perfect angel, full of wisdom, full of beauty. Your clothing was adorned with precious stones, stones I've never even heard of. We got red carnelian, we got pale green peridot,

white moonstone, blue green beryl, onyx. Come on, let's read on. Green jasper, blue lapis lazuli. That's not even a real word. I don't know, turquoise and emerald. So decked out, blinged out. Beautiful, adorned with just, like God created this beautiful creation, all beautifully crafted for you. And all of it, it's set in the finest gold. Woo! They were given to you, here it is, you ready? On the day you were created. So God, this is hard to wrap our minds around, was never created, God has just always been. You ever think about that for a little bit? You ever think about eternity? It'll just like melt your brain. God's always been, but the angels of heaven, they were created by God. The devil was one of them, his name was Lucifer. He was just beautiful creation of God. God says, I ordained you and I anointed you as this mighty, angelic guardian. I don't know what your picture of angels is, but you need to get the Hallmark Angel video. out of your mind. Not little babies in diapers with wings playing a harp. These angels are bad to the bone. They are awesome, like giant.

Like if they showed up in, every time you read in the Bible where an angel shows up, everybody just hits the floor. Okay, if like a little baby with a harp showed up, you wouldn't be scared. You'd be like, what is that, that's weird. It says you had access. You had access to the holy mountain of God. Not only did I create you beautiful, I let you be around me. You were in my presence. You got to walk among the stones of fire. You were blameless in all you did from the day that I created you until the day evil was found in you. So perfect creation by God, until all of a sudden some evil starts to grow on the inside. Let's read how that happened. Your heart was filled with pride. You know what pride is? Pride is I don't need you, God. It's actually the one sin in the Bible that God says I can't work with that. It says God actually pushes away the pride. He stiffs arms. He's like, get away from me. If you have pride, I don't want anything to do with you. Because pride says I don't need God. You were filled with pride because of all your beauty.

So isn't this interesting? That the devil, this angel created by God, created beautifully, started to try to take credit for how beautiful he looked instead of giving God the credit for creating him like that. He's like, look at me, look at me, look at me, look how beautiful I am, as opposed to look at the God that created me. Your wisdom was corrupted by your love for splendor, so I threw you to the ground. Track with me on this. At some point, this angel created by God, Lucifer the devil, starts to go, hey, all the worship that's going to God, I want it on me. And in that moment, God said, sorry, bro. There's only one God, it's me. And I created you, and I will not have any of this in my presence, in my home, in my heaven. Get out of my presence. I'm casting you to the ground. Where? Earth. The devil's not in hell right now. That is his future home. But right now, he is here on earth. Somehow, in the process of all of that, he actually convinced a third of the angels to follow him, meaning they also lost sight

and vision that God is God, and all worship should go to him, and they lost sight, and now they're out of God's presence. I mean, you know, we can all lose sight from time to time. Aren't you grateful for grace and mercy from God that when you lose sight, God's like, hey, come on, get it together, come back to me. So God cast him out, and in the book of Revelation, it says this, chapter 12, verse 12, but woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you. He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short. He's not happy that he's here. He's angry at God for casting him out, filled with fury, and now who is he gonna take it out on? God's creation. He knows, I am here for a limited time, and this is what the Bible calls the devil, couple names it gives him. He's the God of this age, meaning God has allowed him, for whatever reason, take it up with God, God has allowed him to rule on this earth. Now hear me very clearly, he is not God, meaning he is not all-knowing, he is not all-powerful, and he is not able to be everywhere all at once. It's crazy to me that God is here with us right now, that's good news, and he's also in Africa right now at the same time, because he's outside of time, he's outside of, he's just God.

How does that work? I have no idea, but I'm grateful for the God that I serve, that he is a big God, but the devil's not like that. Hey, I think the devil's actually very limited, like the devil's not in Jacksonville right now. Okay, there's demonic influence, I think the devil's in the Middle East right now. I think he's stirring up conflict somewhere else. He's the God of this age, he is the tempter, meaning everything that is not holy and good and from God, he is trying to tempt you to get you to follow after that. Everything that is lesser than God's absolute best for your life, he's trying to tempt you to. Destroy your life. Bible says he's a murderer. He's a liar. There is no truth in him. He is the accuser. Let me break this one down for you for just a little bit. Like, because this is in the Bible, that he literally stands before God in heaven and accuses you of all of your sin. Going, God, look what they did here. Look what they did here. He knows your sin. Because he's, here's what I believe. And again, this isn't in the Bible. This is just a personal opinion.

Take it for what you want. I think there are demonic influences that follow you. They know your patterns. They know your sin. They are assigned to you. I just personally believe that, okay? They weren't just assigned to you. They were assigned to your parents too, so they know your family history. And they stand before God accusing you. Look at this sin. Look at this sin. Look what they did here. Look what they did here. You shouldn't love them. You shouldn't forgive them. You shouldn't do this. Jesus in heaven stands there and goes, yeah, he's right about all of that. Debt. I paid for their sin. All of the, listen to me. Oh, this is so good. All of the thing that the devil's accusing you of, Jesus goes, yeah, they did all of that. But also they called upon me to come and forgive them of all of their sins. And when I gave my life for them on the cross, come on, they are completely forgiven. And so then Jesus is like, shut your mouth.

Stop accusing the ones that I have fully forgiven. Now, if you have never called upon Jesus to be the Lord and Savior of your life, all those accusations against you are 100% true and nobody has paid for it. So you get the choice. You can either pay for it or Jesus can pay for it. If Jesus pays for it, you are sealed for eternity in heaven. If you have to pay for it, you are sealed for eternity, separated from God in hell. Oh, may Jesus pay for it. May you call upon him to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Amen? Come on. Bible calls him the devil, which is like a Greek word diabolos, which just means the twister of truth. Because he doesn't just come out with a right out lie. He just ever so twisted. It sounds like truth, but it's not. He's the divider. He sows division. All he wants to do is break relationships, break people apart, destroy lives, destroy relationships, destroy marriages, destroy families. And he wants to alienate you from the things of God. Now in the garden with Adam and Eve, he took the form of what? Snake.

That's why to this day, I don't like snakes, okay? Take my man card from me if you want, okay? I have a irrational fear of snakes. Well, some of them are good snakes. Nope, nope. That's like saying, oh, that's a good cockroach. That's a good spider. They ain't no good snakes. No good, like, ugh, I don't care. They eat that. I don't want them in my house. I don't want them around. Now we are on the West side and we're in Duval County. How many of you have ever found a snake around your house? Yeah. So a couple years back, I open up my back door and when I do, this little demon comes sliding right into my house, okay? I wish I had a camera. I wish I had something to record because it sounded something like this. Ah! That was me. That wasn't even my wife. That was me. My wife, my kids, they come running. They're like, what is it? I was like, there's a snake in my boot. Like, there's a, there's a snake in the house. It was like 10 feet, man.

This thing was, it was probably like this big, but you know what I'm saying? And my wife was like, do something. I was like, you do something. So I got two brooms. That was like a, like a hockey goalie, man. I was just like, get out of here. In the name of Jesus, get out of my house. And he went, you know, I was just hitting it and I finally got him like halfway. And he got like, he was like taunting me. And he was like halfway in the house, halfway out. So I just grabbed the door and I just slammed his shot on him, caught him. And then I went and got my ax, because I'm a man and I own an ax. I chopped that snake's head off because I'm a man. I think it went down something like this. But I got that sucker. And I said, tell all your friends, this is what happens. You mess with me. Amen, amen, still have PTSD. Listen, so what if, what if, what if that snake got in my house and I looked at my kids and I said, hey, we're just gonna pray and hope that it finds its way out. Let's just all go back to what we were doing. We'll just hope, you look at me like I'm crazy, right? Okay, this is what I wanna tell you. There is a snake, Luce.

He's trying to get into your home. He's trying to get into our church. He's trying to get into your life to cause harm. Hear me, he is out to get you. First Peter 5, eight says it like this. Stay alert, I know you lost an hour of sleep, but come on, wake up. Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. If I told you right now, this'll be fun. If I told you right now, hey guys, I need you to know this, 10 o'clock, somebody showed up to our church today, a person, and they came here with the intent to cause harm to people today. They came to hurt some people today. They came to steal from you. They're gonna try to get into our kids' area. How many of you be like, it's on, let's go, okay, and half of y'all, the women are like, let's go. I will claw, I will claw your eyes out. I will rip your hair out. I am ready to, I haven't fought somebody. Hold my earrings, you know what I'm like. It's been a while since some of y'all got up, but you be like, I'm ready. Give me a chance to hurt somebody today. Take out all your aggression.

Like that's what we're dealing with here. I know we're joking, but that's what we're talking about here, that the devil, he is like a roaring lion, and he's looking for someone to devour. I don't know if you've ever watched like some nature shows, but a lion will prowl, and they're patient. They'll creep, they'll hide, and listen to me, they'll wait for the right time. That's the devil. He's looking at you. He's looking at me, he's looking at the world, and he's going, oh, I'm not gonna go right now. I'm gonna wait, because this isn't the right time. This isn't the right, now's the right time. And he's not just trying to hurt you. He is trying to take you out. He wants to devour you. Here's what I wrote down. Here's the people that are most vulnerable. The isolated, the discouraged, and the distracted. Isolated means you don't have the right people around you. You got the wrong people, or maybe you have no people around you. So of course the devil's gonna look at you like an easy target going, they ain't got nobody to pick them up if I take them out. They don't have anybody to encourage them. I'm gonna come and I'm gonna beat them down. He's coming after you if you feel discouraged right now. And the reality is this.

We're all gonna have seasons of discouragement. We're all gonna face things that aren't easy, and things that just kind of wear us out, but he's gonna look and go, I'm not gonna go now. I'm gonna wait for this thing to happen, because in this moment, they're gonna be discouraged, and that's when I'm gonna come after them. And really, I think one of his main tactics is distraction. He wants your eyes to be taken off of the things of God, where you're not filling yourself with the spirit of God, and you're not setting your mind on the things of God. He's like, I'm just gonna wait until they get real distracted. I'm gonna wait until they're just kind of scrolling. They're not reading the Bible. They're not filling themselves with the things of God. They're just watching TV. I'm gonna wait until they're fully distracted. Then I'm coming at them, and they're not even gonna see it coming. They're not alert. All of this can cause some anxious feelings. All of this can cause some, all of this is a recipe for fear to come into your lives. Now, when you read the Bible, I can't encourage you enough. Don't just read one verse. Read the surrounding verses sometimes of what the Bible is trying to say, because in 1 Peter 5, 7, it says this. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Anybody grateful that God cares for you this morning? All right, so the next time I read a verse like that, just say amen or something like that, okay? God cares for us, and so what God is saying is, I know you're gonna have some anxious thoughts. I know you're gonna have some worries. I know you're gonna have some fears. Don't carry them yourself. Give them to me, because I care for you, and I'm stronger, and I can carry the load. You can't, but the reality is. We hold on to those anxieties. We hold on to those worries. We hold on to those fears. Guess what? Now we're walking around with all this stuff and we're not casting it on the Lord, that's when 1 Peter 5, 8 would say, that's when the roaring lion is gonna devour you. So why is it so important that we give our anxiety to God instead of trying to carry it? Because that's when the roaring lion's gonna come to try to devour us. Then it goes on in verse nine and says, hey, and we know that all the family of believers are walking through some difficulties. So let's make sure we're doing this together. In the Middle East right now, there is all out war. It is, I mean, you turn on the news, something new is happening every day.

People are losing their lives. People are losing their homes. I've talked to a handful of people within our own church. We are a Navy town. Spouses are already on deployment and they're worried. Anxiety's coming in them. They're already gone. Could they get shipped out? I talked to a second time guest in our church this morning. They just found our church, just moved to Jacksonville in the Navy. I said, have you heard anything? He goes, I can't talk about it. Listen, that's real. You think that doesn't cause some worries, some fears, some parents whose sons and daughters, some siblings, like that's real. And it's got the devil's fingerprint all over it. Now, if you're here and you're like, well, tell us what's, like, I don't know what's right or wrong. I do not like evil. I do not like evil people. And sometimes you have to go and protect others, but I'm not gonna stand up here and go, this is the right thing to do, this is the wrong. I'm not here for that. I'm a spiritual person. At the end of the day, I am praying that God's kingdom would come on earth, okay? But I understand, man.

I'm grateful for our military. I'm grateful, I'm so grateful. If we're not careful, we'll get so caught up in the political landscape of this. And we'll get so caught up in reading every news article and watching everything on TV. And if we're not careful, we'll start to let that stuff consume us. And it will breed fear. It will breed worry, it'll breed anxiety. So here's the thought that I wanna share with you, because I've had so many conversations with some of you. Be informed, just don't be over-informed. Like, there is a reality. So many of you are like, how much of it should I read? How much of it should I know about? I'm like, you should know what's going on in the world around you. You should be informed. Just don't be so over-informed that it's actually crippling you and causing more anxiety to grow in your life. There's a level of going, okay, I see this happen, I see this is going on, I see that's going on, and now I'm gonna turn it off and I'm gonna do what God has called me to do. I'm gonna pray. And I'm gonna call on God. I'm not gonna let fear grow in my life. I'm gonna be a person of faith.

Amen? All right, so 2 Timothy says this. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and of self-discipline. So God didn't give us a spirit of fear. If it's a spirit, where did it come from? The devil. He wants us crippled in fear. He wants us walking in fear and not in faith. He wants us not trusting God but doubting everything. That's the moment he wants to come and take us out. And so the Bible would say, I've given you a better spirit, a spirit of love, a spirit of power, self-discipline. And then the following verse says this. So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord. So don't walk by fear, because when you walk by fear, you're not gonna speak up. When you walk in the power of God, then you're gonna be bold in your faith to tell others about Jesus. So let me tell you who God is. Let me tell you who Jesus is. He's the mighty God. He's the everlasting father. He's the wonderful counselor. Come on, he's the prince of peace. He is Emmanuel, God with us. He is our good shepherd. He is our creator.

I'm sorry, Dwayne Johnson, but he's the rock. And he is the beginning and the end, meaning he starts something and he will finish it. And the devil has come into our world and God has given him influence. God has allowed him. It's almost like God's creation of us is like a big I told you so to the devil, meaning God created us because he loved us. God created us because he wanted a relationship with us. God created us, come on somebody, to honor and glorify him with our lives. And where the devil has come and tried to use his influence. draw us away from God, and offering death and destruction at every turn, God offers us something better. And when we choose God over the things that the devil is trying to throw at us, God's saying, I told you so. I knew not all of them were gonna follow me. Some are gonna follow the enemy. Some people their entire life will rebel against God and choose the world over him. But there is a remnant of people who are saying, I am tired of what the world has to offer me. I want the things of God. And here's what God offers us. God offers us life when the devil offers us death. God offers us goodness when the devil offers evil. Truth over deception, light over darkness,

and hope over hopelessness. And so much more. This is the God we serve. And so we walk by faith going, God, everything that the enemy is trying to wreck and destroy in my life, everything he's trying to wreck and destroy in our world, I'm gonna walk by faith knowing you're greater. I'm gonna walk by faith and not be dictated by what's going on around me. I don't have to live in fear. I don't have to live in worry. I can live knowing that my God is good. Pastor Jonathan, join me on the stage. This is how we'll close Romans 8, 37. Overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us. I love this adjective. It's not just victory. It's overwhelming victory. I love when the Jags win a football game. I don't care if we win by one point. I don't care. I don't care, I just love when we win, right? Come on. You know what I really love? I love when we kick some butt though, man. I love when the Jags just put a beat down on another team, especially when it's the Titans, like, let's go. This is what God is offering us. Hey, you don't have to walk through earth life here

just going, oh man, I hope I can make it. No, overwhelming victory is yours. Not because you have anything, but because of Christ in you. It's yours through Christ who loved us. Now, I wasn't in heaven when this happened, but let me give you one more history lesson based on what the Bible tells us. The Bible tells us that the devil rebelled against God in heaven. This angelic being created by God, he rebels. An overwhelming victory took place. How do we know that? How do we know it wasn't like a struggle? How do we know it wasn't like the devil and God were in a wrestling match and it took, like God finally won, but man, it took him a while. Here's how we know, because Jesus said, I saw Satan fall like lightning. Track with me here, you ready? You ever seen lightning? It's there and then it's gone, boom. That's what Jesus says. So again, I wasn't there, maybe we'll get to watch the movie in heaven. But the devil rebels against God, wants the praise for himself and God's like, nope, boom. You talk about overwhelming victory, you talk about getting your butt kicked, you talk about like, oh yeah, everybody put the attention on, boom, you're gone.

The best, the best the devil ever did at thinking he won took three days. Spoiler alert, I know Easter's coming up, all right? Don't read the book, all right, listen. Three days Jesus laid in that tomb. Did the devil think he had won? Maybe, but on that third day Jesus resurrects and comes back to life. You talk about overwhelming victory. Come on, that's available for us. You think something's dead in your life? God can bring it back. You don't have to be dictated by your emotions. You can put your hope and your trust in God. Here's what overwhelming victory means. It means you can be at peace in your life. It means you don't have to walk around with stress and worry all the time. You don't have to let fear control you. What is overwhelming victory? It means the joy of the Lord is our strength. This is what God is offering to us. What the devil offers us, death and destruction. God goes, oh, I've come to give you life. Not just for you, but so that you can be a light to the world that is dark right now. You feel like your life right now is being affected by some fear. Some anxiety, some worry. I want to pray with you. I want you to give it to the Lord right now. I want you to remind yourself

He cares for me. Pray. Thank you God that you are in this place. You're right here amongst us right now. We can't see you. We can't touch you. We can't feel you, but your promise from your word says you're here in our midst. And so we just remind ourselves that you're the God who is for us. That you're the God who never leaves us. That you're the God who is greater. Everything that we're facing, everything that our world is currently facing, we're just choosing to look to you. Be our peace. Be our hope. Be our comfort. In Jesus name. Amen.