Living by Faith not Fear

In the beginning of high school, I did not know who I was and got plugged in with the wrong crowd right off the bat my freshman year. Started making bad decisions in my life. I wasn't the true person that I was. My mom found out what I was doing. I started seeing Jacob going down the same path that I was going down in my own youth. And we needed to get him plugged in somewhere where he could have a different focus.

She started to make me go to 2701, the high school group at Twin Lakes. And I did not want to go at all. When I would have to go, I would put my hood on and walk in, not talk to anybody. One summer up at Camp Hammer, I was doing Apostle. And I prayed with this leader and accepted Jesus as my savior. And when we said amen, I was the person that Jesus intended me to be.

I was the stress of trying to figure out who I was all through high school. This dropped. And I could be myself, didn't have to fit in with anybody or try to act like someone that I wasn't. I was me, Jacob. Ever since that summer, I got plugged in with the high school group at Twin Lakes. I started to become a student leader at 2701 and was helping out. And then one Sunday, my mom came with me. I started seeing a change in him.

It led me back to church, discovering Christ, which then led our entire family to Twin Lakes. I started going because my family was going and I didn't want our family to separate. I wanted our family to be together and do things together. So I kept going and listening to the messages and they really sort of grabbed my heart. I discovered who Christ was through Twin Lakes, through my son.

Here I am, graduated from high school, waiting to go on my mission trip with YWAM. I leave in five days, going to Germany for six and a half months, doing the marriage of the arts, DTS for photography. So I'll be in Germany for three months, training to serve the Lord for my other three months of outreach. I'm just super pumped to leave and go and to serve the Lord because I've been waiting to do a mission trip for a long time.

I'm so excited for him to go to YWAM. I'm so excited to see what God has in store for him. Jacob's growth as a Christian is inspiring to me, beyond inspiring, something I didn't expect as a mom. The 2020 vision for me is really exciting. After watching our son go through the change that he went through and how it impacted his life, I am so excited to see how it's going to impact the lives of so many other children.

There's no place like it in this community where kids can go and just feel safe and be themselves, right, and just grow. And then, you know, when they do feel safe, I think it just draws them closer to God. The college group where so many of our son's friends are going now needs a space to just grow and thrive. And that, to me, is just amazing and exciting. And I can't wait to send our daughters there and watch them grow.

I'm glad that God opened up that door for me, and now I'm excited to see what God has in store for me after YWAM's over. See which door opens up. Don't you love stories like that? We want to be showing you little stories like that all through the month of November, because that's why we are doing the whole 2020 vision.

Because when you have vital children's ministries and youth ministries, it impacts not just children and youth, but entire families, as you just saw in the Wilkinson's story. And if you're just joining us for the first time this weekend, what's the 2020 vision thing all about? What we want to do is to build a children's ministry building here on campus, first building we've built here in decades.

And we want to build a ministry building on the campus of an orphanage in India that we've supported for many years. And we want to support Second Harvest with some funds from this campaign as well. So here's the deal, we've got just a few weeks left on November 23rd and 24th, that is commitment weekend. And what we're asking you to do is to come with a pledge card and envelope. Those are in the back of these booklets.

I'd encourage you to pick up one of these at the display in the lobby and really pray about how the Lord would lead you to give to this project for the next four years above and beyond your regular offering. It's a lot to ask, so pray about it. Just pray about it carefully. And then after Thanksgiving, when we reveal the total that's been pledged that'll help set the parameters for our building, we won't talk about it again.

This won't be some eternal fundraiser. And also on commitment weekend, we want you to bring a bag filled with food for Second Harvest, more bags if you want. We'll have bins out here to collect food for them and we'll be giving them a lot of the funds from the 2020 vision campaign as well. And also if you were here early, you heard Mark kind of give the major new announcement that's just in.

Our friend Lincoln Brewster has agreed to do a concert that night, commitment Sunday evening, 7 p.m., $10 and all proceeds go to the 2020 vision project too. So it's very exciting stuff coming up. We appreciate your being in prayer about that. And right now, why don't you grab the notes that are right in the middle of your bulletins that look like this because faith building is the name of our fall series.

We are right in the middle of a 40 day study on faith and to tie into it, we have free books on faith. You can get yours again for free at the info desk. And did I mention they're free and what these are is 40 days of daily devotions. We are literally in the middle of them right now. We're on day 21. So it's not too late to join us.

Plus on our website and the exact URL is right there in your notes also on screen. You can just click on the faith building logo and get lots of other free resources. It's all free. Free faith videos and small group questions and more daily devotions and everything you need to help build up your faith. And this morning, here's what I want to talk about living by faith, not fear.

Living by faith, not fear. And I just want you to know going into this that every single word that I am going to be preaching today came out of a deep need that I have to discover how to do this. Because I wrestle with fear. I struggle with anxiety. I get overburdened with a sense of responsibilities that I have as a husband, father, as a pastor going into this 2020 vision thing. I really do wrestle with that.

And so as I've been studying about faith, I have not just been, you know, reading the Bible and asking myself, what's some content I can get out of this to preach to the people on the weekends? This has been life giving. Life changing for me. And here is the key to it all for me. It's the verse that's at the top of your notes and also on screen. And let's read this out loud together.

All right. Let me hear you really read this with gusto. Here we go. We walk by faith, not by sight. Now let's stop and read it one more time, a little bit more slowly and with more gusto. Okay. Here we go. We walk by what? Faith. And not by what? Sight. That's right. Now you go, okay, that's kind of an interesting phrase. What does it mean?

Here's what I want to do this morning. I want to examine two implications of this verse, two myths it dispels. They're on page one of your notes. And then on page two, I want to conclude by looking at a classic Bible story that illustrates this verse. Because the more you get what this verse means, the more confidence you will have in your life, the more godly risks you will take, the more holy ambition you will have, the more your life will be changed.

So the first thing I want to do is to look at two faith myths, two myths about what faith means that this verse just blows apart. And these are very important to examine. Because my guess is that every single one of us here in this room either believes these two myths right now or you have believed these myths at times in your life and you will again, even if you never put it in these terms.

These are almost universal misconceptions about faith, especially in our culture. And the danger is that they keep you and they keep me from actually living a life filled with faith instead of fear. So it's very important to dispel these myths and here they are. Myth number one is that faith is opposed to reason. Faith is opposed to reason.

In the popular mindset, faith is the opposite of thinking. It's the opposite of reason. You know, you hear, even your church people say this all the time, you got to lead with your heart, not your head. You're overthinking this. You got to just go for it and have faith. You know, good Christians don't think, what are you doing thinking so much? Faith is opposed to reason. But the biblical truth is this, faith is grounded in reason.

The Bible teaches not only that faith is compatible with thinking. The Bible teaches that faith is grounded in, consists of, originates in, stimulates the most profound thinking. God says in Isaiah 1:18, come let us reason together. The Bible says in 1 Peter 3:15–16, always be prepared to give the reason, reason for the hope that you have. It doesn't say come let us feel together, always be prepared to give the feeling for the hope that you have. It's this reason, reason.

The Apostle Paul in our key verse this morning doesn't say we walk by faith, not by reason. He doesn't contrast faith with reason, he contrasts faith with sight. Now you say, what are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about here today. But I'm going to say, I absolutely hate giving blood. Is there anybody with me on this? I mean, I know it's important, but I have needle phobia, needle phobia. And I want to know if I'm not alone. Anybody here have needle phobia? Raise your hands. Lift them up high. There is not a nurse that's going to poke your arm right now. Okay, I'm among friends.

This has created some awkward moments in my life. One, when my wife and I were in grad school, it was a little bit awkward because Lori was super smart. She was super cool. And I really wanted to impress her. And like the second day that I know her, we're not even dating yet. We're just walking across campus together. And I'm just high that she's just even walking across campus with me, you know.

But I want to impress this girl and get her to date with me. And she goes, "Hey, René, look. The Red Cross is having a blood drive on campus. Let's go give blood." So I go, "Oh, okay." And we walk over there, and I was psyching myself, "Okay, I can do this. No problem. It's important. It's important to give blood. And when I impress her, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it." And so we both got -- it's in the basement of the chapel building at the cemetery. And we go down there. We get into the screening area, you know, where the nurse sits down behind a desk.

She asks you a bunch of questions about your blood type. And if you don't know it, they prick your finger with that little Landset thing and get a droplet of blood and type your blood. And so that's the screening area. And I'm looking around the screening area, and I can look past the dividers into the blood-draining area, whatever they call it. And in that instant, I began walking by sight. Literally, it's like my sense of vision got hyper-acute.

Suddenly, it's like one of those TV shows where the detective, you know, zooms in on all the clues to the crime. Suddenly, I'm zooming in, "Vvv, why are there straps on the tables? Are they gonna strap me down? Why do they need the straps? Vv, why are the needles so long and shiny and metallic and antiseptic? Vv, why does everybody in there look so unhappy? What's going on in there? Are there rubber hoses in there like at a heroin clinic or something? What's happening here?"

And what about this screening thing? Why do they have to first prick my finger with a shiny little Landset thing to get a precious droplet of my precious blood, my dark precious blood? And you know what happened next? I freaked out and fainted right there. Somebody asked me after the service, "Is that a true story?" Totally a true story. At the screening table, passed out cold. While the nurse is rearing back to prick my finger, she didn't even touch me. I just look, "Boom, I'm on the floor."

To make matters worse, Lori is already giving blood at this point. You know, she's like halfway through, and she sees all this commotion, people running over there, other side of the room. She goes, "What happened over there? The nurse is running past her. Some idiot just passed out at the screening table." Lori thinks, "What a wimp." Crowd clears, "It's me lying on the floor there." It's like a miracle I ever got married to her, seriously, but...

But where did all those doubts and fears come from? Not from reason. They came from sight. You see where I'm going with this? The sight of the needles. The sight of those straps and rubber hoses. And all those people who raised their hands earlier are like going, "Oh, my goodness, I'm passing out right now," right? It came from sight. When you get afraid, where do your doubts and fears come from? From sight.

From all the scary things you're focusing on that you see on the news, or that you see even in your mind's eye and your imagination. Now, I still give blood sometimes. I've given blood for the Red Cross blood drives. I have to do it every year or so for physicals. I don't like it. But how do I get my faith back? I don't walk by sight. I think. I think to myself, "This is why I'm doing this. It's very important." I think to myself now, "No one ever dies from giving blood, René." So they tell me.

But I remember the facts, right? My fears don't come from thinking. My fears come from an absence of thinking. When I walk by sight and not by faith, that's when I get afraid. Lack of faith is never from too much thinking. Lack of faith is too little thinking, and that ties right into the second myth. Faith is a feeling. That's the second myth that verse dispels.

People think, "I feel confident I got faith." I feel so close to God. My faith is really going 100% today. I don't feel good. I feel cowardly. My faith is gone. But the truth is, faith is a choice. Faith is a choice. Now, stay on page one here for just a second, because in this verse in 2 Corinthians 5:7, the context is that Paul is talking about his impending death, and he does not feel all good about that. In fact, in chapter four, just prior to 2 Corinthians 5:7, he said, "I feel crushed." He literally says that. But not destroyed.

I'm crushed, but not destroyed. He's saying here, "My faith is bigger than my feelings, and my feelings about my circumstances." Now, listen, this is very important. This is why you have to really believe that God exists, and really believe that Jesus really rose from the dead, and really exists today to give you his Spirit, to empower you to go through whatever you go through, that that's really true.

Not just, "It's true for me." Not just, "Well, I feel like it's true." Because what about when your feelings change? Because do feelings change? Feelings change all the time. Do feelings about true things change? Feelings about true things change all the time. And so your faith can't be founded on feelings because they're too unpredictable. Feelings aren't wrong. Sometimes feelings follow faith. I love it when that happens. I'm not anti-feeling. I love feelings.

But your faith can't be founded on feelings. It's got to be founded on something else. You walk by faith, not by sight, not by what you feel, not by what you see, but on your faith. What you believe by faith is true. I love what Tim Keller says, love this quote, "People of little faith are people who let their feelings bludgeon them." Feelings aren't wrong. Of course not. God gave us feelings. But what's wrong is to give them priority, make them the captain of your life, and let your feelings bludgeon you.

Listen very, very carefully. Your faith is not a product of your feelings. Your faith is not a product of your circumstances. Your faith isn't a product of your temperament or your personality. You know, I used to think that. I looked at some people who were just like bold risk takers, people who love to go just bungee jumping or do jumping out of airplanes, and I'm not wired that way. That's not my personality.

About half the people are risk takers in life, half the people aren't, and I'm one of the people who's not. And so I look at some of these bold people and go, "I guess I'm just not a person of faith. They've got the gift of faith because they've got that personality." That is not biblical. That's not what faith is. It's not a function of your personality or your circumstances or your feelings. Faith is a controllable response that can trump feelings and circumstances and personality, and the classic example of this is in Numbers 13–14.

That's on page two of your notes, and I want to spend the rest of our time together on this awesome Bible story. Book of the Bible called Numbers, chapters 13 and 14. Let me just set up the scene for you. This happens about 3,500 years ago, and if you've ever seen the Ten Commandments movie or you've ever seen the Prince of Egypt movie, you know the setup to this story, right?

Moses has been God's spokesman, and he and his brother Aaron have seen the people get set free by God from their slavery in Egypt, and they go through the Red Sea, it parts for them, and then it closes on the Egyptian army, and they've got all these miracles, and they're set free, and they rock it right through the desert, right to the border of the Promised Land.

And this huge group of people is standing on the border, which is the Jordan River, and they're peering across into Canaan, into the Promised Land, and God says, "Go for it. This is your new home," and they go, "Well, we're not like an army or anything. That's kind of scary. We don't know if we can do it." And so they send in a group of spies to spy out the country and see what it's like, and they come back after 40 days, and two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, go, "We can go for it. We can do it!"

And the other spies go, "Are you kidding me? It's so intimidating over there. There's no way we can do it. We'd be like the Jacksonville Jaguars trying to go against the San Francisco 49ers in London last week. We can't do it. It's impossible. We're overmatched." And the Bible says this. They spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites. "The land we travel through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there." Look at this. All the people we what? Saw were huge. We even what? Saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. And next to them we what? Felt like grasshoppers. And that's what they thought too.

And so they're freaked out. Why? Because they're walking by sight and by feelings. And what happens next? Chapter 14, panic spreads. Then the whole community began weeping aloud. And they cried all night. Their voices rose in a great chorus of protest against Moses and Aaron. These are the people who just like days before had been leading them, setting them free, right? The end of the Prince of Egypt and the Ten Commandments. Glorious stuff.

Their voices rose, "If only we had died in Egypt." Or even here in the wilderness, they complained. Then they plotted among themselves, "Let's choose a new leader. Let's go back to Egypt." And in verse 9, Caleb and Joshua say, "No, no, no. Don't rebel against the Lord, and don't be afraid." Now stop there. Did you catch that? "Do not rebel and do not be afraid" are the same thing. That means to act in fear is a choice.

This is not talking about your feelings, because you can't always control your feelings. A lot of times you'll be afraid. Anything worthwhile in life is going to cause you a little bit of anxiety. This isn't saying that. This is saying you can choose to act in fear, overcoming your feelings of fear, or you can choose to be paralyzed by your fear. That's your choice. And this is a great passage if you're wrestling right now with the idea of trying something new.

Maybe you're thinking of going on to finish your schooling. Maybe you're thinking of starting a new career. Maybe you're thinking of starting a family, getting married, adding to your family, adopting, starting a new business, starting a ministry, and you've got those feelings of anxiety going on. This is fascinating because it's such a good example of what panic does to people. The land devours all who enter. That's a little bit of overstatement, I think. The land eats people up. And there were giants in the land. It's scary. We should just forget about it. Let's just lay down and die.

I want you to jot this down. This story shows how fearful reactions in life come from three things. Number one, leaving my comfort zone. I get fearful and nervous leaving my comfort zone. These people say, "If only we had died in Egypt or this wilderness, why is the Lord bringing us to this land? It's so scary." They had their comfort zone literally, and they were now leaving it, and they were freaked. But before you judge them, we've all got our comfort zones, right?

We've all got our spiritual security blankets, and we feel like we're okay there. And when we get outside of our comfort zone, by definition we get uncomfortable, you have a social comfort zone. You have a spiritual comfort zone. You have a professional comfort zone, and when you're in there, you're comfortable. But you get outside of that, and you start to feel increasingly uncomfortable.

True confession time here. My comfort zone in life is only doing what I know I can probably do pretty well. I really only like to do the things that I know. In advance, I'm probably going to ace. I hate to do stuff that I know that I'm bad at. And this is a problem because there's a lot I'm bad at. A lot. Like, for example, I am the world's most un-mechanical person. Cannot figure out anything mechanical, can't handle a hammer. Un-mechanical.

I'm also not great at sports. Except for running, that's the one exception because it requires zero hand-eye coordination, right? So that's the only sport I can do. I can barely eat without injuring myself if I'm using utensils. I'm so uncoordinated. Also, honest to goodness here, I don't think I'm a very good counselor. I really don't think I'm a good counselor. A lot of times people see me for counseling if they could see a thought bubble above my head. Like in the comics. On the outside, I'm going, "Mm-hmm." And over my head, the thought bubble would just have a giant question mark, like I have no idea what to say to this person. Not the slightest, right?

There's a lot more I don't do well, but some of you are thinking, "What do you do well, then?" Right? Well, one thing. One thing, I think. For years, before I was a pastor, I was in broadcasting, and now for years I've been a speaker and a teacher, so I can talk. That's it. Period. That's it. I mean, I wish I had a more marketable, tradable skill. You know, I see my friends who are in the trades, and they're always trading things out, like, "Hey, you do the tile in my bathroom, and I'll give you several crates of the apples I'm growing or the wine my family makes."

And I think that would be so awesome to have a tradable skill like that, but, you know, you do the new roof on our house, and I'll come and preach in your living room. Does not fly. Doesn't work. So I have to get out of my comfort zone a lot. Mission trips. Everybody else has a hammer, like all the little kids, and building houses for the poor. Five minutes of me... They're taking away my hammer. "René, René, we don't want to do this to the poor." They've had it so tough already, they don't need you building a house for them, René.

They've had so much tragedy already, you know? Go play with the small children over there. But I can't play sports. René, just go and leave us. So I go over there and get humiliated by five-year-old orphans who kick me in the head with their soccer balls. So it's... I'm always out of my comfort zone all the time. But my guess is you don't like to do stuff out of your comfort zone either. I don't think anybody does. But here's the problem. Our comfort zones become our idols.

And as Tim Keller says, "Our fears always surround our idols." Do you get that? Your fears are always attached to the things that you make your security instead of God. If you are petrified of getting out of your comfort zone professionally, probably a good sign that's your idol. If you are absolutely devastated at even the thought of losing your physical home, that may be an idol in your life. If you're completely devastated at the thought of losing your profession, if you make your job your security, your money your security, your looks your security, your reputation your security, those are the things you're scared of losing. Those might just be your idols.

Now the ultimate fear, of course, is kind of a mistrust of God. Like if I gave my life to God and if I followed God completely, He'd let me down. So better just to be safe, keep things status quo. Kind of like the people in this story. If we go and do what God's telling us to do, we're going to be wiped out. So let's just stay back in slavery, right? And they forget how God already worked in their lives and that leads me to point two. Fear comes from forgetting my story. Forgetting my own past.

God says, "How long will they refuse to believe in me in spite of all the signs that I have performed among them?" They forgot their own salvation from Egypt. God part of the Red Sea. God destroyed the Egyptian army. Now is He going to let them down now? And here's my question. Do you forget your own story of rescue? You know, the Apostle Paul said, "If God gave you His Son, won't He now also graciously give you all things?" After giving you the car, is He going to withhold the keys?

But the problem is, here's why I think a lot of Christians, here's why I can struggle with anxiety sometimes. You ask us, "Hey, are you a Christian?" And you usually get an answer something like, "Well, I try." "Oh, you know, I do my best." "I should be." But if we really remembered our story, we'd say, "I am a Christian and I can't believe it." Man, I don't deserve this, but God, by His grace, reached down and He found me when I was flat on my back. And let me tell you some of the stuff He has seen me through.

God is so awesome and I am so humbled when I think of how I don't even deserve my salvation at all, and yet I am by His grace. And you remember your story and you go, "Yeah, you know what? If God saw me through all that and rescued me, He's not going to drop me now." Listen, this is why it's important to keep preaching the gospel to yourself, right? It helps you with your fears of the future.

I quoted Tim Keller a couple of times already. He's kind of one of my heroes as a pastor. The guy is just a brainiac, super capable. He's an author. He's been a professor. He's now a pastor. Yet, he really struggles with taking risks for God. He says, "Listen, I am not a very courageous guy." And so you know what he does? He puts a card in his wallet. In fact, he has several of these cards in his wallet that he reads to himself on a daily basis that remind him of his story.

And I love one of these so well that I actually put the phrasing in your notes. If you look there on page three of your notes at the top, this is what Tim Keller says, "This is what I preach to myself. This is on a card in his wallet. Why am I afraid of failure? Do I live by performance or on the basis of Christ's power? Have I gotten this far on my efforts or by the grace of God? What will I lose through failure anyway? I still have God's love, His kindness, and if I do fail here, He'll only use it to prepare me for something greater. My worthiness is not based on my success. Jesus is my security, and as a result, I don't have to worry about failure here. I am free from fear."

You have to talk to yourself like this. It's not enough to say, "Don't be afraid." It's like saying, "Don't think of the elephant. Don't think of that elephant. Don't think of an elephant. What did I just tell you not to think of? How do you know? I told you three times not to think of it, right?" It doesn't work. It's not enough to just try hard to be brave. What you do is you rest in the fact that God has been so engaged in your story in the past, and by His grace, He will be in the future, and that leads right into point three.

Fear is forgetting God's glory. Forgetting God's glory. In verse 21 of Numbers 14, God says, "The glory of the Lord fills the whole earth." He says, "If you saw that my glory fills the whole earth, you wouldn't be afraid because you'd see that I am bigger." Again, it's not a matter of working up bravery. It's not a matter of changing even your feelings or your circumstances or your personality, because that's not what faith is.

Faith is shifting your focus. Faith is forgetting about yourself and focusing on how big God is. I'm in a small group at Mount Herman on Wednesday nights, and we were in a discussion group with Sarah Marsh, who's our venue producer, and she said something a couple of weeks ago I thought was really profound. In fact, I wrote her words down. She said, "Anxiety is an absence of thinking accurately about God." I love that. That's so rich. Anxiety is an absence of thinking accurately about God.

Now, some of you know that I have struggled with anxiety attacks in my past, and that still can be an issue for me, and I don't mean to imply by this that anti-anxiety medications are wrong, that the only thing that there is to overcoming anxiety is thinking accurately about God. When I had my anxiety attacks, prescription medications were God's gift to me, but all they really do is press the reset button, and then it's my responsibility to do cognitive therapy, to pour into my brain truths about God instead of lies about myself that I had been thinking, right?

And I also don't mean to imply that you can escape your feelings of fear completely. Don't get hung up on that. Your feelings of fear and doubt and unbelief may never completely leave you. What I'm saying is you don't have to live in bondage to them. Flip your notes over again to page three. Famous Christian intellectual D. Martin Lloyd-Jones said this, and I love this quote so much I put it in your notes. He said, "For me, faith means perpetual unbelief kept quiet. Faith means I won't be controlled by my circumstances. I'll be controlled by the truth."

And then he says, "Now, that's the first thing, but it's not the whole thing. That may be nothing but resignation. This is faith. Whatever your circumstances, bring all you know about your relationship to God to bear upon it." Don't you love that? Whatever your circumstances, bring all you know about your relationship to God to bear upon it. And that ties into the end of the story. Flip your notes back over to page two.

Did they go for it? Did they go into the land? Did they overcome their fears? Well, yes and no. Because they actually gave up and wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years. Before they came back and actually stepped over the border and went across the Jordan River into the Promised Land. And you know the only two people who were with them from the first attempt 40 years ago? Those two spies who said, "We can do this by God's grace," Caleb and Joshua.

And what did Caleb and Joshua say the key was to overcoming fear? I'm going to show you that in a minute. But first I want to tell you one final cool story. Way back in June something very cool happened here at Twin Lakes. Our baptistry sprung a leak. Now that's not the cool part. But Valerie Webb was called the "Baptistry Sprung a Leak." We've got to go find out what's going on. And so she goes down to the basement, all the water had flooded the basement, and she's going through all these water-sodden boxes and throwing a lot of these old things away.

Stuff we haven't looked at in years. And her hand in one of the old waterlogged boxes grabs this. This is a booklet that none of us had seen in 40 years. This is called "My Big Step of Faith." And this was 40 years ago, their equivalent of the 2020 Vision Program, for moving here to this campus. This was a much smaller church, about a third of the size we are now on 7th Avenue, and they were overgrowing that area.

And a small group of people who were in leadership there at Twin Lakes said, "Come on, we can do it. Let's move to Aptos. By God's grace, we can do this." And it was a huge challenge. In today's dollars, it cost them about $10 million to move here, and they did it by just raising pledges like we're doing, about the same amount that we're raising only with a third fewer people. So a huge challenge, huge mountain to move. But they said, "We think it can be done. Let's go for it." And they did in 1973, 40 years ago, they moved here.

Now, it's interesting, it gets cooler, because in this book, they described three buildings that are not built yet, that were a part of the Vision 40 years ago. A children's ministry building, which we hope to build in Phase 1, and a chapel and a college ministry building that we hope to build in Phase 2. Those buildings were never built, and now here we are 40 years later, exactly 40 years later, hoping to build these new buildings.

What's even cooler is that the guy who wrote this, Glenn Ifland, still goes to church here. And I wanted to know, what was it like to take the step of faith to move out here, and how does he feel now 40 years later, now that we're taking another step, kind of come back around to the border again? And so, just on a whim, we shot down to his office on Thursday, and we asked him some questions about how this all feels. Watch this.

There was a saying that Pastor Roy had over the years, and that is, we order our lives based on what we know, not on what we see. In other words, if you don't exercise faith, if you have to see it, then there's no faith in it. And so this is part of being able to see something hopefully accomplished in the next couple of years to see that plan completed. You look back and you can see how God has guided our church so many, many times. You can't have, there's no answer to it other than God did what he said he would do.

Any words of wisdom for us as we take this next big step of faith? At first glance, you say, "This is too much. We can't handle it." You come to the final conclusion, "No, that's not the case, because if it's impossible for us, we know somebody who knows how to solve it, who is not impossible for him to do." It gives a sense of accomplishment that you know you can't do on your own, and an opportunity to trust God for something that he can do that you can't do yourself.

And as a congregation, we can do a lot of things collectively that we can't do individually. And so I'm looking forward to, first of all, in about a month from now, to see what is the first indication of what he's going to do. But then it gives us an opportunity, and for all of you newer people out there, you can go through an experience that this church has gone through before a number of times. So this isn't new for some of us old-timers. We've been through it before. We know what the results will be if we just trust God.

Aren't you glad that there's some old-timers like that here in the church? Wonderful. So whether it's the 2020 project or something else, what do you feel like you're right on the border of right now? You're scared of what the future holds. What's the cure for fear? I love this. Joshua and Caleb say to the people, "The Lord is with us." Don't be afraid of them. Think of the things you're afraid of right now. What are you afraid of? Think of all your anxieties, the giants that you see and feel. Now, say that verse with me out loud together. Here we go. The Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.

The key to conquering fear, if fear is produced by forgetting, forgetting God's glory, forgetting my story, leaving my comfort zone, then the key to conquering it is remembering. Remember the truth about God. It's not by trying hard to be brave. It's by settling down in the unchanging truth about God. Our new worship pastor Trent Smith has written a song about this, and I asked him to sing that for you after we pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

Just pray this in your heart with me. "Lord, why am I so anxious? Why am I so fearful? Help me to remember my story, my story of how you saved me, and your glory. You're still God. You still love me." Let me just settle down in that truth. Not try harder to be brave, but just settle down in your grace. Now, maybe today you long to accept Christ for the first time. Simply pray something like this in your heart. "Jesus, thank you for the gift of salvation. I admit my need of you. I'm a sinner, and I believe you are who you say you are, the Son of God, who paid the sacrifice, the price for my sins. I don't understand it, but I choose to believe it. And now I commit myself. I surrender myself. I trust in you. As my risen Lord and Savior, in Jesus' name, amen."