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[Music] Where do I begin to tell the story of how great a love can be? The sweet love story that is older than the sea. The simple truth about the love Christ brought to me.

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Love Story Part Three. The Way to Fight Your Fears. Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the gospel according to Mark, the fourth chapter, beginning with the verse which is numbered 35. On that day when evening had come, Jesus said to them, "Let us go across to the other side."

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And leaving the crowd, they took him with them, just as he was in the boat. And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, and the wave beat into the boat so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.

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And they woke him and said to him, "Master, do you not care if we perish?" And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace, be still." And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said to them, "Why are you so fearful?

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Had ye so little faith?" And they were filled with awe and said to one another, "Who then is this that even wind and sea obey him?" And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word. Let us pray.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. A way back in 1735, John Wesley set sail for America to begin a missionary effort among the American Indians. The sea voyage was four months long, and at some point in the voyage, the ship encountered a tremendous storm.

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The mast of the ship was splintered, the glass in all of the cabins was smashed, the vessel was splattered and shaken about from stem to stern, and all aboard were filled with terror, except for a small group of Moravian Christians who throughout the entire storm gave themselves to the singing of hymns.

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When the storm was over, Wesley went to these people and asked them why they had given no evidence of fear. And they replied, "God was with us. We had no reason to be afraid." And that night, John Wesley wrote in his journal this single sentence, "I have a sin called fear."

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But I wonder, is fear really a sin? If it is, then this is but another evidence of the fact that we live in the most sinful generation of men. For I doubt if there has ever been a time as filled with fear as this time. We fear the bomb. We fear certain other nations.

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We fear pollution. We fear generations other than our own. We fear the blacks or the whites or the reds or the browns or the yellows, depending on what particular color we happen to be. We fear recession. We fear depression. We fear something even worse.

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And all the time that we confront these external fears, we also have other fears down deep inside, fears we do not share, fears of which we do not speak. Indeed, one psychiatrist has said that fear has become a part of human nature. Well, I do not know if that is true or not, but I do know that it is true of my nature,

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and it is also true of the nature of every other human being I have ever met. Oh, I meet some people on some occasions who claim that they have no fears. But these people are in reality the most fearful of all. They are even afraid to admit there are some things of which they are afraid.

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But I still wonder, is all fear a sin? I will be frank and say to you that there are some fears in my life for which I make no apology to men and no apology to God. I look up and down the street before I step from the curb because I am afraid of being hit by a car.

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I don't think there is anything wrong with that fear. I fasten my seatbelt before I start my automobile in motion. That is because I am afraid of what might happen in an accident if I did not do so. I don't think there is anything irresponsible or sinful about that fear.

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I avoid an area which carries a sign that warns me of the presence of dangerous disease, a quarantined area, because I am afraid of contracting the disease. And I don't think there is anything wrong with that kind of fear. It was fear, wasn't it, that led us to the research that enabled us to conquer poliomyelitis.

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It is a fear of cancer that is driving us in our search for a cure for that dread disease. And I don't think there is anything wrong with the fear which leads us to that kind of progress and human advancement. I will say to you quite frankly that I hope little children never get over their fear of rusty razor blades or of bottles that are labeled "poison."

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Captain Ahab said, "I'll have no man aboard my ship who does not fear a whale." Well, there are some whale-like things in life of which it seems to me we ought to be afraid. Fear, you see, can be a friend when it motivates us in a proper direction, when it leads us to advance and to respond to challenge.

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But what about the fear that paralyzes us? What about the fear that doesn't move us but instead locks us within ourselves? What about the fear that doesn't promote in us any significant response but instead turns us into quivering, quaking, useless personalities?

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What about the fear that isn't a friend but is a foe? Well, that kind of fear is a sin. And I learned how to fight that kind of fear on a lake in an adventure which our Lord and his disciples underwent and which Mark has shared with us.

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It happened at the end of a very busy day. Jesus had been preaching since dawn. He was tired. He thought it would be nice if at the end of the day they could get into their boats

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and go across the Sea of Galilee, separated from the crowd. There had a quiet evening about the fireside and then a good night's sleep. He suggested it to the disciples and they were immediately open to it. Some of them were fishermen, so I'm sure they looked at the heavens to see that they were clear

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before they set sail. And then the phrase is, "They took Jesus as he was." That is, without any further preparation, they got into the boat and set out. And Jesus, so very tired, promptly fell asleep on a rumpled old pillow and stern.

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They were about in the middle of the lake when the storm broke. Now, I don't think the storm itself, initially at least, had much effect upon the disciples. The disciples, you see, understood how this kind of storm was very common on Galilee. The cold air rushes down from the mountains on one side of the lake

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and meets the warm air which comes in from the plains on the other side of the lake. And where the cold air and the warm air meet out over the center of the lake, there is atmospheric convulsion and discord, and this often results in storms, even unto this day. It is not an uncommon sight to see the center of Galilee in storm

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while the shorelines are quite calm and the waters there very peaceful. I am sure that the disciples had seen this phenomenon on many other occasions. And knowing the facts about this kind of storm, when the winds began to blow and the rain began to fall and the water began to slap at the boats,

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I imagine that Peter turned to John and said something like, "Looks like we're going to have a blow. You better trim the sails," or something like that. The facts, you see, and their understanding of them, led them away from fear. And that's the first important thing we should remember, that facts fight fear.

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Ignorance is the ally of fear, but knowledge, understanding the facts, is the enemy of fear. I think back, for example, to when I was a youngster. Now, I don't know whether you can still tear the box tops off cereal cartons and send them in for strange and mysterious products put out by the breakfast food companies or not.

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There used to be some characters called Terry and the Pirates, who were on at 5.15 every weekday afternoon, and they sold Quaker puffed wheat and Quaker puffed rice. I don't even know if there is any more Quaker puffed wheat and Quaker puffed rice. I know there's Frankenberries, because I see those advertised on television.

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But in any case, on one occasion, they offered for a quarter and two box tops a dragon's eye ring that glowed in the dark. My brother and I, of course, immediately sent for it. And it was a delightful day in the summer when they arrived,

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and you would take these rings and you would hold them up to a light or up to the sun, and then you would go into a place in the darkness, and the face of the ring, which was in the shape of an eye, would glow in the dark. Quite exciting.

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That night, we went to bed, and of course we weren't used to rings, so we took the rings off and put them on the nightstand between our beds. And then we fell asleep. About the middle of the night, for some reason or other, I wakened.

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And after wakening, I rolled over. And there, staring at me out of the darkness, two green eyes. I can close my eyes and see them even now. Twisted up at the corners.

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Now, my response to this was a loud bellow or scream. In the neighborhood, it is still known as the night of the screaming banshee. The folks next door said that five engines were out of the firehouse before anybody figured out what had really happened.

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It was summer and all the windows were open, and in no time at all, every light was on in our house and every other house on the block. Now, it's a comic story, but you see, the point is, that had I known the facts, had I realized that was just the two rings

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sitting on the nightstand between the beds, I would never have been possessed by fear. The facts, you see, would have eliminated the fear. Now, we laugh about an instance like that,

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but this kind of situation always is laughable. For example, I remember a man in the congregation, which I served before this one, who had a deep fear of physical illness. He began to have some intestinal difficulties,

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and because he was afraid of illness, he never told this to anyone, even his wife or his children. And he didn't go to any doctors because he was afraid of what they might find. The company for which he worked required a physical examination

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at least once every year, and for two years, while this difficulty was becoming more severe, he deliberately absented himself from the office on the day of the examinations.

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He was so afraid of what the examinations might find. And after two years, he began to hemorrhage one night. They took 32 pints of blood to keep him alive, and when they performed the surgery two weeks later,

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well, the surgeon said to me he had never seen cancer so extensively spread throughout any one body in all of his life. And within five weeks, the man was dead. Now, I cannot stand here and tell you

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that if he would have sought the facts in this matter when he first felt that initial intestinal disturbance, that he would be alive today. I can't guarantee that.

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But I'm sure you will agree with me that had he begun at the first sign of the illness to find out the facts of the matter, there's a much better chance that he would be here today

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than under the circumstances which did transpire. The American Cancer Society tells us again and again, if you have some anxiety or some disturbance, if there is something which arouses your curiosity

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or makes you worried in this regard, go to a doctor and find out the circumstances. In many instances, you'll find out it's only indigestion. The fact will kill the fear altogether.

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But even if you should find out that it's something more serious, the fact that you have gotten the facts immediately will enable you to take preventative or curative action in time. Facts, you see. Fight fear.

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So the disciples, understanding the nature of the storm, fought it with their knowledge. But this storm soon went beyond other storms. It became more intense and more severe,

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and just about the time when it should have been dissipating, it got worse. So now the disciples were thrown back upon the knowledge and the skills which they had learned on Galilee across the years.

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And I think that Peter must have turned to the other disciples and said something like this, "This is going to be a real throb throttler. So we're going to have to fight it with everything we've got.

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Now you do this, and you do this, and you do this, and together we'll whip this thing." They had a very positive attitude, I'm sure. After all, this kind of thing had happened before.

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And so they throw themselves into the battle with this storm they're going to defeat. And this is the second thing we ought to remember about fighting fear. An attitude is more important than a fact.

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We ought to say that sentence over to ourselves at least a half dozen times in every single day. Here are two people who are told on the same day that they have some frightful disease, for example.

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The person over here decides, "All right, I've got it. Now what am I going to do to get rid of it? What doctor shall I go to? What diet shall I follow?

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What is my course of action? What disciplines must I put myself under? I will throw myself into a battle with this thing, with everything I've got."

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And this person over here collapses in the face of the news. They're unable to control themselves. Their nerves skyrocket. They're not able to eat, and so not receiving the proper food,

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the general health of their body deteriorates from this, let alone from the disease. And in the end, a complete nervous and mental, emotional, physical wreck. They die.

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This person comes through it. This person does not. The disease was the same in both instances. The facts were identical.

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The difference was in the attitude with which they approached the facts. Attitude is more important than facts. Many people, you see, have down inside of them a little pocket of poison, a little collection of attitudes or ideas, reflexes or inhibitions, habits,

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gathered traumas, a little pocket of poison, which influences everything that they do. And this poison inside defeats them within. And being defeated within so that their attitudes are negative and defeatist,

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they're unable to win any battles without, especially battles with fear. I had a high school classmate who stuttered terribly. I was with him through school for many years, but it was not until he was in the hospital

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and he was in school for many years, but it was not until we were seniors that he came to understand, and he shared it with me, I came to understand why he stuttered so. When he was an infant, his parents always punished him

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by slapping him across the mouth. When he said what he was not to say, he was slapped across the mouth. When he said more than he was supposed to say, he was slapped across the mouth. When he did anything that was improper, the kinds of things that little boys often do,

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he was slapped across the mouth. Now, you don't have to be much of a psychiatrist or much of a psychologist to understand that when this boy grew older, every time he would face a situation which was in any way threatening to him,

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which in any way was fearful, in any way challenged him, his mouth would be what would begin to give him the difficulty. He couldn't speak until, in severe circumstances, he was rendered virtually mute. Now, when he came to understand, under the care of a skilled counselor,

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what this poison pocket down inside of him was doing, he gradually regained the power of normal speech. See, the person who has this kind of attitude down inside... This is the kind of individual who wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat

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about something of which they are afraid, and their pulse is racing, and their health begins to deteriorate, and sometimes they even die as the result of what has happened. You see, their inner engines are running all the time, fast, hard,

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trying to keep up with this poison. And that's not the way we're supposed to be moving inside. On Friday, I was on a Boeing 747 coming back from Chicago to Los Angeles, and I was seated where I could look out on the engines.

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Tremendous engines! They lift that plane up from the ground like it was on a string. They just pull it right up into the sky. And then, when they get up to a certain height,

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they cut back on the power on the engine. You can tell it right away. In fact, for persons who are flying for the first time, when they feel that diminution of power,

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a little thrill goes through them. They wonder about it. Now, you might wonder to yourself, "Why don't they keep those engines going at full speed and full power all the time?" You'd get to Los Angeles a lot quicker that way.

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Please turn your cassette to the other side. [The sound is cut off due to a technical issue.] The fact of the matter is that if they kept those engines going at that speed and that power all the time, you probably wouldn't get to Los Angeles at all,

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because the vibration of those engines is so great that it would, over the period of four hours that it takes to get to Los Angeles, shake that plane to pieces. The power is there for when they need it,

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to get them up into the sky. But once they are there, then they cut back on the power. And if they used that power all the time, it would destroy that plane. Now, we're the same way.

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We have tremendous reserves of power in us for the moment that we really need them. But when a person has a poison pocket down inside of them, and they're doing battle with this all the time, and those engines are running at full power constantly,

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well, you've heard a person say in a stressed situation, "I just went to pieces." Well, that's more than a phrase. That's a very solemn truth.

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It's very important that we understand our inner attitudes. So here's three cheers for Christian psychiatrists and Christian psychologists and Christian counselors. I wish that our church had a full-time minister of counseling on its staff,

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a man who could simply help the people in our family to understand themselves and understanding themselves, be victor over more of their fears, and minister also to the community.

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Because there are so many going about who simply need to better know why they tick as they tick. And when you spill yourself out to a counselor and he plays yourself back to you again,

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you understand, and understanding cures attitudes. And attitudes are more important than facts. So the disciples go at the storm with the right attitude. But in this instance, not even that was enough.

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The storm now begins to spin the ship. The waves are coming into the ship. The nets are snatched overboard. The sails are torn away.

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And so, possessed now by nothing other than fear, forgetting the facts, losing their attitude, possessed by fear, they rush to the stern of the boat. "Jesus, don't you care if we perish?"

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See, he was still asleep. Isn't that remarkable? He was still asleep on that lumpy old pillow in the back of the boat. I just think that's marvelous.

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There are many pictures that have been painted as the face of Jesus. He has been depicted at that moment when he says, "Lazarus, come forth." They've painted him as he says, "Go ye unto all the world," with the little children in his lap.

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We've seen him on the cross. They've even sought to depict the majesty of his resurrected appearance. But the painting I'd like to see would be the painting of the face of Jesus when he was asleep in the back of that boat,

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so confident, so trusting, so absolutely at peace in the loving arms of his Father. And they come to him, and they rudely awake him. Now, you see, there was nothing wrong in their coming to him.

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It's never wrong to go to Jesus. But they come to him saying something like this, "Don't you care if we perish?" Now, that was a terrible thing to say to the Lord. I mean, they had been with him.

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They knew the way he loved them. They knew of his concern. They knew of his care. They knew of the fact that he protected them in every different facet of their lives.

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And still they come to him and say, "Don't you even care if we die?" And, of course, the reason that they said that was this. Fear had jammed the passageways of power in their lives. The reality of Jesus was still there.

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His presence was still in the midst of them. The peace and the power which come from him were still available to them. But, you see, fear had jammed the passageways through which that power came. And so Jesus rebukes them.

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He doesn't rebuke them for coming. There's no place in Scripture where Jesus rebukes any man for coming to him. The man can be sane or insane. He can be in complete control or altogether out of control.

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And Jesus never rebukes anyone for coming. My friend, you can be absolutely panicked with fear and go to Jesus, and he will not send you away. He is always ready to receive. He does not rebuke the disciples for coming.

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What he does do is rebuke them for the manner in which they come. For they don't come confident of his love. They come filled with fear and with panic. My brother had his first little boy.

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It was the first baby that I ever had the chance to be close to over an extended period. And I used to spend hours with David. I've been taught that one of the things a baby fears is lack of support, the fear of falling. Well, David was different.

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He just loved to be thrown up into the air and caught again. And his granddad would do it, and his father would do it, and his uncle Bruce would do it. And he loved it, giggled and laughed and enjoyed every minute of it. Why?

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Why, because he knew that we loved him. And he loved us in his infant way. And that love cast out his fear. That's just what the Bible says.

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Perfect love casts out fear. If those disciples would have thought for a moment about the tremendous love which was in Jesus for them, and if they would have thought for a moment so that the love for him in them would have welled up, well, then they would not have gone to him as they did.

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And Jesus, as if to underscore the foolishness of what they'd done, gets up, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts, he took a moment to stretch. And then he walks to the middle of the boat, puts his arm around the mast. His robe is wet now.

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It's sticking to his body. You can see his lithe and muscular frame. And he looks out over the water, and his face is running with water now, and it's pouring off his beard, and his long black hair is blowing in the wind of the tempest.

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And he looks out over the water, and I'll wager he was smiling, and he addresses the storm. And he addresses the storm just as if the storm were a naughty puppy dog that you have at home that's just chewed up your favorite slippers.

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That's just what he says to the storm. He doesn't say, "Peace, be still." That's what the King James says, and that's a very poetic translation, and it's very beautiful. It sounds biblical, but that's not what he said.

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Literally, this is what he says. "Be muzzled. Be quiet. Stop that barking.

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Hush." And there was a great calm. And the wind stopped, and the waves settled, and the storm in the hearts of the trembling twelve disappeared too.

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I've had some Galilees to sail. And when storms have come up in my life, I have found that sometimes just knowing the facts has whipped my fears. And sometimes just having a positive attitude, knowing what skills and capacities are mine and how to use them, sometimes that's been enough.

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But there have been also times when, just like the disciples, I ran screaming and fearful to Jesus. And he looked at me, and he said, "I love you." Now, is that okay?

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And that's happened to me enough times now that I don't go running like I used to. You see, as you become more and more conscious of his love, there seems less reason to run, less reason to be afraid. Till you get, I don't know if I'm here, but I hope so, or someday at least,

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till you get like that sailor boy who wrote to his mother, who was very afraid that in the war he might go down with his ship. And he wrote to her, and he said, "Mom, even if my ship goes down and me on it, it will only be down into the arms of Jesus.

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Even if the storm blows and blows and blows and tears the ship to pieces, and you sink and go down once, twice, three times, and it's over, still, it's just into the loving arms of Jesus. And when you get hold of that, your fears have been defeated.

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Jesus never asks us to do more than we can. When he walked up to those disciples on the shore of Galilee when they were cleaning those nets, he didn't give them any theological examination. He didn't put them through any physical or emotional or spiritual rigmarole.

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He said, "Follow me." And they followed him. All he wanted was trust. And then he gave them some tasks to do. But when he gave the tasks, he also said, "I love you. Is that okay?"

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And then he gave them some commands to carry out, and some of them were hard. But when he gave the commands, he said to them, "I love you. Is that okay?" And as they fulfilled the tasks and completed the commands, that is, as they yielded themselves to the love of Jesus,

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his peace and power flowed into them. And their fears died. So that the same men who were crying there in the boat that night, at the end of their lives,

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climbed crosses and met wild beasts in arenas for his sake, without a whimper of fear. They had discovered, you see, the indescribable secret of who he is and what he does when he gets into the midst of a life.

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And they said to him, "Okay. Okay. It's okay." Let us pray. O God, grant that we might always know the facts, know ourselves and our attitudes, and above all, know Jesus.

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And in these three knowledges, in this, our Father, may we find the faith which conquers every fear. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

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The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love and to all those whom nobody loves the peace that conquers fear. How long does it last?

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His love cannot be measured by a single day. I have the answer now. His love is here to stay. I know he'll be there when the stars all burn away. He placed them there.

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He placed them there. He placed them there. [music]