Confronting Culture - No Fear - a podcast by Lewis Marsh

Confronting Culture

Part 2: No Fear

By Louie Marsh, 3-5-2023

 

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Fear is a natural and normal human emotion that can serve a protective purpose in certain situations. However, if fear becomes excessive or irrational, it can interfere with our ability to lead a fulfilling life. Here are some strategies that may help reduce fear and anxiety:

 

1) Identify the source of your fear: Try to identify the specific source of your fear. Is it a concrete object or situation, or is it a more abstract worry? Once you identify the source, you can work to address it more directly.

 

2) Practice relaxation techniques: Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, or yoga can help reduce anxiety and promote feelings of calmness.

 

3) Challenge your negative thoughts: Often, fear is the result of negative or catastrophic thinking patterns. Try to identify and challenge these thoughts with more realistic and balanced thinking.

 

4) Seek support: Talking to a trusted friend, family member, or mental health professional can provide support and perspective on your fears.

 

5) Take action: Sometimes taking action to address the source of your fear can help reduce anxiety. This might involve seeking information, practicing skills, or taking steps to avoid or confront the feared situation.

 

Remember, living without fear completely is not realistic or even desirable, as some level of fear can be healthy and protective. The goal is to manage and reduce excessive or irrational fear to live a more fulfilling life.

 

1) God loves everyone EQUALLY.

 

“¹⁶“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16, ESV)

 

·       He’s not PLEASED with everyone.

 

·       BIG QUESTION: Who do I love MORE; God or…?

 

"This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Sir Winston Churchill

 

2) I shouldn’t fear people, but GOD instead.

 

“¹²“I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass,” (Isaiah 51:12, ESV)

 

“⁴“I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. ⁵But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:4–5, ESV)

 

3) Fear feeds on LOSS, so I must focus on Christ.

 

“¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. ¹⁹We love because he first loved us. ²⁰If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:18–20, ESV)

 

Kara Lynne was fired by Limited Run Games after trans activist 'Purple Tinker' accused her of following 'transphobic' accounts

 

“We are at the end of Christendom.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen said during a talk in 1947- 76 years ago!. Making clear he didn’t mean Christianity or the Church, he said, “Christendom is economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles. That is ending — we’ve seen it die. Look at the symptoms: the breakup of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty.”

 

“The new era into which we are entering is what might be called the religious phase of human history.”

 

But he quickly said this didn’t mean men will “turn to God.” Rather, they’ll turn from indifference to having a passion for “an absolute.” The struggle will be “for the souls of men. … The conflict of the future is between the absolute who is the God-man and the absolute which is the man god; the God Who became man and the man who makes himself God; brothers in Christ and comrades in anti-Christ.”

 

“Evil must come to reject us, to despise us, to hate us, to persecute us, and then shall we define our loyalties, affirm our fidelities and state on whose side we stand.  How shall the strong and weak trees be manifested unless the wind blows?  Our quantity indeed will decrease, but our quality will increase. Then shall be verified the words of Our Master: whoever does not gather with me, scatters.” (Matthew 12:30)

 

“We tremble not that God may be dethroned, but that barbarism may reign; it is not Transubstantiation that may perish, but the home; not the sacraments that may fade away, but the moral law. The Church can have no different words for the weeping woman than those of Christ on the way to Calvary: Weep not over me; but weep for yourselves and for your children.” (Luke 23:28)

 

Over the centuries the Church has had its Good Fridays, he reminds us, but there’s always Easter Sundays “because Jesus promised the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.’ (Matthew 28:20)

 

As bleak as things may be, never has “there been such a strong argument for the need of Christianity, for men are now discovering that their misery and their woes, their wars and their revolutions increase in direct ratio and proportion to the neglect of Christianity.  Evil is self-defeating; good alone is self-preserving.”

 

“The forces of evil are united; the forces of good are divided.  We may not be able to meet in the same pew — would to God we did — but we can meet on our knees.”

 

4) Fear always EXAGGERATES the issue.

 

“¹⁴He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”” (1 Kings 19:14, ESV)

 

"Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home!" ~ George B. McClellan

 

·       It naturally leads to LYING.

 

“¹⁰And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself…¹²The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”” (Genesis 3:10,12, ESV)

 

5) Fear allows me to RATIONALIZE anything.

 

“⁶And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and there are four hundred men with him.” ⁷Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps, ⁸thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape.”” (Genesis 32:6–8, ESV)

 

6) I OVERCOME fear when I know God is with me.

 

“³¹What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³²He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”…“³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Romans 8:31-32,35–37, ESV)

 

⁴Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4, ESV)

 

 

 

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