Faith Vs Fear Pastor Hope Message

I am so glad that you decided to join me tonight right here on Facebook Live, or whether you're on YouTube, wherever you are joining in. I am so grateful and just so thankful that you decided to take the time to hear the word of the Lord tonight. I'll tell you, I got a powerful word. It's a lot of teaching. I hope you're ready. I know God gave me this word because, you know, 20. 20 has been a year, right? Everybody can say amen to that. And, you know, for 20, so many of us have been plagued with fear. So tonight, I am coming to attack the spirit of fear. I am coming to attack fears and phobias and nightmares and fear of death and fear of heart attack, fear of man, anxiety, stress, unrest, doubt, disbelief. I am coming to attack that spirit of fear that would grip you in the name of Jesus tonight because we have power over over the spirit of fear. As a believer in Christ. Do you hear me? You have power over the spirit of fear. 2 Timothy says this. He says, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but power, love, and a sound mind. Say it again if you have to. God has not given me the spirit of fear, but what has he given me? Power and love and a sound mind. How many Christians are walking around gripped and paralyzed with fear? Maybe you're listening right now and you struggle so bad with fear, you just feel like, I can never get out of this invisible box that's wrapped around me. I have counseled so many people who struggle with fear, who feel like life is just going on past them and they cannot get up out of where they are only because of fear. We are going to attack it tonight. The promises of God, the Bible says, are yes and amen. Yes and amen. Amen is so be it. The promises of God for your life are. So be it. What are the promises? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I am the head and not the tail. I am an overcomer. I have healing in the name of Jesus. He's already paid the price. But how many of hear it? We want to receive it, but we cannot activate the promises of God. The problem is fear. Fear. Fear locks up all of God's potential from ever operating in your life. It locks up the miraculous from flowing in your life. There are two types of fear. You say, well, Pastor Hope, I'm afraid of rats. Is that the spirit of fear? No. There's a natural fear and then there is a positive. There is a negative fear. So there's a positive fear that says no, no, no, no, no. Don't touch that. That's going to burn you. Right? You tell your children, don't touch that. That's going to burn you. It keeps you from hurting yourself. Don't stick your hand in the fire. You see a growling dog, what do you do? Don't go over there with the growling dog. That'. But that is not the fear that I'm wanting to talk to you about tonight. The other fear is a spirit of fear. It's when your spiritual vitality is sucked, it is affected. It chokes out faith, it chokes out joy, it chokes out peace, it chokes out love. It binds and it paralyzes the life of the believer. It keeps you from operating without out all of these limits on your life. You're operating every single day with limitations in your life. And listen, this is the truth. You say it's not, but it is the truth. The truth is this. We believe what the devil says more than we believe what the word of God says. You say, oh, no, no, no, no, that's too strong. But it's the truth. When you live underneath the spirit of fear, you are believing everything that the enem to tell you. All of those strongholds, all of those lies that you are listening to, you are taking them to be the truth for you instead of what God's word says. Matthew 8. 26. Jesus asked the disciples, he said, why are you so fearful, little ones? O ye of little faith. I thought about that today, O ye of little faith. Because you're fearful. So fear is equal to a lack of faith. What were they afraid of? They were afraid of drowning. They were afraid of death. And see, what they didn't fully understand was that God holds the keys anyway to death, hell and the grave. Jesus is life. They were afraid of dying, but their life was supposed to be in his hand. But they let fear of death keep them paralyzed from doing what God was asking them to do. So yes, they believe the lie of the enemy more than they believe the truth of God's word. Come on, have you ever been there? Have you ever believed the lie over your life? More than you believe the truth of God's word. We all have. And it keeps you paralyzed, it keeps you trapped, it keeps you from operating the potential that God has for you. We don't fully understand that our life is really in God's hand. He's the author. He's the finisher of our faith. First, John 4. 8 says, There is no fear in love. There is no fear in God. When Adam and Eve had perfect love before they sinned. Listen. There was no fear of the animals. There was no fear of the elements. There was no fear of death. There was even no fear of God. They walked, they communed with God. This was before sin. And as children of God who obey God's words, we should never permit fear, fear to take us prisoner and paralyze us. But I see it every day. Every day I counsel people. I have people call me Pastor Hope. I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm worried and I've been there. And listen, really, if you ever have never experienced fear, just have kids. When you have children, you start imagining fears that you had never imagined before. I remember I had never been so afraid, afraid in all my life than when my children got car keys and left for the very first time. I imagined everything you could imagine that could go wrong. And none of that happened. We get fearful. We start believing the lie of the enemy. We start believing these vain imaginations. We start rehearsing things in our mind that haven't even happened yet. We are putting more faith in, in the lie of the enemy than in the protection and the precious promises of God's words. See, listen. It makes you want to just slap yourself when you hear somebody up here talking about it rationally, right? Then it makes you say, my goodness, I really have been doing this. How do I live a fear free life? Living a fear free life is living a life faith. Say it out loud. Living a fear free life is living a life of faith. And this faith that you're supposed to be living will make you take risks. Living a life of faith will always, always involve risk. Believing in something you can't see, in something you can't touch, in something you can't grasp. That's risky, right? That's risky. And fearful people don't take risk. And the Bible says this. It says without faith it's impossible for you to please God. You have to live a life of faith. Therefore, living in fear is not pleasing God. These are the people who, who don't take trips. These are the people who won't get on an airplane. These are the people whose life is just confined to these small parameters. And they're miserable because they are so afraid to take a risk. So fear's going to come, right? It hits every one of us. We're normal, we're natural. There's no one who has reached this spiritual place called there, where they glow in the dark and nothing ever bothers them. So what happens when it hits you? How do I respond? There's two different kinds of faith I want to talk about tonight. And number one, there is a supernatural gift of faith. There is a gift of faith that you can have. That's 1 Corinthians 12, 9. And some people have more than others. The Bible says we have measures of faith. So this is what I pray every day. I say, God, stretch my measure. God, stretch my measure of faith. God, I want to believe you for more today than I believed you for yesterday. God, I want to take more risk in you today than I took last month. God, help me to believe you. What is faith anyway? It's really. It's believing in what you cannot see, what you cannot grasp, just on the very word of God. You move and you shift and you go. That's a supernatural gift of faith. It's faith that rises beyond just belief. Faith. This is Hebrews 11:1. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. This is what happened to us when God spoke to us to move to California. We didn't understand. We didn't know the people. We did not know how we were going to make it. We didn't know how we were going to transition. We didn't know how we were going to leave our church. But we knew God had spoke to us and told us to go. It was a supernatural measure that was placed on us when we said, yes, God, we don't see. See, we don't understand. We don't know. But we're going to obey you on your word. Then there's the gift of faith. It looks into the impossibilities as if it's nothing. This is David when he's 12 years old and he sees Goliath standing there, seven foot tall. He said, this is nothing. Give me my little rock and my rag. I come at you in the name of the Lord. That is a savior. Supernatural gift of faith. When you look at impossibilities as if they're nothing, this requires supernatural faith. Job. Job was a good man. Many of you, if you've followed the Lord, you read the Bible, you know the story. Job was a good man. And in his own words, he said this. He said, for the thing that I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come to me. What did he do right there? He had opened a door to fear. He had opened a door to calamity in his life. He opened the door to satanic oppression by fearing the loss of his children, his wealth, his health and Then Satan went and said, I want the opportunity to come against Job. Why? Because he already had legal right. Because Job had fear in his heart. Do you hear me? You open the door to satanic oppression in your life when fear is operating on the inside of you. Fear is not normal for Christians. It is the complete opposite way of living for a Christian. It is not normal. It's normal for sinners, but it is not normal for a Christian. Well, you say hope. What opens the door to fear? What opens the door? Do you ever watch scary movies? Now, now I'm meddling in your business, right? Scary movies. The things we watch, the things we listen to, all of those things. Open the door and I hear people say, I'm scared to death. You just opened a door. You just gave Satan legal right into your life. You just said, come on in, come on in. Do with me what you're going to do. I'm giving you legal right. I'm scared to death. Negative talk. Negative things you watch. You have to be so diligent to guard your gates. You have to guard your ears, you have to guard your eyes. You have to guard your company. And you have to be bold enough to tell people, mm, mm. Stop. I don't want to hear that. Don't speak that around me. This past Thanksgiving, one of our church members, their little granddaughter walked outside, got in the road. Two or three years old, got hit by a truck. She was completely out. No heartbeat, no pulse. They brought her into the house and they began to lay their hands on her and pray for her. Well, one of the family members was standing in the house and he was watching this whole interaction, and he said, she's not going to make it, guys. You might as well give up. She doesn't have any pulse. She doesn't have a heartbeat. You just, she's dead. And the daddy turned around and said, be quiet. If you cannot speak faith in here, get out. And do you know, when the man left the room five minutes later, her heart started beating and she gasped for air. You gotta get the doubt out of the room. You gotta get the doubt out of your life. You gotta get the negative voices out of your life so that you can't operate in fear, so that you can operate in faith, so that you can please God. Aren't you tired of being in that prison of fear? Aren't you tired of struggling and letting your life have limit after limit after limit because you're afraid. Afraid. And you're paralyzed to move when God says move. I remember the first time God touched Me and my husband in a service. I remember it like it was yesterday. And he said, I want you to sow a thousand dollar seed. Whew. My heart started beating. I was like, ron, how are we going to do this? All we have in our check account is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was so afraid. But now that I've been walking with the Lord for a number of years, I know that voice. I know when he tells me to do something and I know that if I don't obey, it's going to bite me on the rear end. Right. I know that there is a blessing on the other side of obedience. So when I feel my heart start beating like this, I just do it anyway. I do it scared. Joyce Meyer's just written a book called Do It Afraid. That's what we need to start doing. This is how you eliminate fear out of your life, is you start to take risk. And you do it even when you're shaking. Whoo. Come on. We gotta guard our gates. We gotta guard our eyes, we gotta guard our ears. We gotta get the negative voices out of our life. How do you combat this fear? You got to fill your heart and your mind with the word of God. Oh, the word of God is living, it is breathing, it is alive. It will combat fear in your life. Use it like a sword. The Bible says that it's as powerful as a two edged sword. And you got to continually walk in faith by taking risk even if you're shaking in your shoes. Don't run from challenges, don't run from opportunities because you're afraid. Come on. God has not given you that spirit of fear. He's given you power. He's given you love. He's given you a sound mind. You are stronger than you think you are. Come on, tonight is your night. Tonight you have got to speak to that thing that's on the inside trying to tell you you can't make it. Trying to tell you you're gonna die, that this sickness is gonna take you out, that you can't leave your house. The devil is a lie. It's time for us to raise up in our rightful place in our authority. The Bible says that we are seated with Christ Jesus. You are seated in authority. I believe that for you tonight. And I'm going to pray for you. I just. I sense it even on me right now. I can feel people listening to me who are so afraid to even. It's like you're paralyzed. And I bind that spirit of fear right now in the name of Jesus. I Decree and declare over your life that you are coming out of this thing, that you're going to rise above. If you're listening to me right now, and you know somebody who deals with the spirit of fear, I want you to get them on the phone, share this broadcast. And I decree and declare tonight. The lies of the enemy have to stop over your life. Stop agreeing with the lies of the enemy. You are the righteous of God in Christ Jesus, and greater is he that is in you than those lies of him that are in the world. I just decree over your life tonight. You're free from the spirit of fear. I bind the spirit of fear and I lose power, love and a sound mind over you right now. You are going to go into 20, 21 victorious. Sickness has no hold over you. Oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Debt cannot keep you back. A lack of education cannot hold you down. I thank you, God, that the promises of God are yes and they are. So be it. Over their life. In the name of Jesus. Devil, you cannot lie. Another day. You will not control our minds or our actions. Another day. I thank you, God, that you're going to help them start taking risk and they're going to have victory after victory after victory after victory. In the name of Jesus. God bless you. I love you. The spirit of fear is bound over your life and you are victorious. God bless you. I love you.

Wow. I love how Pastor Hope breaks down the word. I also love following her on social media because she's always so real, encouraging and motivating. So if you're not following her, make sure to follow her on Facebook, PastorHopeC and on Instagram. PastorHope Carpenter. And we'll see you next week.