Break Free from Fear: Transform Your Life

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The On Target Institute presents a teaching from the Men On Target small group curriculum. Now with today's session, On Target founder, Vince Dacchioli. How are you doing? Welcome to session nine of On Target Institute. In our last session we dealt with the importance of praise.

It was a powerful session and my prayer is that you will really understand how important it is to praise God in order to really be able to hear his voice. In these next several sessions, we're going to be dealing with overcoming our past. I've discovered that you will never be able to see God's glorious future for your life unless you are able to let go of your past. So in the sessions that are coming, we're going to be dealing with fear in this session and session nine, but then we're going to be dealing with anger, unforgiveness, and guilt. And the idea here is to be able to release, to be able to let go.

The word release is taken from the Hebrew word Shamita. It means a remitting or to release or remit. Also the Hebrew word Shamat means to let alone. It's used in the sabatic year of remission. It's also the Greek word Apoluo, which means to release as in the custom of letting a prisoner go at Passover.

Our verse for the next several weeks is going to be Philippians 3, 13, and 14. We've covered this before. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, Paul says, but one thing I do, listen, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press on toward the goal or the mark or the target. That's where our ministry name came from.

To win the prize, he says, for which God has called me Heavardward in Christ Jesus. And so we're going to be referring back to that often. But this whole idea of letting go is such a powerful, powerful spiritual principle. There's a poem I heard years ago. The author is unknown, but it goes like this.

As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend, I brought my broken dreams to God because he was my friend. But then instead of leaving him in peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own. At last I snatched him back and cried, how can you be so slow? My child, he said, what could I do? You never did.

Let go. And this is so typical of us men. We try to fix things. We try to make things happen to ourselves. And God is saying, you know what, you just need to let it go.

So let's begin by talking about fear. What is this thing we call fear? Edmund Burke says this, no passion so effectually robs the mind of all of its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. Fear is a powerful, powerful, motivated. They all began in the garden.

You know, there was a curse in the garden placed upon the man and placed upon the woman as a result of sin that entered into man in the garden. But the curse on the man and the women, women were very different. If you look into Exodus, you can begin to see these things. To the man, God said, the curse is the ground because of you. You will labor and toil all your days.

As a result of that curse, a man's greatest fear is failure. We're trying to overcome the curse. Our greatest need is for significance. It's very different for women. It says, among other things, that women will desire their husband and their husband will rule over them.

This, let me caution you guys, is not a matter of lording it over. It is a matter of you becoming a place of safety and security. So a woman's greatest fear is abandonment. Her greatest need is for security. So we have different fears and needs.

And by the way, we have outlines about this. If you go to our website at otm.co, right on the front page is a place where you can click to get some of these resources that will drill down even more on some of the things that we're talking about here. And you can also get the outline for these sessions there as well as just a reminder. The Bible uses numerous words to denote fear. Let's talk about some of those.

It talks about reverence, dread, terror. The new Bible dictionary states that, theologically, there are four main categories that can be suggested for this idea of fear. The first is what we call holy fear. This is God-given, enabling us to reverence God's authority, obey His commandments, and hate and shun all forms of evil. Scripture tells us that this kind of fear is the very beginning of wisdom.

And in fact, if you look at Ecclesiastes, Solomon spends the entire book of Ecclesiastes whining about the futility of life. But when he gets to the very end, it's really interesting what he says. He says basically paraphrasing here, now that I've said all of this, really all of life distills down into two things. Fear God, I should say first, fear God and obey His commands. He says this is the whole duty of man.

Wow, those are powerful words. And when the most incredible man like Solomon, a man with such incredible wisdom says stuff like that, we should pay attention. But fear God in this context does not mean cower in a corner and be afraid of God. Rather, it means be in awe of God. This is what it means to have holy fear.

This is healthy, okay? The second kind of fear is what we call slavish fear. It's a natural consequence of sin. An adulterer, for instance, fears they'll be found out. I dealt with a lot of this fear.

Some of you have heard my personal story. You know that there were some years in my life where I was an adulterer and I was always afraid. It was a slave to that kind of fear of being ultimately found out. A tax evader works hard to cover their tracks so that they won't be discovered. Or an alcoholic fears losing his job because he's an alcoholic and he'll be found out.

This is what we call slavish fear. The next one is called fear of men. This can be positive in the sense of having a reverential awe in regard of men or it can be quite negative where we have a blind dread of other people because of what they have or can do to us. I remember when I was in the business world, there was a man that I worked with. I won't use his real name, I'll call him Bob.

I really did not like this man. It was before I really knew the Lord very intimately. In fact, I would say I actually hated him, which I'm not proud of. But I also feared him. I feared him because he was in a position of authority over me.

I didn't revere him at all. I feared him. I feared what he could do to me. I feared how he could hold me back in the organization and it occupied my thoughts. We'll talk more about this later as we drill down into these sessions.

That was not a healthy fear. But around that time, I also had a reverential awe for some men in my life. I remember Pastor Hayford. I was a new church on the way where he pastored for many, many years and my wife and I began attending and I was in awe of him. I really revered him for what God was doing in his life and how special a man he really was.

So fear of men can be positive and it also can be negative. We've got to be careful with that. And then the fourth one is fear as an object of fear. This is a particular fear that terrifies us. The Greek word is phobos, which is where, of course, we get our word phobia.

And President Roosevelt would say it this way. He says, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And sometimes that can really be what is going on in our life. The right kind of fear can be a good thing. The wrong kind of fear can devastate us.

But fear is always the underlying emotion and always the beginning point that we have to cover before we really start dealing with anger and unforgiveness and guilt and all of those kinds of things. The only kind of fear we should really have and that should dominate our life is holy fear. It's really being in awe of our Heavenly Father. Now, let me remind you before we close this session here in just a few moments, I remind you about the handout. We have some handout verses that will help you read and pray about this area of fear.

There's a whole list of prayers and Bible verses on our website at www.otm.co. I would encourage you to go there and look for the handout for this session on dealing with fear and really begin to read those verses daily, especially if you're struggling in that area. Now, in keeping with our promise as we close these sections, let's explore two things. First, life implication and then life application. Life implication.

A failure to understand and deal properly with fear is a major contributor to a variety of dysfunctional human behaviors. We'll talk more about that in sessions to come. But not dealing with this and having a blind eye to this is really not a healthy thing for us to do. Now, let's talk about life application. This is the time when you get to really have a quality discussion with the men around your table.

Life application. Your first discussion question, which area or aspect of fear do you most struggle with? Talk about all of the four areas of fear that we discovered. Maybe you've got some examples in your own life that you can share. I gave you one dealing with the wrong kind of fear, dealing with a man that I worked with.

So, talk about those and come up with maybe some examples and they'll be men at your table that have gone through some of these things that will be able to maybe give you some quality advice on what they did when they were going through it. The second one is, how can I use this teaching to help me become a man who will overcome inappropriate fear? This is a place where you can begin to talk to the men at your table and, for instance, if you've got a fear, a phobia maybe, or something that is really not very healthy, you could say, you know what, maybe what I need to do to overcome that is this, A, B, and C. And I encourage you, if that's the case, ask the men at your table to hold you accountable and that maybe give them permission that next week, when you come back, go ahead and ask me the tough questions. Was I able to do these things that I said I was going to do in order to overcome?

And listen, men, this is the way we grow. We grow not so much by just sitting here and listening to these teachings as good as they may be. We grow by doing life together. The Bible says, iron sharpens iron. Now, I want to encourage you in your conversation around the table that I want to pray that God really, richly blesses you guys and that He reveals some truth to you that can really help you be a transformed man and become a true disciple of Jesus.

And listen, until next time, remember this, don't forget about it. Thank you.