TEEN TREE 
OF LIFE
THE DOCTRINE OF FEAR
Part 1
May 21, 2017
BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God the Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of The Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JO 1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God the Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31).
Fear is a big deal in life! It can stop you dead in your tracks and totally prevent you from accomplishing all kinds of things! Fear includes worry, too. Worry is stress. And everyone deals with stress nowadays – especially teens. Nowadays, there are many things in the Cosmic System (the world) which bring about fear. But Our God is an AWESOME God and if you learn His Word and apply it to your daily lives, fear will never rule you!
Fear is described in different ways in the Bible. The meaning is determined by the context in which it is used. Fear is a mental attitude sin, characterized by panic when in a dangerous situation. It can be a painful emotion or passion excited by the expectation of harm or evil and a strong desire to escape it. It can be apprehension, worry, or horror. It is also an active feeling of dread, of which fright and terror are the more intense degrees.
Fear is also used to mean reverence, respect, or awe. It is a reverence manifesting itself in obedience. In this respect, fear is a Christian virtue. Neglect or rejection of the Mystery Doctrine of The Church-Age and failure to utilize its fantastic Problem-Solving Tools results in many problems, including fear. In case you forgot, the Mystery Doctrine refers to the doctrine of the Great Power Experiment for the Church-age that was introduced by The Lord in the Upper-Room Discourse (READ Joh 13-17). The Mystery Doctrine is completely revealed in the New Testament Epistles. It is called the mystery because it was never revealed in Old Testament times by now has been made clear to the Church.
Fear is lack of thinking under pressure and that is a general problem in life. We are designed by God to be rational creatures; but fear makes us irrational. This makes fear an irrational and emotional sin. For the believer, fear is failure to learn and apply Bible doctrine to the problems of life and failure to learn and utilize the Problem Solving Tools. Fear is a whole system of sins which include worry, anxiety, insecurity and even incapability of doctrinal application. Fear also includes all the problems of emotionalism since fear is an emotional sin. Many sins involve only thinking, but fear involves emotion without thinking. The Christian loser is bogged down and hindered from advancing by various categories of sins and arrogance related to fear.
When you’re anxious and worried, you are drawn in different directions by an uncertain and troubled mind. Worry pulls us apart and puts us off balance. People worry and become anxious because they try to live life without God’s Guidance! That is the sin of independence. Worrying is destructive. Worry only tears us down. Worry can’t add anything positive to our lives. Worry is also deceptive. It convinces us that this world is more important than eternity. Our enemies want us to be so concerned about today’s world, that we totally forget about eternity and our goal – to glorify God.
Worrying is debilitating. It stops us in our tracks and keeps us from growing. In the process, it makes our Christian walk unsuccessful. It makes us ineffective as Ambassadors of The Lord Jesus Christ. How can we witness to a lost and dying world and encourage them to put faith in Jesus Christ if we ourselves doubt God by worrying? One mark of a true Christian is that he/she makes it easier for others to believe in God. What a tragedy it is when so many of us fail to.
What does worry, anxiety and fear do to us? Worrying makes us miserable and destroys capacity for life and happiness. Fear, worry and anxiety interfere with our Personal Sense Of Destiny, because it is the opposite of what Jesus wants for us. A Personal Sense Of Destiny is God’s meaning, purpose, and definition for the believer’s life, which becomes stronger and clearer as he/she progresses through the three stages of spiritual adulthood. God wants every believer to grow in His Grace and Knowledge and in doing so, you will have His Peace which will calm your fears: “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (JOH 16:33) Worrying reveals a lack of faith in God’s ability to guide us. When we worry, we are taking on God’s responsibility. If worry gains control over us, it can stop our spiritual walk in its tracks and we go backwards.
How do we conquer worry and fear? Here are five tips from the Bible: Fix our eyes on Jesus; Your heart is where your treasure is – so don’t store up treasures on earth, instead store up treasures in heaven; God knows all about us so Seek first the kingdom of God; Don’t worry about tomorrow.
Let’s look at HEB 12:2: …fixing our eyes on Jesus, the [b]author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. The phrase “fixing our” eyes is the Greek word aforaoo which means to look away from other things and steadfastly and intently look toward another object. We are told to look away from the world and its desires; people who distract us; difficulties; and fears; and to look toward Jesus Christ through the source of Bible doctrine. There must be no divided attention. The minute you take your eyes off of The Lord Jesus, your momentum in the Christian life is hindered. Satan’s work is to constantly try to make us take our eyes off Jesus and put them on ourselves or the things of the world. Our Lord once walked where we walk. He knows, through firsthand experience, life’s difficulties and sorrows. God never takes us through a trial that He doesn’t understand through experience. And then, on the other side, He gives us something better.
We have to look to His Holy Life; to His Patience and Perseverance in trials; to what He Endured in order to Obtain The Crown, and to His Final Success and Triumph. Keep your eye simply on Him; let His Death, His Sufferings, His Merits, His Glories and His Intercession always be in your mind. Jesus is The One Sure Thing. He is The Rock and The Foundation. Get Him in view when everything else in your life is swirling and you will land safely. Your heart is where your treasure is. Don’t store up treasures on earth, store up treasures in heaven: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (MAT 6:19-21)
This is a passage which enables you to determine what your scale of values is. It is saying in effect – don’t make materialistic things your first priority. Job understood this when he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” (JOB 1:21) And mind you, he said this after he had lost immeasurable wealth! Job understood the doctrinal principle that we take no riches of this world into the next. He also knew that God is the source of all blessing and that He deserves our thanks and praise in all things.
If you make your fortune on the earth, you have made a fortune, and stored it in a place where you cannot hold onto it. Also, these material things will not make you happy without The Lord Jesus Christ. Man was made to fellowship with God. No amount of money will bring genuine security and contentment: God alone gives that. When you set your life to store up the wealth of this world, you are setting your life after that which cannot last. Eventually the money you worked so hard for will slip from your hands and into the hands of others. The only thing a person can take away from this world is DOCTRINE in his/her soul. Everything else stays behind. Everything!!! But death cannot touch the soul – it lives forever. The content of your soul is part of your eternal treasure.
{to be continued}