Do Not Fear - From our Friends at RYM
By: Sean Scott
The impossible puzzle of packing up the vans…. Singing Taylor Swift at the TOP of our lungs… Overwhelming Chick Fil A on the way there and back… The giant swing in Maryland… Navigating DC traffic with 15-passenger vans… Winning sports tournaments… Figuring out where electives are the first morning… Getting our third wind of the day when it’s time to worship and sit for evening large group…
Each summer we typically attend the Reformed Youth Ministries (RYM) summer conference with our high school students. Some of the things we look forward to are listed above. Those things and so much more are the things we missed out on. While it is disappointing to not attend, they have provided us with a “virtual conference” which we will start as a large group, outdoors, this week. As I have prepared on my end for our time together, I found comfort in hearing from familiar folks, seeing and hearing the band sing familiar songs, and ultimately the comfort in being taught God’s word.
The theme of the conference is “Do Not Fear” and it could not be a more appropriate topic right now. The phrase “do not be afraid” is in the bible over 300 times. That is a remarkable fact that should cause us to think… what is fear? And am I afraid?
I would commend to you this first sermon from our virtual conference. Richie Sessions is the RUF Campus Minister at Vanderbilt University and is a RYM mainstay in terms of preaching, and leading us at our annual youth leader training. He is preaching from 1 John 4 and though this is a sermon for “high schoolers”, I found it so convicting and moving. The passage addresses the Love that God has for us, and how “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…” (v.18).
Fear can cause us to change who we are, to cling to and preserve a way of life that God may be ripping out of our hands. It can bring clarity to what we idolize and worship apart from God. It could mean we fear some kind of punishment or we live just waiting for the “other shoe to drop”. And yet 1 John 4 gives us this idea that not security or comfort, but perfect love, is the antidote to fear.
Sessions closes with some helpful tips regarding “what do we do with our fear?”
We need to talk honestly with God about what is really going on inside of us, and open up about the thing we feel we need to hide the most.
We have to be honest about the darkness in order for the light to come in – this is the Christian life!
We should read scripture out loud and be still in it.
We should ask the Holy Spirit that we might be a channel of God’s love.
Check out the sermon here: https://youtu.be/fYsDIydJ86c?t=1177