In Let Go of the Fear, guest speaker Lee Grady teaches that overcoming fear involves more than managing anxious feelings. Fear can influence our thoughts, relationships, decisions, and willingness to obey God. Through Paul and Timothy’s discipleship relationship, this message reveals how the Holy Spirit gives believers the power, love, and sound mind they need to move forward with courage.
Timothy was young and apparently struggled with fear, insecurity, and timidity. Those struggles could have kept him from accepting God’s assignment. However, Paul reminded Timothy that God had not given him a spirit of fear. Instead, God had equipped him through the Holy Spirit to speak, serve, endure difficulty, and remain faithful to his calling.
Overcoming Fear Through the Holy Spirit
Overcoming fear does not mean that we will never feel nervous, uncertain, or intimidated. It means fear no longer controls our response to God. The Holy Spirit heals the wounded and hidden places in our hearts, restores confidence, and gives us the boldness to obey Jesus.
God often chooses weak, reluctant, shy, or unlikely people to accomplish His purposes. Our personality, age, past experiences, or insecurities do not disqualify us from serving Him. When we depend on the Holy Spirit, God’s strength becomes visible through our weakness.
Five Practical Ways to Confront Fear
Lee offers five practical ways to confront the fear that keeps us trapped: stop overthinking, don’t isolate, limit social media, share your heart, and find peace in prayer.
Overthinking can produce worry, perfectionism, second-guessing, and mental paralysis. Rather than waiting until we feel completely confident, we can trust God’s truth and take the next step He places before us.
Fear also tempts us to isolate ourselves. Yet God created us for relationships and places us within families and the church so we can receive encouragement, wisdom, prayer, and support. Overcoming fear requires us to resist the urge to withdraw and allow trustworthy people to walk with us.
Guard Your Mind and Share Your Heart
Social media can fuel comparison, anxiety, insecurity, and dependence on the approval of others. Lee challenges us to recognize when our online habits damage our peace or distort our identity. Setting healthy limits protects our hearts and helps us focus on what God says about us.
Hidden pain, shame, trauma, and negative emotions can also strengthen fear. Honest confession and healthy relationships create opportunities for healing. When we share our hearts with trustworthy believers and invite others to pray with us, struggles that once kept us trapped can begin to lose their power.
Find the Peace of Jesus in Prayer
Prayer gives us a place to bring every anxious thought, difficult decision, and uncertain situation. Philippians 4:6–7 teaches us to present our requests to God with thanksgiving. As we do, His peace guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
The peace of Jesus does not depend on perfect circumstances. It steadies us while we face uncertainty and helps us continue obeying God. Overcoming fear begins when we stop carrying every burden alone and surrender our concerns to Him.
Open Every Area of Your Life to God
In a personal vision, Lee saw oil flowing through a large pipeline. Closed valves represented fears that had caused him to say no to God. He realized that fear restricted the Holy Spirit’s flow through his life because it prevented him from doing what God asked.
Freedom from fear is not simply about feeling better. Overcoming fear enables us to make decisions, speak when God asks us to speak, accept difficult assignments, and follow Jesus without allowing insecurity to set the boundaries of our obedience.
God has not given you a spirit of fear. He has given you power, love, and a sound mind. Receive the peace of Jesus, trust the Holy Spirit, and freely say yes to God’s calling.
Key Scriptures 2 Timothy 1:7–8, John 14:27, Genesis 2:18, James 5:16, Philippians 4:6–7
What do you do when you don’t feel close to God? Every follower of Jesus will experience seasons that feel dry, confusing, or difficult. In The Wilderness Choosing Jesus in the Dry Places, Mona DeVous reminds us that the wilderness is not a place to give up on God. Instead, it is an opportunity to seek Him more deeply, trust His Word, and grow in our dependence on Him. Teaching primarily from Psalm 63, Mona points to David’s example of pursuing God even while living in a dry and thirsty land. Rather than allowing his circumstances to determine his faith, David chose to seek the Lord, praise Him, remember His faithfulness, and hold fast to His promises.
Choosing Jesus When You Don’t Feel Him
Feelings are real, but they should never become the foundation of our faith. Mona challenges believers with a simple but powerful reminder: “When we don’t feel Him, we especially need to read the Word.” Jesus modeled this perfectly in Matthew 4. When He faced temptation in the wilderness, He answered every attack with the truth of Scripture. Instead of reacting to circumstances or emotions, He stood firmly on what God had already spoken.
The Wilderness Reveals Our Hearts
Throughout Scripture, God often uses wilderness seasons to shape His people. Looking at Deuteronomy 8:2, Psalm 139:23–24, and Jeremiah 29:13, Mona explains that difficult seasons expose what is in our hearts and invite us to seek God with our whole heart. Rather than resisting the wilderness, believers can embrace it as a place where God teaches dependence, strengthens faith, and draws His people into deeper communion with Him. As Mona says, “David wasn’t looking for relief. He was looking for communion with God.”
Choosing Jesus Together
The temptation during difficult seasons is often to withdraw and isolate ourselves. However, God designed His people to encourage, strengthen, and walk alongside one another. Drawing from Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 and 1 Thessalonians 5:11, Mona reminds us that we were never meant to face the wilderness alone. Healthy friendships, strong families, and an active church family help us remain faithful when life becomes challenging.
Continue Choosing Jesus
Whether you are walking through a wilderness season today or preparing for one in the future, this message calls believers to seek Jesus before seeking relief, answer life’s challenges with God’s Word, and remain connected to the family of God. As you listen, you’ll be encouraged to trust God’s faithfulness, surrender your heart to Him, and continue choosing Jesus, even in the dry places.
Key Scriptures Psalm 63:1–8, Matthew 4:1–11, Deuteronomy 8:2, Psalm 139:23–24, Jeremiah 29:13
Faith over feelings is not about ignoring emotions. It is about letting God’s Word become the foundation of our identity, even when our feelings shift from day to day.
In this message from the Spiritual Authority: Sons & Daughters series, Chad Everett teaches from Galatians 3 on what it means to live by faith instead of feelings. As sons and daughters of God, our identity does not come from emotional highs, personal performance, religious works, or how close to God we feel in a moment. Instead, our identity rests securely in Jesus Christ.
God Is Building a Family
Chad reminds us that God is building a family, not simply an organization people attend. From the beginning, the Father’s desire has been to bring people into relationship with Himself as sons and daughters. Through faith in Christ, we become part of His family and receive the promises of God.
Using Abraham as an example, this sermon shows that righteousness comes through belief, not performance. Abraham believed God, and God counted him righteous. In the same way, believers today must learn to trust what God has spoken above what they feel. That is the heart of faith over feelings.
Faith Over Feelings, Not Performance
Many believers feel pressure to earn God’s love, prove their spiritual strength, or measure their relationship with Him by emotional experiences. However, Chad challenges that mindset through Galatians 3. Obedience matters, but obedience does not create our position as sons and daughters. Instead, obedience flows from the identity we have already received through faith in Jesus.
Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law and the burden of trying to perform our way into relationship with God. Because of His blood, we no longer have to live under the pressure of proving ourselves worthy. We can stop striving, stop pretending, and receive what Jesus has already done.
Living From Identity Instead of Emotion
Feelings are real, but they are not always reliable. Some days we feel strong, and other days we feel weak. Some days we feel close to God, and other days we feel distant. Still, the truth of the gospel does not rise and fall with our emotions.
Faith over feelings means choosing to believe God’s Word even when our emotions disagree. It means trusting that Jesus is the constant, not us. It means remembering that our righteousness is found in Christ, not in our successes, failures, or feelings.
A Call to Authentic Faith
This message is also a call to live authentically. Emotional expression is not wrong, but it cannot become the proof of our relationship with God. God is not looking for spiritual performance or Sunday-only appearances. He is forming sons and daughters who live by faith in every part of life.
As Chad says, “Both our position as sons and daughters and our possession of the promises come through faith. Our righteousness is not based on what we feel or what we earn. Our righteousness is based on what we believe.”
Whether you feel strong or weak, close or distant, worthy or unworthy, Jesus has made the way. His finished work, not your emotions, is the foundation of your identity. If you’ve ever struggled with doubt, performance, or letting your feelings define your relationship with God, this message will encourage you to embrace faith over feelings and confidently live as a son or daughter of God through Jesus Christ.
Scripture References Galatians 3:1–14, Galatians 3:22–29, John 8:31–44, 1 John 3:1, Matthew 19:16–26
What does it really mean to say, “The Lord is my Shepherd”? In this message, Promise Bradley invites us to move beyond seeing Psalm 23 as familiar words and into a deeper relationship with Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Through Psalm 23 and John 10, she reminds us that God does not simply want us to know about Him. He wants us to know Him personally, trust His leadership, and faithfully follow wherever He leads.
Knowing the Good Shepherd Personally
At the heart of The Lord Is My Shepherd is the truth that David’s declaration was deeply personal. He did not describe God as a shepherd in general. He declared, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” That same invitation is available to every believer today.
Jesus calls His followers into a relationship where He knows them by name, cares for them, protects them, and leads them with perfect wisdom. Rather than relying on our own understanding, we can confidently place our lives in the hands of the One who always leads with love and faithfulness.
Trusting the Shepherd’s Leading
Following Jesus does not always mean taking the easiest path. Instead, the Good Shepherd leads His people on paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Sometimes those paths include uncertainty, sacrifice, or seasons we would never choose on our own. Yet every step has a purpose because the Shepherd always sees what His sheep cannot.
Throughout The Lord Is My Shepherd, Promise challenges believers to trust God’s direction even when His plans differ from their own. Using the lives of Abraham, Sarah, Peter, and the older brother in Jesus’ parable, she demonstrates how easily we try to control outcomes instead of trusting the Shepherd who already knows the way.
Hearing the Shepherd’s Voice
One of the encouraging truths in The Lord Is My Shepherd is that Jesus still speaks to His people. His sheep can recognize His voice as they spend time in Scripture, prayer, and relationship with Him.
Rather than believing the lie that hearing God is reserved for a select few, believers can grow in discernment by continually drawing near to the Shepherd. As we learn His character through His Word, we become more confident in recognizing His leading in everyday life.
Letting Go of Control
A central challenge of this message is learning to surrender control. Many people naturally want to manage every situation, relationship, and outcome. However, Promise reminds us that God has not called us to control others. Instead, He calls us to trust Him while allowing the Holy Spirit to produce self-control within us.
As believers release fear, pride, and the need to control every circumstance, they discover greater freedom to follow Jesus with confidence. The Shepherd faithfully leads those who willingly place their lives in His hands.
Follow the Good Shepherd
The Lord Is My Shepherd offers both comfort and challenge. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who restores, protects, and faithfully leads His sheep. He never abandons those who belong to Him, even when the journey includes valleys or difficult decisions.
This message encourages every believer to know the Good Shepherd more deeply, trust His leadership more fully, hear His voice more clearly, and follow Him wherever He leads. As you grow in your relationship with Christ, you will discover that the safest place to be is always with the Shepherd who knows the way.
Key Scriptures Psalm 23:1–6, John 10:1–30, Genesis 22:1–14, Galatians 5:22–23, Luke 15:25–32
What if your relationship with God was never meant to be built on striving, proving, or earning? Many believers know the words grace and faith, yet still live as though God’s goodness depends on their performance. In Sons and Daughters Through Faith, Chad Everett takes us through Galatians 3 to call us back to the foundation of the Christian life: God provides by grace, and we receive through faith.
Receiving What Grace Has Provided
Paul asks the Galatians a simple but confronting question: Did you receive the Spirit by works or by the hearing of faith? That same question still searches our hearts today. Are we trying to earn what God has already given? Are we working to make God willing, or are we learning to receive what He has provided through Jesus?
Sons and daughters through faith do not have to convince the Father to be good. He already is. Faith does not twist God’s arm or persuade Him to care. Instead, faith takes hold of what grace has already made available. Salvation, righteousness, the work of the Spirit, and the promises of God begin with Him, not with us.
Living From Identity, Not Performance
Because of Jesus, we do not obey to become sons and daughters. We obey because, through faith, we already are sons and daughters. That truth changes everything.
When identity rests on performance, life becomes exhausting. Every failure feels like rejection. Every weakness feels like proof that we are not enough. However, when identity rests in Christ, obedience flows from love instead of fear. Growth produces works; works do not produce sonship.
Sons and daughters through faith live from a secure place. They do not strive for a position in the family. They grow, serve, and obey from their place in the family.
From Sonship to Family
Faith does more than connect us to God individually. It places us into the family of God. Therefore, church becomes more than a service to attend or a message to consume. It becomes a family to belong to, serve, strengthen, and grow with.
This message also gives credit to a teaching by Banning Liebscher that helped frame the contrast between viewing church as a restaurant and viewing church as a family. A restaurant serves customers. A family grows when everyone contributes.
That picture challenges a consumer mindset. If church becomes a restaurant, we show up, receive what we prefer, and leave disconnected. But God designed His people for something deeper.
A Family to Grow With
When believers understand that they are sons and daughters through faith, church stops being something they simply attend and becomes a family they help strengthen. Instead of only asking what they received from a service, they begin to consider how God may want to use them to encourage, serve, and build up others.
This message calls every believer to receive what God has provided, rest in their identity in Christ, and take their place in the Family of Faith. God is not building a crowd of consumers. He is building a family of sons and daughters through faith who serve one another, encourage one another, and grow together in Jesus.
Scripture References Galatians 3:1–29, Ephesians 2:8–9, John 3:3–6, John 14:6, Philippians 1:6