Becoming Worshipers, Part 4: Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

Becoming worshipers means moving past thanking God for what He does into knowing who He is, and that move always runs into fear. In this fourth message of the series, the pastor traces fear back to Adam hiding in the garden, shows how worship requires us to become vulnerable before God, and explains how His perfect love casts out the fear that keeps people from their calling. It continues from Becoming Worshipers, Part 3 — Who Told You That You Were Naked?.

The message closes with two pictures of what worship looks like: Moses meeting God in a tent outside the camp, and the one leper out of ten who came back to fall at Jesus’ feet. Below are the full video, a structured summary, the Scriptures linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway, a timestamped outline and practical steps.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was preached at NTC Ministries in Merrill and posted on January 11, 2023. It runs about 63 minutes. The pastor reminds the church that the praise and worship time on Sunday morning is a type and shadow of how believers are meant to live every day, and that the previous weeks of the series have focused on recognizing who God truly is.

This time he turns to the obstacle. Our unrenewed mind fights worship, he says, because worship is where intimacy with God is found, and fear is what most keeps people from it.

From Praise to Worship

The pastor begins with the pattern of Psalm 100:4: enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise, and be thankful to Him. Praise recognizes what God does, what He can do and what He has done for people through the ages. Psalm 150:2 says to praise Him for His mighty acts.

Every week, write one thing God did for you and drop it in a mason jar. By year’s end, he says, the miracles become greater and your life more full of what He does. Then read them all back. Journaling works too, since Scripture says to write it down so that whoever reads it may run (Habakkuk 2:2).

Worship goes further. Like the progression through the tabernacle and temple, it is a growth process. Praise thanks Jesus for waking us up this morning. Worship moves from what God does to who He is, and it has to be learned and acquired. “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker” (Psalm 95:6). God is God; He does not have to do anything to be worthy of it.

Jesus was worshiped as a baby, when He could do nothing for anyone. Those who recognized who He was worshiped Him. The religious leaders who did not recognize Him wanted to kill Him, driven by fear of losing their position and their followers. That, the pastor says, is the point: fear is bound up in every person, and fear wants to keep you from worshiping God.

Fear Has a Voice

In the garden, Adam and Eve had a daily custom of walking with God in the cool of the day. After they ate from the forbidden tree, everything changed. In Genesis 3:9–11, God calls, “Where are you?” and Adam answers, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

Adam was vulnerable, and he was afraid. The pastor’s teaching is that to worship God, we have to become vulnerable. Nobody is saved simply by knowing Jesus was born, died and is in heaven; that knowledge, he jokes, plus two dollars gets you a cup of coffee. A transformed life comes through an intimate relationship, and that comes through worship: “Lord, I can’t run my life. You’re my Creator. I give my life to You.”

Picture a rabbit in the backyard: even if you bring food, it runs, because you are so big and different. People run from God the same way. You cannot get rid of fear with more fear. Where there is no wood, the fire goes out (Proverbs 26:20); to make fear go away, you have to worship the One who can destroy it.

Then God asked, “Who told you that you were naked?” Before that, Adam had no sense of vulnerability; he simply had fellowship with God. “Fear has a voice,” he says, and we cannot listen to it.

Becoming vulnerable is part of every real relationship; otherwise it is hypocrisy. He explains that the Greek word for hypocrite comes from stage actors who held up a smiling or frowning mask and spoke from behind it. With God there is no mask: “I’m nothing; You’re everything.” Then salvation comes and His life is imparted.

Control by fear does not work, any more than threats calm a crying child. Adam tried to control his situation by hiding, but God sees everything, and becoming worshipers starts with coming out of hiding.

Worship in Spirit and Truth

Moses came with the law, the pastor says, but Jesus came full of grace and truth. At Jacob’s well, the Samaritan woman wanted to talk about worship, and because worship is about who God is, Jesus revealed that He was the Messiah. He told her the hour had come when true worshipers would worship the Father in spirit and truth, for God is Spirit (John 4:23–24).

Not with our intellect, he stresses. The end of theology is not more knowledge; it is worship. Jesus came as the bread of life to feed our spirits so that we can relate to the Father without fear of being vulnerable. Because we know who God is, we can be honest with Him; He is not an ogre with a hammer.

The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14). Intellect alone does not cast out fear.

Then Satan told Adam and Eve that God had lied and was withholding something from them, when in fact God had given them everything. That fear of not having still controls mankind. James asks where wars and fights come from, and answers that people desire and do not have (James 4:1–2).

In this fallen world we do have needs, and God invites us to ask so that our joy may be full (John 16:24). The danger is when the need becomes greater than the desire for God.

He shares his own testimony. He was diagnosed with cancer, but he knew who God was, and he reports that later tests showed it was no longer there. For about twelve years he took no salary from the church, now receiving only a hundred dollars a month, yet he and his wife Pam came out of debt. In both seasons, he says, he refused to let the need become greater than who God is.

With Adam, the need became greater than who God was, so he hid. Jesus, the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45–47), won everything back on the cross. He who did not spare His own Son, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things (Romans 8:32)? If He gave the greater, he says, He will not withhold the lesser.

Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

This is why Jesus came. Hebrews 2:14–15 says He shared our humanity so that through death He might destroy the one who had the power of death, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. When a doctor says a word like cancer, fear starts talking. But it is God’s will that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4).

Through worship, an exchange takes place: fear is destroyed and faith rises, revealing God as Jehovah Rapha, our healer. Jesus undid everything Adam did to mankind. The worst death, he adds, is not leaving this earth but being separated from God’s presence forever, which is why Jesus said not to fear those who can kill the body (Matthew 10:28).

The fear of death in this broad sense keeps people from God’s will. Someone called to start a business or serve the public never steps out. Yet God wants His people in those places. Many great ideas, he says, lie in graveyards because of fear.

The answer is 1 John 4:18–19: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.” When the disciples’ boat was filling with water and Jesus slept, they cried out, asking if He did not care that they were perishing. He rebuked the wind with “Peace, be still,” and the sea was calm (Mark 4:35–41).

We cannot cast fear out of our own lives, but perfect love can. Becoming worshipers means letting it. In worship we become aware of His presence, and the more we practice being still before Him, the clearer His voice becomes and the more His love empowers us. The hope that does not disappoint comes because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).

Perfect love grows in the place of worship. The pastor explains the words behind worship, summarized below.

Your mind will race, he warns, but God wants you to put the mind aside and let your spirit bask in His love. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet while Martha served, and Jesus said Mary had chosen the good part (Luke 10:38–42). Exalt the Lord and worship at His footstool (Psalm 99:5). Much of his own prayer time, he says, is simply sitting before God without saying anything.

Before moving to Merrill, he and his family gave away everything, including their vehicles, and a neighbor drove them there in a pickup to start a church. Years of sitting in God’s presence and perfect love had removed the fear, he says, even when others around them were afraid. Thirty-six years later, he believes he would never have accomplished what God called him to do if he had allowed fear in his life.

Becoming Worshipers Like Moses

The pastor stresses that the subject is not worship in general but becoming worshipers. Psalm 103:7 says God made known His ways to Moses and His acts to the children of Israel. Israel, shaped by fear for 400 years, complained in the wilderness. They knew His deeds; Moses knew His character.

The difference was a decision. In Exodus 33:7–11, Moses pitched his tent far outside the camp, which the pastor applies as far from the news channels, the bickering neighbors and the complainers at work, and called it the tabernacle of meeting. Anyone who sought the Lord could go there. When Moses entered, the pillar of cloud came down, and the Lord spoke to him face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

The people stood at their tent doors waiting for Moses to bring them a word. They could have gone too, the pastor says, but they waited for a man to do it. They knew God’s miracles but not His character, and that generation died in the wilderness. God wants to speak to every believer face to face, like a best friend, every day.

In Exodus 33:13–15, Moses asks God to show him His ways, and God promises His presence will go with him. Moses answers, “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.” He was willing to give up the promised land rather than lose God’s presence. That, the pastor says, is the difference between religion and Christianity.

God’s thoughts toward us are thoughts of peace and a future and a hope, and He promises that we will find Him when we search with all our heart (Jeremiah 29:11–13). It is possible to attend church without being a worshiper; Jesus quoted Isaiah about people who honor God with their lips while their heart is far from Him (Matthew 15:7–8).

But Hebrews 10:19–22 gives us boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus and to draw near with a true heart, no longer conscious of sin and failure. The righteous are bold as a lion (Proverbs 28:1). Draw near to God and He will draw near to you (James 4:8).

The Leper Who Returned

“Worship changes the atmosphere,” the pastor says. It heals wounded hearts and turns battlegrounds into holy ground. The faster we become worshipers, the faster our hearts heal.

His final story is Luke 17:11–19. Ten lepers cried out for mercy, Jesus sent them to the priests, and as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, a Samaritan, turned back, glorified God with a loud voice and fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, a picture of worship. Jesus asked where the other nine were, and told him, “Your faith has made you well.”

Leprosy cost people circulation, so fingers, ears and noses could be lost. The nine were cleansed of the disease; Jesus did not withhold what He does. But to the one who returned He revealed who He is, and that man was made whole, which the pastor reads as everything restored. God shows no partiality; one simply chose to become a worshiper.

Becoming worshipers opens the way to restoration. Many people carry the scars of hard seasons that made them draw back from life. God wants to restore what was lost while they lived in fear, the years the locust has eaten (Joel 2:25). He did not come to condemn, but so that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:17) and have life more abundantly.

Living It Out This Week

Here are practical steps drawn from this message on becoming worshipers:

• Start a mason jar. Each week, write one thing God did for you and drop it in; read them all at year’s end.
• Pitch your tent outside the camp. Set aside time away from the news and the complainers just to be with God.
• Sit without asking. Spend part of your prayer time quietly in His presence, letting Him speak.
• Drop the mask. Tell God honestly how you are doing, trusting that He is not waiting to punish you.
• Answer fear’s voice. When fear speaks, ask, “Who told you?” and turn to 1 John 4:18.
• Go back and say thank you. Like the tenth leper, return to worship Jesus for who He is, not only for what He did.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Praise and worship: Psalm 100:4
• 1:09 The mason jar of thanksgiving
• 3:11 Worship goes beyond what God does
• 4:17 Psalm 95:6: let us bow down
• 5:36 Fear keeps us from worship: Genesis 3
• 7:58 The rabbit in the backyard
• 10:26 Who told you that you were naked?
• 11:47 Masks and hypocrisy
• 14:26 John 4: worship in spirit and truth
• 17:07 Hebrews 2: Jesus destroyed the fear of death
• 20:01 Fear keeps people from their calling
• 21:27 1 John 4: perfect love casts out fear
• 24:23 The Greek and Hebrew words for worship
• 27:29 Mary at Jesus’ feet
• 31:27 Moving to Merrill without fear
• 33:55 The natural man and the lie in the garden
• 37:47 When the need becomes greater than God
• 39:13 Romans 8:32: freely give us all things
• 44:16 Psalm 103:7: His ways and His acts
• 45:18 Exodus 33: the tent outside the camp
• 49:41 If Your presence does not go with us
• 55:06 Hebrews 10: boldness to enter
• 57:37 Worship changes everything: the ten lepers
• 1:01:48 God restores what was lost

Becoming Worshipers Series

This message is part of a six-part series at NTC Ministries. Start from the beginning or continue where this one leaves off:

• First message: Becoming Worshipers, Part 1: From Praise to True Worship
• Previous: Becoming Worshipers, Part 3 — Who Told You That You Were Naked?
• You are here: Becoming Worshipers, Part 4: Perfect Love Casts Out Fear
• Next: Becoming Worshipers

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it selfish to pray for my own needs?

No. The pastor tells of a man whose previous pastor had said praying for himself was selfish, and he told him never to listen to that again. In this fallen world we do have needs, and Jesus told us to ask so that our joy may be full. The problem, he explains, is not asking; it is letting the need become greater than our desire for God, which is what caused Adam to hide instead of running to Him.

What if sitting quietly before God feels like a waste of time?

The pastor expects that reaction. He says your natural mind will race at a hundred miles an hour, insisting you have things to do and asking what God is doing. Worship means putting the mind aside for a while and letting your spirit rest in His love, like Mary at Jesus’ feet. Much of his own prayer time is spent just sitting before God, and he says His presence grows as you practice it.

Why did only Moses know God’s ways?

Exodus 33 says anyone who sought the Lord could go out to the tent of meeting. The pastor’s point is that the people could have gone but chose to stand at their tent doors and wait for Moses to bring them a word. Moses decided to go in. Because he kept seeking God’s presence, he came to know God’s character, while the rest knew only His miracles.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Psalm 100:4 — enter His gates with thanksgiving
• Genesis 3:9–11 — I was afraid and hid myself
• John 4:23–24 — worship in spirit and truth
• Hebrews 2:14–15 — freed from the fear of death
• 1 John 4:18–19 — perfect love casts out fear
• Romans 8:32 — freely give us all things
• Exodus 33:7–11 — the tabernacle of meeting
• Exodus 33:13–15 — if Your presence does not go
• Hebrews 10:19–22 — boldness to enter the Holiest
• Luke 17:11–19 — the leper who returned

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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