Bible Text: Genesis 20:1-18 | Preacher: Pastor Joe Ricchuiti | Series: Genesis, God Deliver’s

1.  “To be afraid is to not fully trust God…  Fear and lack of trust go hand in hand; where you fing one you will find the other.  So if we are to understand why we do fear, we must understand why we don’t trust God.”  (Patrick Morley).

2.  When we are consumed with fear because we believe we are at the mercy of other people we are entrapped by that negative emotion.  The answer is to trust that God is ultimately in control of our lives, nothing can touch that He doesn’t permit.  Fear must give way to faith (Psalms 56:3; 94:19).

3.  How do we explain Abraham’s (and our) lapse into an old and familiar sin:

-even after salvation, the sin nature remains in us seeking to enslave us; we must yield instead to the Holy Spirit (Romans 7:18; Galatians 5)

-older believers (who should know better) as well as young, inexperienced believers are subject to failure.  We must always be vigilant.

-sin we haven’t dealt with will come back to exert its power over us

-we may have a particular weakness (i.e. a “besetting sin”) (Hebrews 12)

-we all face circumstances/challenges/reversals/trials that stress us and cause us to revert if we aren’t careful

-we have a tendency toward self-sufficiency, independence.  Scheming instead of believing God

-Satan seeks to make us ineffective (even destroy us physically) to silence us.

4.  We must resist sin; confess it when we fail; cry out to God for help (1 Corinthians 12:13); learn scripture dealing with out sin; memorize and meditate upon it; and ultimately see that sin is a violation of our love relationship with God.