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seem to have the answers to everything. But the Bible, it's always
ignored.
As Mr. Armstrong and I were discussing last week in his study in
Tucson, if you were to listen to the behavioral scientists on the
subject of child rearing, you would very soon have to do away with
the fifth commandment, honor thy parents. Because as you well know,
those behavioral scientists teach their disciples that you shouldn't
expect a child to auto�atically give respect to the parent--that the
parent must "earn" that respect. Before you know it, not only are
the parents sparing the rod and spoiling the child, but the child is
literally running wild and the parents are very soon fearful of
their own children. I assure you .that most juvenile delinquency is
a direct result in almost eve�y case of the failure of the parent to
raise the child according to biblical principles. In many cases the
parent is so fearful of the child, not only of the child's disapproval
and disrespect, but sometimes even fearful of the child in a physical
way. And therefore, there can be no discipline in the home. And
parents just simply raise their hands and say there's nothing we can
do about it.
I mention all of that because I too just recently read an article,
which wasn't bad actually. It was on the subject of fear, success
and failure. But the important ingredient that I found that was
missing was faith. The article didn't tell you how to overcome your
fear in order to achieve some measure of success. And I felt that
it would be good to share with you today my feelings about how to
overcome fear of any kind, and of course, to do so, one falls back
on a gift of God called faith.
But I'm sure there are some of you in this congregation today who
at some time in your life have been afraid to try because you've been
afraid to fail. Many are so fearful of failure that they are literally
frozen by that fear. People don't want to risk a hurt or an embarrass
ment that might come from a failure. So very often they venture
nothing.
I recall when my younger daughter was about 17 and she began to open
up a little bit to me about some of her emotional attachments, parti
cularly with members of the opposite sex, we had a very important
discussion. And I told her in the.process that if she were going
to learn to love someone and love someone deeply enough to have that
kind of concern for that person that will lead to the kind of relation
ship that will be lasting, that she was going to have to overcome the
fear of being hurt. She was going to have to overcome the fear of
not having that love or that affection returned. And I think that
whatever I told my daughter on that occasion had some effect because
she began to form the right kind of relationships with young men, and
she's now married and seems to have found a man who feels exactly
the way about her that she feels about him. But unless she had been
willing, as I explained, to be vulnerable, to be hurt, if necessary,
in case that love was not returned, she would without a doubt not
find the kind of mate that would lead to the kind of relationship
that she hoped for.