Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.13UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.12UNLIKELY
Fear
0.67LIKELY
Joy
0.47UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.56LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.53LIKELY
Confident
0.18UNLIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.91LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.34UNLIKELY
Extraversion
0.16UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.49UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.48UNLIKELY

Tone of specific sentences

Tones
Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
!! Fear and Faith
{{{"
The Lord is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?
When evil men advance against me
to devour my flesh,
when my enemies and my foes attack me
they stumble and fall.
Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then will I be confident.
One thing I ask of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
For in the day of trouble
he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle
and set me high upon a rock.
Then my head will be exalted
above the enemies who surround me;
at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make music to the Lord.
}}}
Psalm 27:1-6
Marjorie Goff was thirty-one when she stepped inside and closed the door of her small apartment in 1949.
She did not leave her home again until she was sixty-one.
She did go out one time in 1960 to visit her family.
Two years later, she left again to have an operation.
And in 1976, when the friend who shared her apartment was dying with cancer and wanted ice cream, Marjorie went out to get her some.
She might still be there in her lonely apartment if it were not for a social worker who found her and helped her back out into the world!
"Extreme case," you say?
Perhaps.
But agoraphobia does afflict one in twenty Americans.
It is literally fear of fear.
An agoraphobiac is terrified by the possibility of a panic attack in an open place away from home.
One woman suffered so acutely from agoraphobia that she literally could not be out of sight of her home.
She walked backward out of her front door to pick up her morning paper in order never to lose sight of her house.
It might not always be this severe.
But one in nine adults harbors some kind of phobia, making fear the number-one mental health problem for women, and the number-two problem for men, behind drug and alcohol abuse.
It may well be that such abuse simply masks fear.
There are phobias of shopping malls, freeways, and suspension bridges.
In fact, one young truck driver was so afraid of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that he could cross it only in the trunk of his car while his wife drove.
A Los Angeles insurance executive is so fearful of driving on freeways that he holds tightly onto the roof of his car with one hand while he steers with the other.
A San Francisco man who loved airplanes had logged 150,000 miles in the air when he encountered some turbulence in a 747.
In a cold-sweat panic he quit flying—a problem for this thirty-seven-year-old man whose job depended on travel.
At least seventy-five phobias have been given technical names.
Ailurophobia is the fear of cats.
Astrophobia is the fear of lightning.
Trichophobia is the fear of hair.
One of the most unusual phobias is "triskaidekaphobia," fear of the number thirteen; it costs American business a billion dollars a year in absenteeism, cancellations, and reduced business on the thirteenth of the month.
So deep is the fear of the number thirteen that in Paris a professional fourteenth guest can be hired to round out an otherwise ill-fated thirteen-person dinner.
You may say, "None of that is my problem."
But remember that phobias are very personalized.
While your friend's fear of spiders sends you into gales of laughter, your own fear of water seems perfectly sane, totally rational, and completely prudent.
The fact of the matter is that your fear is real to you, whatever it may be.
The writer of the twenty-seventh psalm faced and conquered real fear.
At some point in the midst of his trouble, the psalmist felt the pressing need to get back to God. "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life" (27:4).
This psalm is the testimony that a courageous king gave before the assembly of God's people.
These are the words of an intrepid, invincible hero who has faced fear frequently and conquered because of faith.
The objects of his fears were real, not imaginary.
Vicious enemies attacked him with words and weapons.
Yet he found that faith elevated him above that which he feared.
When communion with God dominates your life, faith is the antidote to fear.
If you are in the grip of fear, come back to God.
!!! Overcoming Fear by Faith
Faith overcomes fear when God is first.
The first words of this psalm form an expression of faith, "The Lord is my light and my salvation."
Only after that affirmation of faith do you find the word "fear."
The name of God is first before fear.
This is as practical as waking up in the morning.
Your first conscious thought will either be of faith or fear, belief or unbelief.
The psalmist greeted the day with the name of God.
Because of that, fear was shouted down by faith.
But this faith can't be vague or ambiguous.
The faith that overcomes fear has solid content.
The psalmist experiences God as light, victory, and stronghold.
God as light overcomes fear because He alone pushes back every form of darkness.
The psalmist had known the choking fear of nighttime military campaigns.
He had known human enemies lurking somewhere behind a rock in the Judean desert.
In such moments God was his light.
He confessed elsewhere, "Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to you" (139:12, NKJV).
Many still fear literal darkness; bad things do happen in the dark.
Worse than physical darkness, though, are those things that belong to spiritual midnights—temptation and trouble.
In all of it fear is finished when we confess, "God is my light."
Hughes Aircraft Corporation invented a small seven-and-one-fourth-pound instrument called "Probeye."
It can see in the dark by detecting invisible, infrared radiation from a human body.
Such technology enables humans to see in the dark what they could not see before.
But all of us need something more than a "Probeye" in the spiritual darknesses that threaten us.
This "something more" is Jehovah, who sheds the light that dispels darkness and shows the way out.
Further, the psalmist confesses that God is our salvation.
On the safe side of trouble it is clear that He rescued us.
God is also our stronghold, our refuge and bulwark.
In the face of everything that gives terror, He is a place of safety.
The faith that overcomes fear begins with the stalwart confession: "Jehovah is my light, salvation, and stronghold."
Fear shrinks in the face of such an assault.
When this confession is an exclusive dependence upon God, it vanquishes fear.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9