Who will you fear?

This is the journey the Lord is graciously leading me on.

It started when I was a kid, this fear of man, but lets start with this year 🙂

This past semester I began to take note of certain patterns (later named sin)  in my life. They seemed to be related, but I was clueless as to how, to what was at the root of these sins. I wasn’t speaking truth to people I knew needed to hear it, I feared their rejection, anger, whatever worst case scenario I’d imagined. At work I was hesitant to confront situations effectively because of how I felt I would be perceived. I second guessed a lot of my decisions and always had a defense prepared for my actions. I ended up constantly over-committed. I compared myself to others.I feared failing in important areas of my life…. I sensed the Lord was bringing these to my attention and really started to repent and to ask Him what all of this nonsense was about, why was I doing these things over and over again? Where was the lie and what did He have to say about it….

I read about Aaron fearing Israelites and then making that dumb calf. I read about Peter fearing others over and over again. I read about how Jesus forgave Him over and over again. I listened to a podcast called ” Fear of Man” one night while I was running, and it struck me completely for the first time. This was my sin too. I feared others, their disaproval, their perceptions of me, I’d become a slave.

I’d heard about this book, When People Are Big And God Is Small,  mentioned a few different times and decided to get it. The Lord began to show me how I’d feared others more than Him for most of my life. As I grew up, I sometimes masked that fear as godliness.  To make a long story short here’s a good explanation of different aspects of fear from the book:

“The first biblical perspective on the fear of man is that it is the result of the nakedness that comes from sin. Because of sin still present within us, we experience embarrassment, shame and the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable. The ultimate problem appears to be the gaze of other people, but in reality the problem is within us and between God and ourselves….We carry the shame with us all the time, other people simply trigger its appearance.”

 There’s more: ” fear of man is fear run amok. It might start with the very natural fear associated with being vulnerable and threatened, At times, however, this alarm is not regulated by faith. It becomes a fear that, when activated, rules your life. In such a state we trust for salvation from others.”

Fear of man is idolatry, plain and simple.Fear that others will disapprove, expose, hurt, reject us.  People become bigger and more powerfu than the Creator and King. “Our jealous God demands that He alone be worshipped and exalted.”

Here’s the beauty, “The gospel is the story of God covering His naked enemies, bringing them to the wedding feast, and then marrying them rather than crushing them. ” Jesus blood liteally covers us, our sin, our shame and our nakedness. His blood speaks on our behalf, His blood is our covering. He alone is to be feared, and reverenced far above all else.

Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart truns away from the LORD.
He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
BUT blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in Him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the sream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.
Jer 17:5-8

 

Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me [the LORD]. Deut 5:29