Saturday, December 18, 2010

The Fear of Man Part 2

As promised, here is m my second post on the fear of man. I hope it will encourage you, even though it is kind of hard for me to write since I struggle with this a lot. For more information, read, When People Are Big And God Is Small. It has helped me tremendously and much of the information from this post is taken from it.
I think much of my problem is just simply caring what people think of me and not caring what God thinks. If I am picking out an outfit, I think, "Will the people of school like this outfit?" rather than, "Would God approve of this outfit?". Or, if I'm taking a test, I think "I need to get a good grade so people will like me and look up to me," rather than, "God wants me to think more about serving Him and less about my grades." To solve this problem, we must fear God rather than man. We need to be more focused on what God thinks of our actions than what people do. When we are making a choice, the first thing we should think about is whether our decision is glorifying God. I really struggle with this because I am an extremely prideful person. I want others to like me. It isn't wrong to be liked and accepted by people, but it is more important to glorify God.
Take Job, for example. He was hit by too many trials and tragedies to even count. Rather than listening to his friends, though, he lived uprightly. He feared God and knew that if he listened to his wife's advice to "curse God and die [Job 2:9]," he would be condemned. That really struck me, because I am so fortunate, and yet Job's attitude was so much better than mine, even in the midst of all those troubles. That was another example to me about how far I still have to go, but I am confident that God will help me if I ask Him. I hope that this post is encouraging and helpful!

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