Fear of Man vs. Fear of God

     One of my greatest weaknesses is speaking out when God has given me words to say.  I have this fear of man that leads me to believe that what I have to say isn’t of any importance and that when I speak people aren’t going to listen.  I also have this fear that people will become angry with me when I say what God has asked me to say. I’m afraid of people turning against me because of what I say.  It’s quite horrible and it has caused me a lot of pain and heartache, we aren’t created to be silent when the Lord asks us to speak.

     I didn’t realize that this was something I struggled with till a couple months ago and since then I have been trying to change.  But it hasn’t been easy, it’s been a huge struggle and every day I ask God to give me boldness and a fear of the Lord.

     My deepest desire is to love God and to love God is to obey Him, and to obey Him means you fear Him.  What I’ve come to realize is that when I fear man I feel little and weak and in the end I have regrets and heartache. No peace.  But when I fear the Lord and obey what He asks me to do I have joy, I have peace and this overflowing feeling of love.  I feel secure and accepted, maybe not by man, but by God.  When you feel accepted by God you don’t need to feel accepted by man.

     So that’s my weakness, I know what it feels like to fear the Lord and obey, but it’s not something I do all the time, it’s not yet a part of my routine.  I struggle with being bold.  I struggle to speak out.  But now that I know this weakness I’m never going to stop asking God to fill it and for His power to shine through it.

“His power is made great in my weakness.”

The Greatest Commandment: Love

     My desire is to live a lifestyle that loves and serves others. The greatest commandment is to love God and then love others.  When you live a life of love every other commandment is followed.  If you love your brother you won’t steal from him, won’t lie, you won’t commit adultery, etc.

     So many times I try to work on one commandment, but then I fail. To be honest, I lie, I put other gods before the true God, and I covet my friend’s things all the time, I’m a sinner.  I try to follow the commandments, but so many times I break them. So many times I feel like I can’t ever do anything the way God wants me to.

     Lucky for me, God is a forgiving God and He like to help us when we ask.  So God gave me a revelation on this topic. Without love there is nothing.  If I don’t love before I try to follow a commandment I will fail. That is why the first and second commandments call us to love. If we don’t start by loving, everything else we do before is done in vain. The beginning of everything is to love God, love others and then serve them.

     When we begin with the first commandment it’s impossible not to follow the second, third, fourth, etc. If you love your brother you aren't going to steal from him. There isn’t any point to begin with the fourth or fifth commandment if you don’t have love. You can keep it up for a little while, but then things start to fall apart and you have to start all over.

     God also gave me 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, the chapter in the bible on love. This version of the passage really spoke to me this week and has given me a new passion to loving and serving Him and others!

     "This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience; it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive, it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

      Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.  It is not touchy; it does not keep account of evil or gloat over wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.

     Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope, it can out last anything.  It is, in fact, the one thing that stands when all else has fallen."

   1 Corinthians 13:4-8

His Power Made Perfect

     Sometimes things are hard.  Sometimes we feel like we aren’t going to make it.  Sometimes we feel like we can’t do anything right and that everything we do makes everything worse. It’s been a challenging couple of weeks with lots of good things and lots of not so good things. A lot of ups and a lot of downs.  A lot of running in the same circle, with a fear of never getting out. 

     But something that the Lord has spoken to me is this: my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  Something that I’ve never been good at as a leader or actually in any situation, is sharing the things that the Lord has been putting on my heart.  God speaks to me and often asks me to share it with those around me, but I struggle to share.  For some reason I allow myself to fear man.  I allow myself to believe the lies the enemy feeds me that the words I have aren’t important and that they aren’t really from God. 

                                     

    This fear that I have has kept me from allowing the Holy Spirit to move when He wants to and that unfortunately causes you to go in circles.  But our fears and our weaknesses don’t stop God from doing what He wants to do.  It actually perfects His power. So instead of allowing my mistakes to control me and make me feel bad about myself, I can praise the Lord and allow Him to take control in my weaknesses.

     It hasn’t been an easy thing to learn.  It’s hard to let go of your weaknesses and allow God to work in them.  Most of the time you want to fix your weaknesses before you come to God because you don’t want Him to see your imperfection, but we have that all wrong.  God doesn’t need us to be perfect before we come to Him.  He just wants us to come to Him with all our mistakes and all our weaknesses, because in those His power is perfected and everything is made into good for those who love Him.