Proverbs 29:25-26 says, “The fear of man brings a snare, but He who trust in the Lord is safe. Many seek the ruler’s favour, but justice for man comes from the Lord.”
If there is one thing that can hinder us in life is over-preoccupation with what people think of us. We all want to be well thought of by others and to feel like people see us as valuable and valued. Most people want to be seen as kind, thoughtful and generous. On those rare occasions you will find someone who wants to be feared and hated so that others will respect and revere them. But for the most part, people want to be conceived positively.
This need for approval can lead us to live an inauthentic life, because if we are unable to say no, we live by someone else’s agenda, live by their beliefs, focused on their needs and we lose ourselves and lose sight of what it is the Lord has called us to do.
There are times when the Lord calls you to do something that will go against the grain and perhaps offend people who believe you should take a different approach. For a long time, I procrastinated on the ministry that the Lord has called me to do, because every time I thought about doing it, I would get knots in my stomach. Not even thinking if God would be pleased, subconsciously my thought was on whether people would be offended.
I had to do some serious self-examination. The problem was not that people would think badly about me, the issue was that deep down inside of me, I believe them. I believed the voices in my head that I was not worthy of being called by God. As women, especially, many of us can believe we are not fit to carry the promises of God. We can believe wrong things about ourselves based on many factors. It could be bad life experiences like verbal, physical or sexual abuse. It could be loss of a loved one or financial loss that have pushed us to the place where can no longer see or appreciate the gifts and talents that the Lord has placed in us.
The fear of man makes us see ourselves through other people’s eyes, instead of through God’s eyes. We look to people for validation and approval, and if it is not forthcoming, we tend to feel diminished inconsequential.
God had a rich land dripping with milk and honey for the children of Israel. The first time the people were attempting to take the Promised Land, they failed to move forward, complaining to Moses and God that there were giants in the land. They came into agreement with the spirit of fear, seeing themselves as grasshopper in the sight of the enemy.
“Now they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 Then they told him, and said: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly [g]flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the South; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.”
When you study the scriptures, you realised that Moses failed in his leadership because of his own fear of man, which eventually infected the people he was leading. He gave them the wrong mission based on that fear, “
“Then Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, “Go up this way into the South, and go up to the mountains, and see what the land is like: whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, few or many; whether the land they dwell in is good or bad; whether the cities they inhabit are like camps or strongholds; whether the land is [d]rich or poor; and whether there are forests there or not. Be of good courage. And bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes,”
In numbers 13, Moses gave the people the wrong mission, marking his failure of leadership. God already told Moses it was a good land. God already told him that he was giving the children of Israel the land. Why did he tell the spies to look if the land was good and if the people were strong or weak? He took the people’s eye off God and put them on their enemies. In so doing, he set them up to fail because they came back saying,
“The land through which we have gone to spy is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people whom we saw are men of great stature. There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
In all fairness to the twelve spies, they answered all the questions that Moses asked them to answer from spying out the land, the only problem was that it was the wrong questions.
Later in Joshua Chapter 1:10, Joshua sent two spies. Before he sent them, he simply told the people, “Prepare provisions for yourself, for within three days, you will cross over the Jordan to go in and possess the land which your Lord God is giving you to possess. Then he simply instructed the two spies to, “Go view the land especially Jericho.” Moses’ fear of man was transferred to the people, and as a result he led them into failure. The people saw themselves as grasshoppers. They had a bad self-perception.
Sometimes our distorted self-perception and lack of self-worth can make us fear people we think are more accomplished or from a better background than us. We fear their criticisms, we fear their pronouncement that we do not belong in their circles that we belong where we came from. This is imposter syndrome.
Saul was the most famous people-pleaser in the Bible. God told him to utterly destroy the Amalekites – the king, the people and the cattle. He kept back a portion of the cattle and spared the King, contrary to God’s instructions. God was not pleased and Saul, wrested the Kingdom from him. When Saul was confronted by the prophet Samuel, he pretty much confessed that the people made him do it. God told him to do one thing, he followed the directives of the people. Maybe you are holding back from the things that the Lord has told you to do, because you see giants in the land. It may not be literal giants, but the people who have gone before you with “giant” reputations or “giant accomplishments and you feel intimidated. Perhaps God has told you to talk or write, but it’s not in keeping with the prevailing view on the matter, so you water it down or remain silent.
Saul had an imposter syndrome; he did not feel worthy. When he was first anointed as king, he went and hid among the equipment. He did not want to be seen and seemed to have been afraid because he perhaps felt that he would be judged. From day one, Saul did not seem comfortable in his own skin.
Fear of man makes you unable to walk in the authority that the Lord had given you. Those giants in the land of Canaan were no match for the God that the Israelites served. The Israelites could have easily taken authority over the giants and defeated them through the power of God, but they “fainted in the day of adversity.” God has given us the authority to trample upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means harm us.”
But when we are gripped by the fear of man, we lose our sense of authority. The Bible said that Jesus did not subject himself to man, because he knew what was in man. As Christians, we should love everyone, but refrain from fearing them to the point of reverence. Through the fear of man, the enemy is always at work to trip us up and divert us from the path that the Lord has set out for us. We overcommit and underdeliver; we overspend on purchases to impress people and at the end of the day, we are the ones left in the lurch.
The fear of man also makes us bury our gifts that God has given us to express His glory and to change the world. Saul hid among the equipment. A master gave gifts His servants before we went on a long trip. He gave one five, one two and one. The talent in this context refers to currency or money back in the day., but it is very appropriate to use the story as a reference to actual gifts and talents within today’s society.
The servant given the one talent buried it. In another article I will discuss why I think he buried it in more detail. But for now, I will focus on the simple fact that he buried it. The master entrusted him with something of value to him (the master). He also gave the servant that gift for his own material benefit, a way of generating wealth and prosperity for he and his family.
The unfaithful servant said the master was a hard taskmaster and he expressed fear for him (not the good kind). He was so paralyzed with fear for the master, a man who was kind enough to give him a gift, that he dug a hole and buried it there. Perhaps, he was also ashamed or unsatisfied with the one gift he had been given. Somehow, he was not impressed and did not see it as enough to garner admiration.
The Bible tells us that we must only fear the one who has the power to kill our bodies and throw our souls into hell. God is the only one who deserves our fear. When we give others our fear, we give them our power and we make idols out of their opinions and perception of us, instead of believing what God says about us. God has gifted you, he has anointed, you go forth and change the world.