Fear of Man

This is another one of those posts that's late in coming. My apologies. Also, no pictures. Sorry. Anyway, we are headed up to MI today, so no blog postings while I'm gone, but look for pictures next week. However, I wanted to share this before we left & it all fell out of my head.

A couple weeks ago, Pastor Hoskinson (Danny was gone, speaking of which, we're going to just miss him preaching at Inter-City. He's preaching tonight & we'll get up there tomorrow morning. Bummer. Oh well.) started off his sermon with a quote, part of which said that this is the last sin a Christian will ever obtain victory of. He went on reading the rest of the quote, and my mind starts going. Is it pride? Anger? Self-centeredness? Lack of contentment? (Can you tell what my issues are?) He finally told us that it was the fear of man. I chuckled to myself. Ha! I conquered that in my freshman speech class, thank you very much. However, I soon realized that "fear of man" covered more than just public speaking. He gave the illustration of this: When he was an intern, and he had his first opportunity to give the morning announcements one Sunday, he had everything all written down on a sheet of paper and memorized. Well, as the choir was coming out, Pastor McCormick walked up to him and told him that a man in our church had died and gave Matt the funeral and visitation info. Matt asked Pastor McCormick if he could write it down for him. Being the kind and generous person that he is, Pastor said no. :) He said that sometimes we don't always have pen/paper and we have to remember things. Besides, he should keep pen and paper with him. Matt & Pastor went back and forth. Pastor Sipe, who's in charge of the interns, said that Matt's problem was the fear of man. Matt argued that no, he just didn't want to mess up the info. As the service continued and Pastor Sipe was preaching, Matt said he finally had a realization. True, he didn't want to botch up the funeral announcement, but why was he so concerned about it? He was concerned because he didn't want to be embarrassed. Thus, the fear of man. He also posed these questions: Why do you wear what you wear? Why do you listen to the music you do? Pretty much, just why do you do what you do? We easily justify fear of man as something more spiritual. For instance, take dress. If you are around conservative people, do you dress conservatively because you want them to think that you're not "crazy liberal" or out of deference to them? There is a really fine line between the two. Often we are afraid of being judged, so we wear what we do, however, we mask it behind deference.

These fears attack in so many ways. Many of our fears are based on pride. Once you start paying attention to why you do what you do and give an honest answer, you'll be amazed. For instance, last night, I had a ladies' meeting. I had to bring Lauren & Ryan. My kids were pretty much the only ones under the age of 28. There was a 3-week old boy, but he was well behaved, since he slept the whole time. Anyway, I was sitting on the edge of my seat for almost 3 hours trying to make my kids behave. By the end of the night, I realized what I was doing. It was the fear of man. I wanted to make sure everyone thought that my kids were well behaved. I didn't want them to think that I didn't know how to control my kids, instead of understanding their ages. That being said, Lauren's my side buddy. When we go to someone's house for Shepherding Group or some sort of Bible study, she'd prefer to sit quietly in my lap and just look at my fingers compared to hers, than go play with toys. Ryan, on the other hand, would prefer to play with the toys, but he doesn't like to play by himself. So, when Lauren wanted to sit with me last night, Ryan really wanted to go upstairs and kept trying to get Lauren to go up with him. Ryan pretty much whispered to Lauren all night, and I kept trying to shush him. He wasn't being bad. He wasn't defiant. He was just 2, and questions EVERYTHING. Still, I was so focused on trying to make sure that everyone can hear (that's how I justified it-however, he really wasn't that loud at all), that I kept squelching his curiosity. "Why is there thunder? Why is going to rain? Why did God say so? Etc..."

Anyway, all that to say, just closely and honestly evaluate why you do what you do.

Well, there are a million things to be done before we leave. I will post pictures when I get back. (Hopefully one week won't last into 2 months.)