Disowned Series

Jesus knows the religious leaders are plotting to kill Him. That doesn’t really scare Jesus. The only reason they are able to is because Jesus lets them. They can kill Jesus but they cant much more than that. Their power is overrated. Jesus isn’t scared of what people will do to Him for following God. He just follows God.

We are not supposed to live in fear. How many times do we fail to do what is right because we are afraid of what might happen? Whether we call it peer pressure, people pleasing, or codependency the problem comes from replacing a Biblical fear of God with a fear of others. This causes us to do things we don’t want to do or we know are wrong because we are afraid. Doing what is right is not always easy. Some people will go out of their way to try and stop you. They will threaten you with bad things. Threaten to withhold good things, they will try to intimidate you or pressure you. People will yell and scream and manipulate all to stop you from doing what is right. So people will use fear to try and force you to do what they want. That is wrong.

People shouldn’t scare us. What should scare us is when we start choosing people over God. When we let fear of others dictate how we lives our lives we are ignoring or rejecting God as our ruler. That should scare us. We should be afraid that when we disobey the commands of God out of fear of others that He might respond. Scriptures commands us to fear two things: God and nothing. You decide who has authority in your life: God or others. People may hurt you, they may even kill you but they cant touch your soul. Don’t fear men who hate you, fear the God who loves you.

Religion likes to do this with faith: come to church or you will be punished, read your Bible, pray everyday, don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t step foot in a bar, don’t express yourself or else God will destroy you and you will burn in hell. Give us your money or God will punish you. Do what we say or bad things will happen to you. They use a fear of God to get people to do what they want. As a result some people view God as this great big mean man in the sky like Zeus holding a thunderbolt just waiting for an excuse to strike you down. The point of this is not to make us terrified of an angry God but to show us that we have to pick sides. Either we are for God’s or against Him.

Life is a choice. You have to decided who determines how you live. When we focus on what other people think of us, when determine our value based on how others see us, or when we live with low self-esteem then we probably have some fear of man issues. For some it is the inability to say no. If you are one of those people who commits themselves to everything because you don’t know how to tell someone no then you probably have some fear of man issues you need to work out. The point is who do you need approval from? Does everyone in your life have to love you? Does it have to be a certain person? Who do you have to get praise from?