February 7 – The Opinion That Matters

“Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.”(Proverbs 29:25)

IN WORD:
The need to impress. The desire to stay out of trouble. The tendency to compare ourselves to others. The urge to maneuver & manipulate. All of these are products of our natural fear of man. If “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), the fear of man is the end of it. We cannot serve Him well with our eyes on popular opinion.
We do all sorts of strange things because of an inbred dependence on the approval of others. We may not actually be afraid of others, but every person alive tends to be concerned with how others think of us. When we are, our welfare rises & falls with the trends of our culture, the variances of human opinion, and the moods of the people closest to us. We have no firm footing in such an uncertain world. Our human-centered living proves to be a snare. We find ourselves trapped in a sinful society’s norms.
God’s desire is to remove us entirely from this no-win situation. He does not want us in a futile search for popular approval or an obsessive fear of rejection. He never asks us to compare ourselves to others. No, God wants His opinion alone to matter to us.He calls us to place our identity entirely in Him. When we do, our behavior will be godly because we have an audience of One, and we know our audience is forgiving, strengthening, and gentle. We have nothing to lose when we approach Him in humility and honesty.

IN DEED:
God commands us to resist the urge to run with the crowd. It’s an urge based on insecurity, rooted in our former alienation from our Creator. But once we are reconciled to our Creator, we have no need for human approval. There is no crowd to please, no culture to accommodate, no hoops to jump through for the momentary applause of a fickle audience. Best of all, there is no snare to fall into. Living Godward lives, we are kept safe from the false values of this world.

“I’d rather be a fool in the eyes of men than a fool in the eyes of God.” -Anonymous-