Does Your Desire for Approval Cause You to Fear?

I peered into the empty church sanctuary. I’d been here before – when I stood on the platform as a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding.

But this time, as I walked down the aisle toward the stage, it wasn’t amid cheerful music and faces. It was for a funeral.

Earlier that week, I had been asked to play the piano and lead a couple of congregational hymns for a funeral. So here I was, adjusting the piano bench and checking my mic before all the family and friends arrived.

Since I had come early, I choose a seat to the side and near the front and settled in to watch as people slowly started filling the main floor and then the balcony. When I agreed to play, I had imagined it would be like the last time I played for a funeral–in a small church with less than 50 people. I didn’t realize around 450 people would come to support this family and consequently hear me sing and play.

I’d performed in many recitals and exams during my piano lesson years. And I played and sang at my small church often. But I had never sat in front of this many people before.

And these weren’t just strangers. They were friends, people from my church, peers from high school, acquaintances I hadn’t seen in years.

Playing the piano for a group of strangers you will never see again is nerve-racking enough. I thought of the time at a piano recital when I completely lost my place during my performance and had to get my book and start all over because of the butterflies in my stomach and the shaking of my hands.

But playing for strangers isn’t really that hard. They don’t have any expectations for you. You don’t care about them or what they think. Playing for people you know and care about is a lot harder.

As familiar faces appeared in the crowd, I began to feel my breath sticking in my lungs. This nervousness was different from the typical pre-recital kind of nervousness. It was deep in my heart and was trying to take over.

As I lifted up a prayer, I knew exactly where the fear was coming from.

I felt a deep need to impress.

I felt a need to prove myself to these people who I grew up with.

When We Fear Man

Can you relate? Maybe your fear isn’t triggered by playing the piano in front of your friends, but I’m guessing you’ve felt it.

Maybe fear sneaks into your heart when you go to a party and feel utterly awkward and terrible at socializing.

Or maybe you face fear when you take a test and think about how your parents and teachers will respond if you fail.

Whatever triggers this deep need to prove ourselves, this fear of messing up is rooted in one thing.

Fear of man.

We want people to see us as competent, strong, successful, smart, beautiful or a billion other positive adjectives. We are afraid of people seeing behind our mask and finding out who we really are.

This fear can drive us to work harder, bringing on anxiety and stress, or cause us to stop trying altogether, giving into fear and self-pity.

And guess what? This fear of man robs us of being used by God in ministering to others. It keeps us in bondage.

God doesn’t want us to live with it. And He has actually made a way for us to break free.

The Power Stronger than Fear

As I watched the sanctuary fill up and my anxiety rise with it, I started praying. I knew my fear was rooted in a desire to please man and I knew I had to do something about it before it was time start.  

When I prayed, God faithfully reminded me why I was even there.

God had challenged me to intentionally love people this year. I accepted the request to play the piano at this funeral because I wanted to show this family love as they walked through tragedy.

It was an offering of love done unto God. At that moment, the Lord confirmed that it was an offering acceptable to Him.

I immediately began rejecting the lie that I needed to perform in order to prove myself to those gathered. And as I determined to play as an offering of love rather than as a way to showcase my talent, my nerves slowly subsided.

I can honestly say I was hardly nervous when it came time to climb the few steps and sit down at the keyboard on the stage in front of 450 people.

God used that experience to demonstrate to me a couple of powerful truths about overcoming our fear.

1. Remember why you are doing what you are doing

Are you at a party and feeling overwhelmed by social anxiety? Remember God’s call to love others. You aren’t here to draw the eyes of people to you. You aren’t here to gather a following of friends. You are here to love them and show them the love of Christ Jesus.

The Bible tells us “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)

When we are afraid of others and their opinion about us, it’s because God’s love for them has not been perfected in us.

I’m not a natural people lover. I constantly need to ask the Lord to give me His love for others. But as I allow Him to love others through me, my fear of man has grown weaker and weaker.

2. Remember God’s word and stand on it.

A verse that kept running through my mind while I waited to take a seat at the keyboard that day was, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

The spirit that fears man is not of God, it is of our enemy who wants to rob us of the opportunity to serve others through love.

So reject it.

Ask God to replace your fearful spirit with His spirit of power – the power to do what He has called you to do.

Ask Him to replace your fearful spirit with a spirit of love – love for those you are afraid of.

Ask Him to replace your fearful spirit with a sound mind – a mind at perfect peace in the power and victory of the Lord Jesus.

The Power of Love

The love of God is real and it is powerful. Let’s be girls who pursue the love of God so that we can fearlessly love and serve others.

 

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• In what areas have you been fearing people instead of loving them?