Related Articles
Table of Contents
Facing Fear and Finding Freedom
The first step in understanding an out-of-balance need
for approval is to understand fear. The variety of fears
people deal with is endless, but an important one I
discovered in my own life–and one you may be dealing
with yourself–is the fear of not being pleasing to God. If you
have been hurt and wounded by people who were difficult
or even impossible to please, you may think God is the
same way. He isn’t! It is not as difficult to please God as we
may think it is.
Simple, childlike faith pleases Him. He
already knows we will not behave perfectly all the time. That
is why He sent Jesus to pay for our failures and mistakes.
As I said in the Introduction, I struggled and suffered in
frustration many years trying to please God with good, or
even perfect, behavior. At the same time I was always
fearful I was failing. It seemed no matter what I did right, I
always saw something I was doing wrong. I never felt good
enough; no matter what I did, I always felt as if I needed to
do more.
I felt God was displeased with me, and even
though that was not accurate, it was true for me because I
believed it. I was deceived! There is a possibility you, too,
have been deceived. To be deceived means to believe a
lie.
Many people are trapped in bondage that makes them
miserable simply because they have wrong belief systems.
It is very possible you believe some things with all your heart, yet those things are not true at all.
I once believed my
future would always be affected by my past, but then I
learned through God’s Word that what I believed was not
true at all.
We can let go of what lies behind, be totally forgiven for
all our wrongdoing, and enjoy the awesome future God had
planned for us since before the beginning of time.
