Exposed – Fear of Man

Yesterday in our Masks mini-series we talked about “Masks” and how we put them on to hide from ourselves, from God, and especially from other people.  I offered you the first step to taking off your mask – today I offer you the second step:

Recognize Fear of Man

We protect ourselves from rejection because we are sure we will be rejected if others really see what’s inside.

So we fake it.

Think about it this way do you have a room that is an absolute mess? If you do, you would not want people to walk into your room unannounced right?

When you hear somebody is coming over unexpectedly, you probably start hiding things – you throw all of your junk into drawers, you hide the dirty socks on the floor, you put all of your junk into a pile in the closet or hide it under the bed. By doing that you make sure that nobody thinks “EWW! This person is an absolute pig.” And you have kept your dignity, but really the mess is still there – its just that nobody can see it.

By keeping up the appearance of being clean – you save yourself from judgment and rejection. By doing this you avoid the fear of being rejected, which make sense – because being rejected sucks.

However I’m talking about an all consuming fear that keeps us from being real. We tend to fake it because we see people as bigger than God and we fear the consequences of people knowing what we are really like. We are afraid that we will be humiliated, laughted at, rejected, ridiculed, or even despised. We are afraid that we will lose those friendships or relationships.

So in that moment when you are about to be real you stop and consider the consequences – and you decide that instead of risking rejection you are going to play it safe and keep it hidden…

We need to realize that the biggest reason we hide is because we fear people more than we fear God….

So if you are going to take off your Mask you need to realize that the reason you even put on a mask in the first place is your fear of man…

Next time we will look at the last and most important thing you need to do before you can take off your mask.