In my walk with God recently, I have been exploring the topic of Fear of Man (which I abbreviate as “FOM”). This sin pattern has and does beset my life. So, I’d like to share with you my thoughts as I explore and fight it.
What It Is
Some of you are familiar with the concept of FOM, but it is nonetheless a slippery sin, requiring a good definition. Unfortunately I do not have a perfect definition of it. Until I understand it better, my working definition is “valuing the opinions of others more than the opinion of God.”
Though this is (I think :)) what FOM is, our culture rarely calls FOM for what it is. We use myriad euphemisms to make ourselves feel better about our sin. We use names such as “shyness,” “self-consciousness,” “ego,” and many others. FOM is anything that makes you look to …
If you’ve been reading ArrowUp for a while now, then you’ve most likely seen my posts on how to study the Bible. The first one, titled “How to Study the Bible - Part One - Individual Book Study“, gives you simple steps for studing individual books of the Bible. The second, “How to Study the Bible - Part Two - Topical Study“, is a thorough description of how to study the Bible topically.
Apart from the articles I’ve written on the subject, there are many, many other websites and resources that you can read and use to learn how to study the Bible on your own. Below, I’ve put together a list of …
As we grow in our Christian walks and delve deep into God’s Word, we are guaranteed to find problems. God’s Word is a perfectly unified body of Truth, but it doesn’t always seem like it to our eyes. There are some difficult issues that are not easily resolved.
I have the privilege of taking a course called Omnibus (published by Veritas Press) as part of my homeschooling curriculum. It is a conglomeration of literature, history, and theology. In it I have run into several perplexing issues in the Bible, such as the morality of revenge. It sometimes seems that God contradicts Himself in His Word, but that cannot be the case. So how do we, as finite human beings, understand the difficult issues? I have a list of 5 steps (we seem to like 5-point lists here, don’t we) that will hopefully serve as useful guidelines.
1. …
Your prayer life is one of the most important aspects of your relationship with God. Imagine if you have a friend, and you claim you know him well, but you never talk with him! The same goes with God. If you think you know God, but you never talk with Him, then you are only fooling yourself.
When you pray, you get to know the Creator of the universe, a thought that staggers the imagination. Unfortunately, most people don’t seem to understand this, and never take time to draw closer to Him. In my article titled “1000 Miles”, I wrote about how we should strive to draw closer to God in this life. One of the best ways to do this is with your prayer life.
Maybe your prayer life isn’t as good as you’d like, or you just can’t seem to make a habit out of …
Yesterday, I had the opportunity of kayaking on a local lake with my family. As we paddled, I looked around and saw the stunning beauty of the world in which God has placed us. It is incredibly complex in even its most basic parts (i.e. sub-atomic particles), yet we often take it for granted, not giving it a second thought. That needs to change.
Glorifying God through Creation
God created the human race to glorify Him in all it does. However, lest we puff ourselves up, we must remember that we are not the only thing that God created for the increase of His glory. He created the entire universe around us for the sole purpose of bringing him pleasure and glory! Creation reveals God’s personality to us. Romans 1:20 says “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have …