Fear the final frontier

This is another follow up post to Christian masculinity, the nice guy and neediness and Christian masculinity and Confidence.

This post was also sped up in release by Donal’s Discerning the Mindkiller.

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Fear is one of the greatest motivators for negative or non-action. It’s the main final frontier for all Christians, especially godly masculine men to master, when interacting with people.

If you had to pin each of these statements down to a particular reason why we don’t do them what would it be?

• Why don’t we share our faith with others?
• Why don’t we freely communicate our sins with one another even though the Bible says to confess our sins to one another?
• Does it cause many men great anxiety to even hold the gaze of men and women?
• Why do men have problems going up and asking a woman out?
• What prohibits you from going out and learning new activities or hobbies?
• Why don’t we have respect for our bodies by going to the gym or eating good food?
• What motivates me away from praying in public when I eat my food?

The simple fact of the matter is that often we as Chrisitans fear men rather than God.

We allow fear to take hold in our lives and motivate us to non-action or inaction when we know we should do the right thing.

This is one of the ultimate problems with Christian nice guys:

• They fear asking a woman out.
• They fear having their own opinion around her which may make her think less of him.
• They fear doing what they like to do because she make think less of him.
• They fear looking her straight in the eye and holding her gaze.
• They fear uncomfortable situations such as “defining the relationship” because they don’t think she will think they same way.
• They fear what happens if she will leave him or if the relationship doesn’t work out.

The Bible is quite clear on fear, with verses such as these:

1 John 4 (NASB)

18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear [e]involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

Let’s go back a second to the article Christian masculinity and confidence. There I listed at the end these traits:

• In our hearts, we have eirene, the peace of God which is a wholeness with Him.
• In our souls, we have peitho/pistis, the faith and assurance of salvation from God.
• In our minds/might, we have parrhesia, the intellectual understanding that leads to an external boldness of which we can freely speak to others because of God.

The primary reason why eirene (peace), peitho/pistis (faith and assurance), and parrhesia (external boldness of actions) are important to the Christian masculine man is that they all opposed fear.

If we have the peace of God in our lives, the wholeness of Him who makes us complete, then what are we going to fear when talking to others about our faith? Indeed, what do we have to fear when we talk to women?

Likewise, if we are assured in our faith then do we need other women to complete us? Do we require human validation to somehow increase our worth in the eyes of God?

Do we need to be afraid of being bold in our actions for God or in interacting with others?

Simply put, fear is the antithesis of what it means to be a Christian masculine man. We often fear that we won’t measure up. We often fear what otheres thing of us. We often fear men rather than God. But that is not what He has called us to in Christ Jesus.

The reason why I pray to God to place me in uncomfortable situations is that I do fear looking foolish in front of others. I do fear what other people think of me. But, I know that this fear is irrational. I know that is not how God expects us to act.

So, even though I may fail at times. Even though I may look foolish at times. Even though it’s difficult for me to see the work that God is doing in me. I know that God’s peace within me, my faith in him, and the boldness in how I should act will carry over into a Godly confidence. A confidence in God that is worth more than anything I could hope for and which will allow me to develop into a godly masculine man that is able to walk into the things that God has willed for me in the future.

That alone should be reason enough to start to want to conquer your fears. But if you need extra motivation, a lack of fear has the nice side of effect of being attractive to women. Women can smell fear, like neediness, from a mile away and are repulsed by it.

As you begin to conquer your fear of men rather than God you will find that you will become a godly masculine man that both Christian and non-Christian men and women respect and admire.

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