What if you had a patch of ground and a bunch of plants which, no matter what you did, refused to produce a good crop? How much work would you keep putting into it? At what point would you say, “I’ve done enough, and I need to walk away now?”
Tremble at God’s awesomeness and power, what He is capable of, and what He has done. And you will find that the more you fear God, the less fear you will have left over for people’s thoughts or opinions of you.
In a way that we might not fully understand, all of our choices—even our sinful choices—happen within the sovereign plan of God. While this all might seem like a contradiction to us, apparently it’s not a contradiction to God.