Fearing The Lord

     We serve a God of love and gentleness and mercy, but we also serve a God of might and justice and deliverance. Some people like to pick and choose to look at God on one end of the spectrum without considering the other end and that is where we lose our fear of the Lord. Fearing the Lord is not a part of our faith that we can simply ignore because it is a baseline for how we see God, how we see ourselves, and how we act because of that.
     Fearing God is not being obedient to Him because you are scared He will strike you down where you're standing if you sin against Him. If that were the case, I would have been gone a long time ago. However, fearing God is knowing He has all the power in the world to pour out His wrath on you and looking at the fact that He showed you love and grace to the fullest extent, and respecting Him because of that.

"Praise the LORD! How blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in His commandments." - Psalm 112:1

"Moses said to the people, 'Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin." - Exodus 20:20

"I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence; I possess knowledge and discretion. To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech." - Proverbs 8:12-13

     When we are saved and the Holy Spirit enters our lives, we are then given a new heart with new desires that hates evil and fears the Lord for both His goodness and might. We respect Him in a new way that makes us turn away from sin and turn towards the cross, and we make our decisions in life based on our fear of Him and our respect for Him. Even through all of that though we are still sinners by nature and are still in a very real battle with the desires of our flesh, but when we are actively desiring what God desires and loving what God loves, we are given the strength to stand up to the temptation of sin. In a perfect world, we would always be able to stand up to sin and become perfect like Jesus after He saves us and redeemed us from our sins, but we live in a very un-perfect and broken world where we are not always actively desiring what God desires and loving what God loves and we find ourselves sinning against Him on a daily basis. Instead of getting completely frustrated at ourselves in those moments, we should take a step back with a humble heart that allows us to look at our sin and then look at God realizing even more how perfect He is and how much he deserves to be feared and respected.

     I pray this week that we will be able to approach God with a humble heart that recognizes our own sin and ultimate need for Him, and turn that into a prayer for a heart that hates evil and fears the Lord. I pray that through that, God would change our outlook on ourselves (humbling us from our arrogance or raising us up to see that we are His workmanship) and then see God for who He truly is on both ends of the spectrum: the Lion and the Lamb.

Love in Christ,