We need to have a healthy fear of God!
Psalm 2:11
*Serve the Lord with reverent fear , and rejoice with trembling.*
There is more than one meaning of the word fear. Fear is commonly defines as terror, anxiety, panic, etc. but, there is also the definition of a reverential awes of someone or something.
Some people think that God is standing over us with a big mallet ready to squash us like bugs if we mess up at all but, that's not the healthy fear that God wants us to have for Him. He wants us to reverence Him and be awed by His Holiness.
The fear of God leads to obedience not because we have to but, because we want to. God wants us to come to Him with the right motive in our hearts. And that would be because we love Him so much that we desire never to be away from Him, especially due to sin in our lives.
God is after our hearts, He wants our hearts to have the deep respect and knowledge of who He is. Proverbs 1:7 says * The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge*. Proverbs 9:10 says * The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.* Wisdom is the ability to use the knowledge that we have in the right way. All the knowledge in the world is of no use to us if we don't know how to use it properly. Proverbs 14:26 says that in the fear of the Lord we have protection. So we can see that through the fear of the Lord we gain the knowledge and the wisdom to receive the protection of the Lord.
The Lord promises us so much through out the entire bible if we have a healthy fear ( or if we have a healthy reverence ) of Him.
In Psalm 25:14 it tells us that if we have a healthy fear of the Lord that He will reveal the secrets of His heart to us. Oh how I want to know the heart of God. To have my heart connected with the heart of God is such an awesome thing. Well how do we receive the fear of God? The most understandable way I have read it so far is written by Mac Owen author of the book: Reaching the heart of God. He says in it> No one can pray and lay hands on you to receive the fear of the Lord. It is something that we have to choose for ourselves.You have to come before Him and make a commitment to fear Him. God made man with a free will and He wants for us to choose to fear Him.
God only wants our best , our purest, not our leftovers. And He wants all of us He doesn't want to share that reverence from us with anyone or anything else. 2 Corinthians 7:1 says *dear friends , let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit. And let us work toward complete holiness because we fear God.*
So in my conclusion of this subject we see that : God is not a slave master standing over us ready to squash us if we mess up, and He is not some terrifying creature who will devour us for making a mistake. But, He wants us to have a healthy fear of Him. One of awe and reverence. One that is our best and purest to give.
He has so many promises and blessings that He wants to give us, All is asks of us is a healthy fear of Him.
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