July 12, 2004 - The Fear of the Lord: Realigning My Walk With Him

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The Fear of the Lord: Realigning My Walk With Him
By Shana Blunt
July 12, 2004

(Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 in a series exploring our walk with God. Part One is also available.)

Often discontent stems from feeling as if we don’t fit in, that we aren’t good enough, or that we aren’t needed. There seems to be a wall when we pray, and there are times that we feel nothing. Sometimes we feel like God disapproves of us.

We can get to a place where we only know how to feel Him when we are convicted and remorseful about the things that we haven’t accomplished, the things that made us feel bad. We lack relationship, and more importantly, we lack fear.

The fear of the Lord is a topic that isn’t ignored, but I’m convinced it’s not entirely understood. When I began to understand, doors in the Spirit began to unlock. I was not even sure I had a right to open them; I was sure that those doors were for the “spiritual” people. The enemy tries to trick us into thinking we don’t deserve all that God has for us, or that some people have a greater right to His gifts. Those things are yours, when you have fear.

I started this Bible study armed with a journal and a King James Bible. The journal was important because it helped me remember everything that was said in the lesson, but it also allowed me to write things down that I figured out later. Let me do a bit of shameless advertising and tell you that the Amplified Bible helped these scriptures come alive to me. You can’t learn about God without digging into the Bible, and there is an incredible amount of Scripture involved in this topic.

What is the Fear of the Lord?
In the Amplified Bible, the fear of the Lord is “the reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord.” It is not to be scared of Him, but to have awe, reverence, and appropriate recognition for God’s qualities. We have that fear when we know Him because fear grows out of relationship. You cannot love Him without fearing Him, or fear Him without loving Him. By asking us to fear, He is asking us to recognize who He is. Reverence is simply the desired reaction to the revelation of God.

Like any of the things God asks of His people, fear is a choice. Scripture states, “For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord” (Proverbs 1:29). The book of Proverbs talks a lot about the fear of the Lord, calling it “the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7) and “the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:1). By choosing to let the fear of the Lord be active in you, you are choosing to let Him operate in you in a sovereign manner. You are deciding to let God be what He is on a personal level.

As the New Testament shares, “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Hebrews 12:28).

Having fear is the only way to acceptably serve Him. The following verse tells us why— “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). That fear doesn’t come from being afraid He is waiting for us to fail, but acknowledging that He alone can keep us from falling.

Fear, Fear Everywhere!
Fear is found in hundreds of places in the Word of God. Some of those places will actually say “fear of the Lord.” It is reiterated over and over, interwoven through both testaments because it is so important. Other passages can be associated with the fear without literally stating it because the scripture relays qualities of the fear.

For instance, the Ten Commandments don’t say to “have the fear of the Lord.” By having His fear, however, you will know His character and why those commandments are important to Him. In essence, each one deals with what having His fear will cause you to do in order to please Him. You understand that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” is written because, if you fear Him, you fear nothing else, and priorities in your life all fall below Him. “Thou shalt not steal” is written because, if you fear, you know God to be your satisfaction and you will not want.

Easy Application
Once I started applying His fear to my life, every choice I made was affected. I would constantly be asking myself, “Would this please Him?” It trickled into my conversations, since I didn’t want to say anything that might offend Him or His children. I spent my time and money differently because I wanted to make good use of the things He had given to me. Knowing that my decisions affected Him made me choose more carefully.

By simply realizing who He is, you fear Him; by fearing Him, you are fulfilling part of His purpose. Only God could come up with a perfect design that allows something that could have been made a duty to actually meet our needs.

ninetyandnine.com

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Shana Blunt had to split this article three times because she gets so passionate about the fear of the Lord that she forgets that nobody wants to spend 50 years reading one thing. Consequently, she is now completing the third and fourth articles in this series.