I’ve been researching this topic for several months and praying for God to grace me with a deeper understanding of His will for those of us who are saints in our Lord Jesus Christ. My first intentions were to write inspired words about the Fear of The Lord and the beginning of wisdom. God took me on a short journey and baked some things into my soul that as usual I did not expect. My notes and biblical references for this mind expanding exploration have reached a point where they need to be put into action. I used absolutely no AI assistance in this piece. These words are divinely inspired directly from His Word and as an outgrowth of my own longing for eternity.
As I have stated before, I am writing this blog anonymously out of respect for my personal relationship with my Creator, His Son, and His spirit. I am not writing for clicks, views, and follows. Those are pride and vanity sins that have no place here. God must be praised before all else, including my own personal aspirations. Scripturally speaking, I am doing this in hopes I can reach the hearts of those around the world God has destined these messages for since the beginning of time, whether it’s five hungry hearts or five thousand.
I learn more and more every day that God exists in such a way the human mind simply does not have the capability to even slightly understand or comprehend his timeless universal sovereignty. This fills me with an awe and reverence that is not possible to translate into human language. One of my goals for this writing is for every person it reaches to hopefully gain a better understanding of what the fear of The Lord actually means from an eternal perspective.
When we think of the word fear, we think of being scared or terrified. I think of my career days having to do a presentation or give a speech in front of a group of people, or teeing off on the first tee of a highly competitive golf tournament. I think of nerves and anxiety and an overall dreadful fear of completely losing my faculties and possibly going into shock. I think of being stuck inside an MRI machine during a power failure and not being able to get out. I think of people chasing me with guns and knives and shooting or stabbing me to death. I think of being beheaded for my Christian faith or being crucified for several days on a wooden cross stuck in the ground until I die a slow and agonizing tortured death. We all have those things that we are totally mortified by.
During my most recent journey through The Old Testament, I came across this well known verse:
Proverbs 1:7 – “The fear of The Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction”.
Throughout The Psalms and Proverbs alone there are over forty verses about “the fear” of The Lord. I am not going to list all of them here because they’re quite easy to find with modern computer search tools, but obviously this is a theme within scripture that captured my heart and mind in a profound way.
I began to question my own understanding of the concept of Godly fear. My prayer before most of my Bible study is to ask for life changing wisdom from His Word. God most certainly does not disappoint and my gratefulness and thanksgiving have no limits.
My prayer for everyone finding this blog post is for you to feel an inspired curiosity to share it with someone in your life. The goal here is not to debate scripture and give you “my opinion” on what word definitions mean in the context of God’s expectations for those He loves.
In modern society we are surrounded by sin and evil coming at us from every direction. One of the over arcing themes of The Bible is the ever increasing evil in the world as we move toward the end times, and please don’t misunderstand, I am not one of the date setters and trackers. I am commanded not to do it.
We are bombarded on a daily basis with every kind of thing you can possibly imagine that God despises. Things that were considered unacceptable in modern society just ten years ago have now become normalized. The behavior of people online and in public has become nearly intolerable, even among our children. Pornography has found it’s way into the cell phones of small children around the world. Young boys and girls less than ten years old are being treated in therapy for pornography addictions. I could write on for hours about the exponential rise of sin and evil in modern society, and the most horrifying part is it’s becoming acceptable behavior by elected leaders around the globe. Even politics here in the United States has become a daily parade of sin, and the networks proudly report it and discuss it with glee. Internet “influencers” out there who were once decent people have become slaves to clicks and views, and have sacrificed their eternal integrity for a few brief years of popularity in the eye of other flawed human beings. I am seeing it right now with people I used to admire. It’s unfortunate and saddening to watch people being deceived.
Here is what we can do. Develop a deep reverence of awe and gratefulness for the sovereign power of God and ask for a form of enlightenment that becomes a protective shield around you. The fear of The Lord is not what you think. It’s not what I thought. It has taken me several months of prayer, Bible study, conversations with God in the middle of he night, and asking Him to teach me, as I am willing to be a good student. Sometimes these things can take years to percolate supernaturally.
The main thing I had to change in my life to align myself with God to elevate that sense of awe and reverence was learn to develop an absolute hatred and disdain for sin of any kind. This took a fearlessness of being honest with myself about my very own sin problems. Pride, vanity, profanity, idolatry to earthly activities like golf and video games, lies, adulterous thoughts, and on and on. I’m not talking about asking for forgiveness and repenting, that’s a requirement too, I’m talking about hating sin with every fiber of your being, just as God does. This is not something that’s going to happen overnight. This is going to be a process that will take until God takes you home. Our hatred and disdain for sin and evil in this world must increase in proportion to beyond the ever increasing evil. If we are to maintain our awe and reverence of our Creator we cannot sit still in our Faith waiting for Jesus to return. You are all soldiers in God’s army and this is all out spiritual warfare. Please don’t allow yourself to get comfortable in your Faith. I have already made that mistake and God’s discipline for those he loves is right, true, and just. I am grateful for that discipline.
You don’t have to be “afraid” of The Lord. I would be remiss if I did not remind everyone of this verse:
1 John 4:18 – “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love”.
God loves you more than you can ever hope to even begin to comprehend with your human brain. God wants you to align yourself with Him and His Son and His spirit, through love, awe, and reverence. You don’t need to be afraid of anything. The only thing I am afraid of is my own flaws, but God had to make me flawed, otherwise I might actually be like Him.
So what then? Even though we all be believe in one God, one Jesus, and one Holy Spirit, our own individual and personal relationships with Him are all very different and unique. God imparts different kinds of wisdom to different kinds of people that we share with each other. Along with love, this is the basis and foundation of fellowship, and part of the formula of living by and gaining God’s wisdom.
So the fear of the Lord is an awe and reverence for Him obtained through his universal love and aligning ourselves with God’s hatred for sin and evil. It’s pretty simple really. I don’t think God would want living by wisdom to be complicated. I have found the more I immerse myself in God’s word the more generous He is with sharing His wisdom. I used to think I was a reasonably intelligent guy, but lately God is blowing my mind with new insight on old concepts and I give all credit to Him only. I’m only the messenger.
My prayer for all of you is please share these ideas with someone you love. There are a lot of people out there in the world struggling today with the ever increasing evil I mentioned. Have a conversation with someone that could change their life. Have no fear..