Fear the Lord

Ex. 20:20  “Don’t be afraid,” Moses said, “for God has come in this way to show you his awesome power.  From now on, let your fear of him keep you from sinning!”

Do you fear God? A proper fear of God helps to keep us from sinning. Most of us don’t fear God as we should. To fear God means we respect Him, revere Him, and respond accordingly. By the way most professing Christians live, I don’t believe there is much respect for God. We have brought God down to our level. He has become not much more than a superman to us. Because God took on flesh and blood, we have humanized Him. We befriend Him to the point where we no longer understand the majesty and mystery of God. God has revealed Himself to us in the personhood of Jesus, but God is far more than what we know about Him. There is a mysterious aura about God that is impossible to grasp this side of heaven. He is greater than creation in His power, and glory. He is the one who designed creation and made it happen by the mere utterance of His word. He is the one who has given mankind the ability to reason and think. He is the one who knows what He has created, why He has created it, and what He is going to do with what He has created. God knows the mind and heart of man and holds us up to His holy standard. He will hold us accountable for what we do with what we know about Him.  He is the one before whom we will stand to give an account for what we have done with Jesus. We must learn to appreciate just who God is and how to respect Him.

We also must revere Him. We must not go through the motions of worship, but truly worship Him. We must strive to focus on Him. We must look to him as our God. We must seek Him with hearts intent on connecting to Him. We must not let others distract us from being still before God and reveling in His presence. We have confused worship with entertainment. We pep up our services and messages thinking that they are worship. While it is good to be excited about our God, excitement cannot replace reverence. In the stillness of the soul we connect with God. We need to rediscover the value of waiting on the Lord. We need to learn how to be quiet and listen for God to speak.

When was the last time you were still enough to hear God in worship or even in your private devotions?  Is all the chatter and busyness before our worship services conducive to reverence before God?  Do we even think about God before we begin to worship Him?

It is only when we learn to fear God that we will know His power and gain victory over sin.