A Convo With God: Fear the Lord

“Listen to this, you descendants of Jacob,
   you who are called by the name of Israel
   and come from the line of Judah,
you who take oaths in the name of the LORD
   and invoke the God of Israel—
   but not in truth or righteousness—
you who call yourselves citizens of the holy city
   and claim to rely on the God of Israel—
   the LORD Almighty is his name:
I foretold the former things long ago,
   my mouth announced them and I made them known;
   then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.
For I knew how stubborn you were;
   your neck muscles were iron,
   your forehead was bronze.
Therefore I told you these things long ago;
   before they happened I announced them to you
so that you could not say,
   ‘My images brought them about;
   my wooden image and metal god ordained them.’
You have heard these things; look at them all.
   Will you not admit them? - Isaiah 48: 1-6

Today’s Reading: Isaiah 47-49; 1 Thessalonians 4

Oh my… this is troubling.

So God will let you go through suffering so that you will recognize who is who and what is what?

Today's Reading: Job 28-29; Acts 13: 1-25

Ok peep these verses from Job 28:

12 "But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell?

13 Man does not comprehend its worth;
it cannot be found in the land of the living.

Yeah I feel you Job… where is this wisdom at? Where can it be found… But then later on he says the following:

23 God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,

28 And he said to man,
'The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.' "

What is this “fear of the Lord” stuff? What the heck does that mean?

That is something that bothered me my entire life. It didn’t seem to make sense. I thought I was supposed to love God and that God had my back and such things. Why am I supposed to fear Him?

This comes up a lot in the Bible, especially in proverbs. I won’t claim to have complete understanding of this topic… but here is where I’m at with it now.

When I was about five years old I learned how to ride my bike.

That’s right… without training wheels baby! Don’t hate….

My dad and my stepmom used to take me and my sister out riding after school. It was a family thing we did together. We used to ride to the park and all kinds of far distances for my little five year old world.

But when he wasn’t riding with us he told me that I couldn’t ride in the street.

Say what!? Didn’t he know that I’m a bike riding professional? Lance Armstrong didn’t have nothin’ on me! Why couldn’t I ride in the street?

Now when I was three my older sister got hit by a car when riding her bike and broke her leg. So of course besides the common sense rule of not letting a five year old ride in the street there was also that fact to contend with.

But in my mind… shooooot, that wasn’t gonna happen to me! I was indestructible anyway. It’s all good.

So I decided to test him… I rode down the sidewalk between two houses and when I got to the driveway of the bottom house I circled back up to the next drive way in the street. Hey I wasn’t in the street long. It’s all good right?

Wrong.

Yep I got punished for that one.

But the key point was that I didn’t have sense enough on my own to know what was and was not dangerous for me. So Pops had to lay down rules for me to follow. Until I was about eight the main thing that kept me in line was the respect I had for my dad and knowing that he played no games when I crossed the line.

It was not my own understanding.

I never feared my Dad at all. Quite the contrary… I just knew that there were certain rules that he had and that I had to follow them.

I wonder if that’s where the “fear of God” comes in. Maybe a lot of these rules and guidelines that we don’t agree with or don’t understand are really in our best interest. Maybe they will protect us from things that we cannot see and cannot possibly understand.

Who knows? That’s all I’ve got for now.

What do you think it means to “fear the Lord”? Do you agree or disagree with your understanding of it?

Let’s discuss.