Has the Fear of God Seized You?

Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to
your name? For you alone are holy.
All nations will come and worship before you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed."
Revelation 15:4

Last night I was sleeping and woke up with a question that was bothering me. I don't know the details of what my dream was about, but I could not escape the question... Do we not fear God anymore? In the Old Testament, as God was leading Israel into the promise land, the surrounding nations would hear of the great things that the God of Israel had done and it terrified them. Fear kept them paralyzed! When God gave man just a glimpse of His might they responded in fear! Think about the early church. Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit before the whole church and God struck him dead and great fear seized the people. We are told in Philippians 2 to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." Do we fear God anymore? Maybe it's that we have lost perspective about who God really is. Let me try and give some perspective.

Look at Revelation 15:4... There is a rhetorical question being asked about the fear of God. "Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to Your Name?" And then we find the reason... "For You alone are holy." He alone is absolutely pure and set apart in righteousness! HE IS GOD!!! That should mean something! So often we sit in judgment on God and question His righteousness because it doesn't fit our sense of justice, yet He alone has a perfect sense of what is just! HE IS GOD! Not like us... We are mere men who often put ourselves in the place of the Sovereign Lord and live for our own glory! HE IS GOD! Yet we relegate Him to a story figure or fairy tale... or at least live that way many times.

Here are some reasons that we should live in the fear of the Lord...
1. Already said, but He is Holy!
2. He will judge sin because He is Holy!
3. He is passionate about His Glory!
4. He is the creator of Hell as a place of everlasting punishment and separation from God for all the condemned!
5. HE IS GOD... and will pour out His wrath!

So this blog post is a call to the Church! Let the fear of God seize us!

Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
Acts 5:11

Lets place God in His proper place... at the highest place... in the place of Glory... for HE ALONE IS GOD!

Comments

Michael T. said…
Great question Jp... I wonder if many know the differeince between fear in the sense of being afraid of God (as in when there was a time when even mentioning the name of God was taboo thus we still do not know the proper pronucniation of the name Yahweh) and fear in the sense of a reverential awe of God which we see in Elijah, Moses, and even David. Do you think fear is a matter of either/or when it comes to these two definitions or a intertwined mix between the two?
July 19, 2011 at 12:01 PM
Jon Pickens said…
Certainly my heart leans toward the reverential awe of God, yet I believe it's that very reverential awe that causes one to be afraid. That kind of fear is not bad! It can be paralyzing like being on the edge of a 2000 ft. cliff. Maybe spiritualizing this but I think of it this way... If I were on the edge of a 2000 ft cliff and looked down, fear would seize me and I would shut down. However, an expert climber would stand over that same cliff, feel a similar fear, yet would proceed to rappel down the cliff. Fear has seized my heart when I think of the awesomeness of God, but He is also the same God who has made Himself approachable, so I come to Him with boldness. I am rambling!
July 19, 2011 at 10:33 PM
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