The Fear of God

Do you fear God? When Pastor Tim (Pastor of Hill Country Bible Church here in Austin) asked this on Sunday morning my heart started pounding.

Do I fear God? YES! So much so that it makes trusting Him difficult. How can you not fear someone with the power to shake the earth?

The Bible says; God is love. God cares about us. God listens to us. God forgives us. God is watching over us. God knows the numbers of hairs on our heads. God knit us together in our mother’s wombs. God is like a big fluffy bear all sugar and spice and everything nice, right?? Read again, the Bible talks about the fear of God over and over and over and OVER AND OVER. (I’ve been noticing this a lot lately since I have this whole new awareness of what it means to fear the Lord.)

My new found fear of God has been really bothering me, I kept thinking it was a horrible thing to be afraid of God. I’m supposed to love God not be afraid of Him, right!?!?! RIGHT?!?!?!

Pastor Tim’s sermon on Sunday really opened my eyes, and has helped me so much. The fear of God I’ve been feeling, and the guilt I’ve been feeling as a result of this fear has been quite heavy on my mind. When Pastor Tim said, "It's a good thing to fear God", it definitely caught my attention.

I wrote this on the top of my bulletin: “It’s ok to fear God, it’s actually good to fear Him, because fearing Him is the beginning of Wisdom.”

It’s so easy to put God in this little box, to try to make God into whatever it is WE want Him to be. Well, that doesn’t always work. God is God, and God, God. He is not going to conform into what I WANT Him to be, instead He is going to continue revealing Himself, His true self, to me little by little.

God created the heavens and the earth. Every single thing comes from him. Does that sound like a God capable of fitting in a little box??

The earthquake scared the living daylights out of me, and millions of other people. I don’t know why it happened and don’t dare even attempt to understand it (my brain is just too small to conceive the bigger picture.) However, I have a new understanding of the GREATNESS and the POWER of God. The God I used to “know”, the God I squeezed into the box of what I understood Him to be has torn the box apart and given me a whole new understanding of His awesome power. My God can do ANYTHING!

Apparently the fear of God really can be the beginning of wisdom!

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