"The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else." Oswald Chambers
I came across this quote just a few days ago and have been pondering its validity - you know, not everything that sounds good is. For a whole ton of people, the idea of "fearing God" has fallen out of fashion in their personal theologies, being outvoted by perspectives of God that keep Him a lot more on the gracious, forgiving, compassionate side. Nonetheless, I agree with Mr. Chambers, and increasingly realize that if I don't have a healthy fear of God, I am destined to fear everything else.
I've been dealing with some fear recently (you might have picked up on it in my recent posts). And let me tell you, fear can be absolutely paralyzing. It can make you freeze when you need to move, hesitate when you need to decide, cower when you need to stand and run when you need to advance. Fear has caused inumerable panics, illnesses and broken relationships and keeps the vast majority of people from ever discovering what they truly could do if they tried.
But since God is a master of redeeming things, He has given us the opportunity to not be controlled by our fears, but to be in control of our fears, utilizing them to bring out the best in us. It is fear that causes a parent to run into a burning building to rescue a child. It is fear that causes a spouse to reach out for help when the marriage is getting rough. It is fear that compels the wise steward to keep some funds in reserve. It is fear that causes us to intervene in the life of a troubled person whom we love. And it is fear that motivates us to seek out & expand our wisdom with God's wisdom before we begin any new venture.
You see, fear is primarily caused by the things we don't know. Markets, weather, terrorists, bosses - they all can bring a measure of fear into our lives because they are unpredictable...we just don't know what they're going to be like in any given moment. Apart from God, those terribly unpredictable things are what we are left to base our decisions & choices on, rolling the dice with such frequency that uncertainty becomes the hallmark of our lives.
And that's why I choose to fear God instead. Not the kind of fear that thinks He's ready at any moment to strike me right between the eyes with a bolt of lightning and turn me into a grease spot on the floor with my eyes bugging out, but the the kind of fear that recognizes my violations of His guidelines & principles always bears a high cost...for me and others.
Contrary to much thought, there is no unpredictability with God. That's right, I don't worry about how He's going to respond or act. As I alluded to in an earlier blog, I may not know how He's going to act, but why He acts is absolutely consistent, rock-solid & unshakeable. He acts because He loves me. And love, pure love (beyond what we can know in any earthly relationship) will never act out of spite, jealousy, revenge or anger; it will always act for my ultimate good, because that's what love, by definition, does (see 1 Corinthians 13 for more on this).
Tomorrow continues to carry a mark of uncertainty, but only an uncertainty of what it will look like. And I am reminded every day that in choosing to fear God, I need not fear why it will occur...I need only be diligent in making sure that I don't approach those days apart from Him. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 1:7).
