Most people reduce the fear of God to something so mild and manageable that it costs nothing at all. A vague awareness that He exists. A respectfulness that evaporates the moment it becomes inconvenient.
Proverbs 1:7 (NKJV)
Imagine you were on the road and, unaware to you, a vehicle was driving toward you with failed brakes. In a moment of bravery, someone stepped in and pushed you out of the way and unfortunately died in the process. This person was a single parent with a young child.
What would you do for that child? Adopt the child, yes?
Now imagine if the person who was saved forgot about that child entirely. Just said “thank you” to the dead person lying there and moved on like it was nothing much. Do you think that is right?
For some believers, this is unfortunately the totality of their Christian experience.
Maybe the only time you feel remorse is when a song that emphasizes the sacrifice/death of Jesus is played. You cry, feel goosebumps all over your body, and then you leave the church premises and go back to living your life exactly the way you like.
The concept of believing in Jesus has been reduced to just something so sweet, loving, and always full of roses. And while that can be true in some circumstances, it is not always so. Like the analogy above, Jesus died a gruesome death for you. And if you truly believe this, there must be evidence of it in your life.
The proof of belief is corresponding action. You cannot believe someone died in your place and then move on without caring about their loved ones or taking some sort of action to show your gratitude. In the same way, if you truly believe Jesus, your life must show for it.
And how is it to show?
It shows in how you live and the fruits you bear. You ought to live your life knowing that God is sovereign and that He is Lord over you. You ought to fear God.
Romans 10:9
New King James Version
9 That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
The Lordship of Jesus is not a theological footnote; it is the very thing you confessed when you believed. And Lordship, by definition, demands a life that responds accordingly. If God is truly Lord over your life, He is to command your affections, decisions and priorities. The fear of the Lord should be represented by your deep reverence for God.
There is a way we ought to fear God. And that way has been greatly misunderstood.
Most people reduce the fear of God to something so mild and manageable that it costs nothing at all. A vague awareness that He exists. A respectfulness that evaporates the moment it becomes inconvenient.
So what is it actually?
Proverbs 1:7
New King James Version
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
The Hebrew word behind “fear” here is “yirah.” And “yirah” does not just mean terror, nor does it mean casual reverence. It carries a range of meaning that includes awe, profound respect, and a weighty, conscious awareness of the nature and authority of the One before whom you are standing.
It is what happens on your inside when you are genuinely confronted with who God is and not a version of Him you have domesticated to make comfortable, but the actual God of Scripture.
Holy. Sovereign. Omniscient. The One who spoke galaxies into existence and calls them each by name. The One who sees every room you enter, hears every word you speak when no one else is listening, and knows every thought before it has fully formed.
That awareness, when it becomes the operating system of your life, changes everything. It changes what you do when no one is watching. It changes the decisions you make when it isn’t convenient and the obedience you keep even when your emotions are contradicting. It changes the reference point from which you live.
When the fear of the Lord is not the foundation, something else becomes the reference point. What people think. What feels good in the moment. What seems to be working for everyone else, and this is where a lot of us believers have gotten it wrong.
They start by blending with the world so much that they begin to take on some of their ideologies and misleading sayings like “do whatever suits you” or “act in whatever way you feel like”, and then they begin to take up the wrong things little by little: lies here and there, sexual immorality, injustice to the poor and weak, bribery, corruption.
You ought to fear God, not as a slave trembles before a cruel master, but as a person who has been confronted with immeasurable love expressed through immeasurable cost of death on the cross, and whose life has been permanently marked by that encounter at salvation.
Prayer
Father, I acknowledge that You are not just Saviour but Lord, and I choose today to live like it. Let the reality of who You are govern every room I enter, every decision I make, every moment in my life. Be the reference point in my life, in Jesus’ name. Amen
