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fear of the Lord


I started received a new devotion from the Navigators, and it is good.  That is why I am sharing with you Day 1 of 31 Days of Soul Care for Hard Times – navigators.org/soulcare.  Read and be blessed.

Fear with the Scary Element Deleted
by Eugene Peterson

We’re afraid when we’re suddenly caught off our guard and don’t know what to do. We’re afraid when our presuppositions and assumptions no longer account for what we’re up against, and we don’t know what will happen to us. We’re afraid when reality, without warning, is shown to be either more or other than we thought it was.

. . . In the Hebrew culture and the Hebrew Scriptures . . . the word fear is frequently used in a way that means far more than simply being scared. . . .

Fear-of-the-Lord is the stock biblical term for this either sudden or cultivated awareness that the presence or revelation of God introduces into our lives. We are not the center of our existence. We are not the sum total of what matters. We don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Fear-of-the-Lord keeps us on our toes with our eyes open. Something is going on around here, and we don’t want to miss it. Fear-of-the-Lord prevents us from thinking that we know it all. And it therefore prevents us from closing off our minds or our perceptions from what is new. Fear-of-the-Lord prevents us from acting presumptuously and therefore destroying or violating some aspect of beauty, truth, or goodness that we don’t recognize or don’t understand.

Fear-of-the-Lord is fear with the scary element deleted.

PSALM 46:1-3 NIV
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
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