Healthy Fear…

I have mentioned in the past that I have been writing things down for YEARS. In fact I have some thing I wrote in grade school squirreled away in a notebook. For grins I started reading some of the things I wrote back when. Unfortunately I rarely wrote a date on things. However the fact that I have not only a pencil and paper version, but also a dot-matrix printed version of this article, dates it to high school or early college. I will attempt to edit it some, but for the most part this is exactly what I wrote.

Remember how scared you were of your dad when you were little? Let’s face it, he could spank harder than mom and he was BIG!!! The thing was that the fear you had for your father never stopped him from loving you nor you from loving him. He was the guy that showed you how to play basketball or softball, who would read you bedtime stories, and who would give you a hug and a kiss before he tucked you into bed. He often frightened away the monsters in your dreams. He was wonderfully scary. You respected him because you understood that when you did something wrong he would spank you. At the same time you knew he loved you and would never let you down. So why do we often forget that fear is part of the whole father package? Look at how we as Christians treat God. We are often lackadaisical towards sin and how we treat Him. Sometimes we forget that God can spank harder than even our dads and that He is MUCH, MUCH bigger than our dads ever could have been. So why should we are about fearing God? God is the author and pure picture of love. Without God there would be no you or me. Nothingness would reign. We forget that God gives us air to breathe, families, and friends to love and most importantly His son to die for our sins. God not only loves, He also disciplines. God is perfect and holy and He is not beyond disciplining His children. Since God has everything under His control His discipline can hurt much more and cut much deeper than our own earthly father’s spankings. So in fear of God lies complete love and trust. Without the fear of God no one can get to know God. You must come to Him in fear and trembling!! Understanding why you should fear God brings you one step closer to knowing and understanding Him. If we fear our earthly fathers, how much more should we fear God, our Father, the Father of the universe?

Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.”

So I ask you, do you have a healthy fear of God?