First, my apologies for being so lax about posting! What a season this has been! For months and months, I focused on finishing my book (Seven Days of Fearlessness). Then it was time to jump into grant-writing season (yes, I’m also a grant writer). After 4 1/2 months of that, I’m finally coming up for air.
I plan to spend this next season, i.e. the summer of 2018, catching up on my writing, spending time with the grandkids, and doing short videos on the topic of fearlessness. Today I’m offering this excerpt in regard to the one fear that banishes all others: the fear of God. Enjoy.
Though you don’t hear many sermons about the fear of God—and although the modern American church has lost much if not most of its fear of the Lord—the Bible has plenty to say about it. “Blessed is the one who always trembles before God,” we read in Proverbs (28:14, NIV). To fear God is to recognize His authority, dominion, worth, and supremacy while also acknowledging our insignificance and depravity apart from Him. I realize that many people “tone down” this topic by claiming that the fear of God is simply a “healthy respect” such as we’d offer anything that has the potential to get out of hand, such as a bonfire. But I disagree. God isn’t anything like a bonfire; in fact, He can hold the fire of a trillion burning stars in His hand.
When I think about the fear of God, I’m reminded of the ocean. Almost every summer, Kenny and I spend a week in our favorite place on earth, Tybee Island. We’ve developed a ritual: the evening we arrive, after darkness falls, we walk down to the beach. When we’re 30 feet or so from the water, I hand Kenny my shoes and he waits patiently as I take off, barefooted, into the surf. There’s something about the ocean that completely unravels and overwhelms me, so every single year, the same thing happens: I cry, and then I laugh—and often I do both simultaneously. Sometimes I run up and down the beach a little, sometimes I shout into the wind, but always the feeling is one of terror and worship. Every trouble and sorrow that has hounded me is instantly washed away with the surf. I experience exquisite joy and relief, but also the compulsion to fall on my face and cry, Woe is me!
The first year we vacationed in Tybee was also the first time I ever swam in the ocean. Kenny and I bought boogie boards so we could play in the surf. As we jumped the gentle waves for hours, my emotions seesawed from exhilaration to dread and back again. From time to time, I was overcome with the realization that the body of water I was standing in was 25 thousand feet deep in some places and had swallowed thousands of lives. The potential for destruction was unlike anything I’d ever seen or felt, and yet I never wanted to leave.
I knew that what I could see on that brilliant, clear day was nothing in light of the vastness that was the ocean. I imagined the colossal creatures that swam deep under the surface, where no light penetrated. It made other so-called dangers seem laughable. And yet … something inside me wanted to experience this ocean in all its fury, to drown in it, for lack of a better phrase. Nothing had ever scared me like the sea did, and yet there was no place on earth I would rather have been—and this is still true.
Sometime during that first trip to the island, I realized I’d never encountered anything that embodied my feelings about God as perfectly as the ocean. On one hand, He’s “terrible” and terrifying; on the other, He shatters all my preconceptions, sweeps away all my sorrow and guilt, and makes all my other fears seem silly. He’s endless and infinite and yet I’m curled up in the palm of His hand. He evokes tears, laughter, joy, and terror. I want to drown in Him.
To fear God is to sense His fury: to recognize that He could, with a flick of His finger, annihilate every living thing. But here’s where the fear of God begets fearlessness in all other matters: the fact that He could annihilate us in an instant means He can do the same to our enemies.
And even though He could snuff out a billion times a billion stars with a single breath, He’s chosen to save rather than crush those who call Him Lord. Meanwhile, He’s defeated darkness, sin, and death, and one day His enemies “will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers” (Revelation 17:14, NIV).
“O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God…” (Nehemiah 1:5, KJV).
Photos: fotolia
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