What is the fear of the Lord?

On June 28th, a couple months after my 8th birthday, my parents gave me my first Bible. Inscribed on the flyleaf was the reference "Proverbs 1:7." In my youthful enthusiasm, I immediately went to the verse:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Reading this, stopped me in my tracks. I'd been taught about the love of God. Why would I fear Him? I asked my Dad "what does it mean to fear God?" (Or something reasonably close to that.) I remember his reply was that "fear" in this case didn't mean "terror" but more like "respect." I remember that the explanation didn't quite click. I understood it and filed it away, but it didn't really fit.

Over the decades since, as I've thought about, studied and prayed over this verse and others like it, I've come to a different conclusion: the "fear of the Lord" does not mean "respect God." It means to be terrified of Him.

The first definition for fear means "knowledge of imminent danger." I think this is the appropriate meaning.

God is holy and righteous. We are sinful. He is light. We are darkness. When light and dark meet, there is no fight. Dark simply vanishes. This should strike terror into our hearts.

Daniel was a prophet of God. He was part of Israel's royal house. He was captured by the Babylonians and made a servant in the foreign king's court for the rest of his life. Daniel grew up and served in an environment where those in authority had the power of life and death over him and those around him. He lived a long life, at least into his 80s, possibly longer. He had extensive first hand knowledge of the authority of the king. He also had a lifetime of serving God. He prayed daily. He interpreted dreams. He was given multiple visions. He saw angels. He had first hand experience of the miraculous. Towards the end of his life, he had a vision of the pre-incarnate Jesus. Even with this lifetime of experience, both in the natural and spiritual, when God shows up he faints in fear.

John was the beloved disciple. He leaned on Jesus at the last supper. He was one of the three closest to Jesus when He was on earth. He was one of the first leaders in the church. He wrote five books of the New Testament. He stood trial before political leaders who tried to kill him. He also lived into his 80s. Towards the end of his life he too had a vision of the resurrected Jesus in all His power. In spite of this lifetime of experience, both in the natural and spiritual, he too faints in fear when Jesus is fully revealed.

I mention these by way of example. I don't think these mighty men of God, who stood boldly before men who held their lives in their hands, fainted out of respect when God showed up.

No. They were shaken to their core. They trembled. They were terrified. If this was their response, how much more so would (or should) we do the same?

God is holy. God is righteous. We should tremble. This is where we need to start. But it's only the beginning.

God is also love. In love He has provided a way for us to be able to stand in His presence and not vanish like shadows when the light is turned on. He touched Daniel and John to give them strength to stand in His presence and receive revelation of what was on His heart. For us He has provided Jesus blood as the way for us to be cleansed of our sins. As a result, we are able to stand in His presence and receive the Holy Spirit to know what is on His heart.

A pastor named Steve Brown frequently says:

If you've stood before God and not been afraid, you've not stood before God. If you've stood before God and only been afraid, you've not stood before God.

And C. S. Lewis puts it succinctly:

He's not a tame lion.

To tremble in fear before God is a good thing. It comes from the knowledge that He is holy and we are common. He is mighty and we are weak. He is just and we are unjust. And it leads us to the understanding that we need salvation and the good news of the cross. Without the fear we cannot know the salvation.

Fear is where we begin.

What is the gospel?

What is the gospel?

Let me start with what it's not.

The gospel is not "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."

This statement focuses on the wrong person. It has "you" as the center. "You" is the object in both parts of the phase. The phrase "wonderful plan" also implicitly sets an expectation that, after becoming a Christian, your life will be blessed and without problems.

But the gospel is not about you.

And God's wonderful plan is not to make your life trouble free.

When Jesus uses the word "gospel" it is frequently followed by "of the kingdom." When other New Testament writers use the term, it is followed by "of God" or "of Jesus." The focus is not on personal salvation and eternal life, although these are certainly by-products of it.

The gospel is closer to the line of thought that: This world is badly broken by the effects of sin. God is going to invade it to remove the effects of sin and make things right. If you are living in sin (and everyone is), this means you're part of the problem and are going to be removed too. But God loves you enough to pay for your sins Himself and offers salvation from the removal process as a gift. Once you accept His gift, He also loves you enough not to leave you wallowing in your mess. He will work in your life to remove the things that keep you from wholeheartedly loving Him and being a fit citizen of His kingdom.

The focus is on God and what He has done and will do. It's on His kingdom and Him preparing us to live in it. Because of the effects of being born into a sin filled world, He has a lot of work to do in us to make us ready for His kingdom. This work is frequently associated with pain and hardship. Sanding off our rough edges skins our egos. Cutting out the cancerous sin from our souls leaves scars. The end result is wonderful, but we may not appreciate the result in our mortal life.

Yes, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" is part of the gospel. But it's a whole lot bigger than just you and the time-line is from the standpoint of eternity, not today, tomorrow or even your lifetime.

Praying for our enemies

Listen to my words, Lord,
    consider my lament.
Hear my cry for help,
    my King and my God,
    for to you I pray.
        -- David (Psalm 5:1,2)

Psalm 5 talks about our enemies. For David, his enemies were obvious. For us, probably not so much. Even those who we may not get along with, they're still not enemies in the same way as Saul was to David. Really. I mean, when was the last time someone tried to pin you to the wall with a spear?

I last read this Psalm during a time when I was also spending time in both Ephesians and The Sermon on the Mount. As I read David's words, I was reminded that, the guy at work who's manipulative and duplicitous isn't my enemy, even though it may seem like it.

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
-- Jesus (Matthew 5:43-45)

Jesus actually calls me to love him.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ... And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
-- Paul (Ephesians 6:12,18)

However, the demons jabbing him are my enemy. I don't wrestle with men, my fight is with the spirits manipulating them. My weapons are not physical or even political or intellectual. My weapons are spiritual because that is the realm of the battle. Paul exhorts us to give ourselves wholly to prayer so we may stand when things are at their worst. From a cave in hiding, David gives us an example of what this looks like.

Philosophy of Communication

I touched on this topic briefly in an earlier post talking about the stories we tell ourselves. This post is a short expansion on some of the principles illustrated in that article.


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Psychology has found people tend to fall into one of three primary ways of processing information: visual, kinesthetic and auditory. Thinking may be in pictures, feeling and physical sensations, or language and sounds. As individuals, we may use more than one of these ways, but typically we each have one that predominates. We perceive reality and conceive thoughts primarily through one of these three modes. It is the means by which we construct in our heads a model of the world. It impacts how we learn, how we create and how we communicate.

Most of what we call Wester Civilization is passed down through just one of these mechanisms: the auditory channel. This is done through oral histories and these abstract symbols called letters and numbers. They are often supplemented by diagrams and drawings, but the primary content is via words. Spoken and written language is the main way information is passed from individual to individual.

Taking these two things together, communication involves converting a rich internal model, in any one of three ways of thinking, into words and transmitting those words to someone else via some mechanism. That mechanism may be voice or hand written or printed or a blog. Then someone has to take those words and convert them to their own internal model, possibly using a different mode of thought than the first person.

In this process, the originator may very well have to take a concept that they feel or visualize and convert it to words. These words have multiple and varied meanings which overlap with different words and their subtle shades of meaning. The speaker (or writer) goes through a process to select what they believe to be the appropriate words to convey their internal model. This is an act of interpretation. The hearer (or reader) then takes those words, with possibly a different set of meanings and tries to construct their own mental model in possibly a different way of thinking. This is also an interpretive act.

There are many things that impact the way individuals may interpret words on both sides of the conversation. A few of the things that may impact it are: different social, economic and cultural backgrounds, different native languages, current emotional state, educational background, political and religious beliefs, time in history and intentional duplicity.

When I think about what goes on in this process, I'm amazed anything resembling communication happens at all.

Our stories

I recently ran across a brief blog post enumerating some hints at effective leadership. The last two items were:

• Entertain more than one interpretation about any situation.
• What story are people telling about me?

In an equally brief blog post, here is a minor expansion of the list.

On a human level, I think there are four important stories to think about:

1. What is the other person's story about me?
2. What is my story about the other?
3. What is my story about myself?
4. What is their story about themselves?

On a spiritual level, I think we also need to think about:

5. What is God's story about me?
6. What is God's story about them?

In our relationships, the more 1 and 3 align with 5 and the more 2 and 4 align with 6, the better off we'll be.

Feel far from God?

I saw a sign outside a church recently: Feel far from God? Guess who moved? There's a popular teaching in Evangelical Christianity that basically says "If you feel far from God, it's you who moved."

This is not only a terrible guilt trip, it's also not always the case. Sometimes, yes, we do walk away from God. Sometimes this is intentional. We get mad at God or the church and decide it's not worth following Him anymore. We willingly, knowingly leave Him. Sometimes through inattention and laziness we simply slowly, quietly drift away from Him.

However, there are other cases.

First, I want to point out that just because we feel far from God, doesn't necessarily mean we are. Feelings are fickle and unreliable. When we feel far from God, we need to look to see if it's just a feeling or if it reflects reality. I'm reminded of the well known poem Footprints. The writer felt far from Jesus, but in fact He was carrying him in those very times he didn't feel His presence.

Next, When we continually, willfully sin He will draw away. This is to protect us. Just as light destroys dark, so will His holiness destroy us if we are dark with sin. In these cases, He will pull back so His glory does not undo our weak frames. He remembers we are dust and takes that into consideration in His dealings with us. There are some schools of thought that believe this is the true manifestation of Hell. The complete and utter lack of God's presence because He has completely withdrawn from a soul due to its repeated and continuous rejection of Him.

Finally, there are times where God pulls away, not due to our sin, but to increase our desire for His presence. This is typified in Song of Solomon 5:2-16 where the Bridegroom knocks on the door but leaves before the Bride has a chance to open the door. She immediately gets up to open the door. She wants and desires His presence with her, but He departs prior to her opening the door; just His scent is left behind on the latch. The purpose of this withdrawal is to increase her desire for Him and cause her to come follow Him. And it works. She leaves the comfort of her chamber and goes out searching for Him. Her search, driven by a deeper desire for Him, takes her to the very places that she refused to go earlier when He simply asked her to come with Him.

Zombies

Zombies. They are gaining attention in the popular culture. There are zombie walks. There are movies about zombies. They are characters in video games. There are talks given about how to survive a zombie apocalypse. There are web sites with zombies as their sole topic. They are all around in our entertainment and thought of as mythical. No one takes them seriously. But I'm here to say they are real and they are all around us. You see them every day. You may in fact be one.

To begin, let's start with a definition. There are many around the web but the one I like best is found at The Zombie Nation:

A living being stripped of it’s will, humanity, and normal behavior by outside forces either supernatural and mundane.

This definition has three elements to it:

1. dead people,
2. these people walk around doing things and
3. they are controlled by an external supernatural force.

Next, let's look at a section of scripture that Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.--Ephesians 2:1-3

This passage also includes the same three elements as the definition above.

1. Anyone living in their sins, anyone not following Jesus, anyone disobedient to God, is dead.
2. They are walking around following their lusts.
3. They are controlled by a spiritual force in rebellion to God.

Therefore, they fit perfectly the definition first given. That person is a zombie.

In Adam, everyone inherits a sin nature. From the moment of conception, even though we are alive physically, we are dead spiritually. God knows us, but we don't know Him. We are separated from Him. Cut off. We live according to our lusts, slaves to sin. By ourselves, we have no hope of life. We don't have a chance of lifting ourselves out of the hole we're born in to. It would be like a single individual trying to pay off the debt of the United States. It is impossible.

If this were the end of the story, we'd be in very sad shape. However, it is not. There is some great news.

In Christ, we can be made alive. Jesus revealed God to us. He was a sinless man doing only what the Father told Him. He was the only human who didn't inherit Adam's sinful nature. Although He was all this, He was so much more. Jesus showed us God's heart and character because He was in His very nature God. And because of all this, by His death He paid that debt that was impossible for us to pay. When we accept this gift and put all our trust in becoming alive only in what He's done for us, we are united with Him and receive life from the very author of life. We no longer are slaves to sin but become alive to righteousness.

Everyone was born a zombie.

We don't have to stay that way.

But many still are.

Are you?

Further reading

Romans 5
1st Corinthians 15
Ephesians 2

What does it mean to be alive?

A song has recently run around and around through my head with a line that, speaking of Jesus, says, There's never been a man more alive. The more this line lapped around my scull, the more interesting it has become. Questions arise: What does it mean to be dead? Are there degrees of deadness? Conversely, are there degrees of aliveness?

Perhaps it is due to my experiences and training, but I typically think of "aliveness" as being a binary state; you are or you are not. However, this song suggests it is a continuum; there are degrees of aliveness. If I think about it a bit, I easily acknowledge there are obviously states, such as comas, where people are obviously not dead, but at the same time, they are missing out on being alive. Can this extend from a few discrete points to a continuous scale?

In Genesis, an un-fallen Adam in an unblemished world enjoyed perfect fellowship with God. They walked together. They talked together. Adam was fully alive. In this condition, God told Adam that on the day he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would die.^[1]

Adam ate. Did he die? Some say, "No, he didn't so God didn't keep His word." Others, I among them, posit that Adam did die spiritually as evidenced by his newfound need to hide from God. Relationship was broken. The only reason he did not immediately die physically was due to God's intervention in sacrificing animals to cover both him and Eve.^[2] Undoubtedly, they did start down the road to physical death that day. We can see from this there is physical death where biological processes stop and there is spiritual death where relationship with God stops.

If death is separation, conversely, we can define life as closeness to God. This is easier for me to understand as a continuum.

Jesus said he came to give life in abundance or to the fullness, until if overflows.^[3] His use of the superlatives in this statement also supports the conjecture that there are degrees of life.

So, taking this concept as a given, that there are degrees of aliveness, and given we probably want to maximize our capacity for being alive, the question arises, how do we become more alive?

I suggest this relates directly to the process of sanctification.^[4] When we first come to God, we are spiritual infants needing milk, the basic elements of the gospel. As we grow and mature, we can eat solid food.^[5] We accomplish this by first deepening our relationship with God through prayer, bible study and fellowship with other believers. Secondly, through application of the things we hear, we become doers of the word. In the doing, we exercise our spiritual muscles and grow in maturity. Throughout this cycle of first learning and then applying, we come to be more like Jesus until, in the end we will be like him because we see Him fully, just as He is.^[6]

In closing, I think William Romaine said it well:

For as the sinful nature is deadened, the new man is renewed, day-by-day. The one grows more alive by the mortification of the other. The subduing of unbelief, pride, and self-seeking, is the strengthening of faith, humility, and glorifying God. This command, therefore, is frequently given to believers–Put off the old man–put on the new–mortify your members which are upon the earth–crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts.^[7]

---

1. Genesis 2:16-17

2. Genesis 3:21

3. John 10:10

4. Sanctification is simply the process of becoming more set apart for God to use us. To increase our freedom from sin. To be productive in holiness.

5. Ephesians 4:11-15, Hebrews 5:11-14, 1 Corinthians 3:1-3

6. 1 John 3:2, Romans 8:29, 2 Peter 1:4, 2 Corinthians 3:18

7. From chapter nine of The Walk of Faith. He follows this statement with references to Romans 6:11-13, Ephesians 4:22-25 and Colossians 3:1-5.

Is death natural?

Twice today, in completely different contexts, people said death is a natural part of life. One person went so far as to consider it ultimate healing. I believe both these people spoke from a Christian perspective and tried to encourage people with the aging and dying process. They took the long view, saw past the immediate emotional turmoil of death and looked to the promise of heaven and eternal life. Based on this view, they see death as a natural blip that everyone must go through.

In spite of their good intentions and soothing words, I must respectfully disagree. Death is certainly normal. With a couple exceptions, birth and death come in a 1 to 1 ratio. Normality notwithstanding, it is the most unnatural event we experience. Originally, death did not exist. God made a good world; it did not include death. When God created us, he created us everlasting beings. Once conceived, we exist forever; spirit, soul and body moving forward united without end. This is still the ideal. This is still what our innermost being expects. This is what is natural for us.

Something happened though: we introduced rebellion to this perfect world. On that day, we died to God. Our spirit separated from His. Apart from His life, we decay. Our spirits wither. Our souls corrupt. Our bodies no longer function properly. We die. This is our typical experience. It is also unnatural.

We should not gloss over the pain of death. Fear and pain exist around the death experience precisely because it is unnatural. Something is happening that should not. They remind us of the very real consequences of our rebellion. When we normalize it by calling it natural, or even worse, a form of healing,^[1] we minimize the impact of our sin. By reducing the effects of sin, we correspondingly take away the power of what happened on the cross. Jesus died so we do not have to remain dead, souls and bodies removed from one another. He rose again as an example of what will happen to us. At some point in the future, God will reunite our souls with our bodies as originally intended. He will restore us to our natural state.

Paul does not tell us to encourage one another with “death is a natural event.” Rather, he tells us to encourage one another with the promise of resurrection.

For further reading

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Romans 6
1 Corinthians 15

1. If death is the ultimate healing, then Jesus “unhealed” Lazarus,^{[John 11:1-46]} Jairus daughter^{[Mark 5:21-43]} and the widow’s son^{[Luke 7:11-16]} when He raised them from the dead. The idea of “unhealing” does not fit into the pattern we see in the rest of Jesus’ ministry while here on earth.