As you may have noticed, I have been marking the country for my most recent posts as a country I’m not actually in. That is in the hopes of protecting the ministry we are working with and the people we are ministering to from any harm that they may come to them by being associated with Christian missionaries.
Our official ministry for this month is to go around to different villages and share messages from the LORD with them. We have had about 11 days of ministry so far (with one day off, unintentionally), with four more to go. So far, I’ve taught once and preached once. By teaching, I mean that I have taken intentionally time to find a deeper understanding about a topic from the Bible and examined it. By preaching, I mean that I have taken a topic, an idea that was put on my heart from the LORD with the intention of sharing a word from the LORD and also encouraging those that hear this message to apply it to their lives. My first sermon was on the ideas of “fearing the LORD” and “to not be afraid,” with the intent to picking apart the meanings of the word “fear” and also giving tangible ways to applies these two important teachings from the LORD (which you can read below).
I pray that these words & thoughts are helpful to you in your walk with God.
Angie
Prayer Requests:
- Safety and favour as we head out into different villages to share our testimonies and the word of God,
- Safe travels as we prepare to head to Nepal, and
- Good health (my entire team has been sick for this entire month, off and on).
Praise Reports:
- We made it to “Mauritius” safely and are settling in well,
- We are being shown a lot of love for the family that we are living with, and
- We are all loving India so far.
I have friends and know people who claim to know the LORD. They tell me how afraid they are to do something bad, to sin because they are not sure what the LORD God will do to them after they die. They are too afraid to live their lives because they are anxious about how God might judge them after they die. In the Bible, the word “fear” and “anxious” are used. But, God has not called us to be anxious. Anxiety means to worry about things that have not or will not happen. God has called us to fear the LORD, but He also told us to not be afraid. In these cases, fear does not mean the same thing. When God tells us to “fear the LORD,” He is calling us to stand in awe, in reverence of Him. But when He tells us not to be afraid, He is telling us not to be scared. God wants us to deeply acknowledge and praise His glory, His grace toward us, His love for all, and to fully acknowledge and praise Him. The LORD God has not called us to be afraid of Him, because He gave His one and only Son so that we may be made right before Him while we are still alive on Earth, are sinful, and after we are judged righteous after we die.
In the Old Testament, when the word “fear” is used it was translated from one of two Hebrew words yirah and yare. Yirah acknowledges the good intentions of the LORD God. In (Exodus 20:20), Moses has just finishing telling the people of Israel the 10 Commandments. He wants to let them know that the LORD has set all of these rules before them to test them so that they can choose not to sin, and so that they can live their lives with a deep reverence for the LORD because they love and respect the LORD. Yare means to respect and to revere, which is an action; it’s something that one does. This fear is produced from God’s Word. In (Proverbs 2:1-5), King Solomon is teaching his son that if he truly seeks the commandments of the LORD like a hidden treasure and values it more than silver, he will understand the fear of the LORD. If you spent every spare moment that you have looking for something, would you not value it a lot? If you value something so much that you spent all of your extra time looking for it, would you not have a deeper understanding of it? The Bible also says that the fear of the LORD allows people to be receptive to wisdom and knowledge. In Proverbs, it clearly says that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. The LORD wants all of Creation, every person and everything to be in a constant state of respect, reverence, and wonder to the One Who created us and the only One Who has the power and authority to redeem us, the LORD God. There is an English worship song that says if things on the earth will sing His praises, so will I. Even if you do not want to praise the LORD, if you make yourself, the LORD will change your heart so that you want to because He is worth your praise. We are supposed to be living in a state of yirah, reverence and respect, and we are supposed to yare, acknowledge the good intentions of the LORD God because the LORD God is worth everything. He is worth our time. He is worth our attention. He is worth our sacrifice. He is worth our love and respect. He is worth it.
Fearing the LORD does not stop simply at being in reverence of the LORD at all times and having a deep respect for Him as well. In the Old Testament, God gave His people a set of rules for them to follow. His people were to follow these rules out of yare of the LORD. The LORD told Moses and the other prophets to tell His people to follow the laws He set before them. These laws were for the people of Israel to follow because it was for their own good. These rules were to help them know & love the LORD. These rules taught them how to become clean so that they could experience His holiness. But, the LORD knew that these people were not able to keep each and every one of these rules. The people of Israel fell short and sinned before the LORD countless times, but He still loved them. So, with His Son, Jesus Christ, He gave us an opportunity to have greater reverence of the LORD without having to be afraid of the Him. The LORD has called us to love Him and to love others. In (John 15:9-10), Jesus is teaching His disciples to abide in the Father God as Jesus Christ has because if they do this they will be keeping the Father God’s commands for us and also loving one another as God has called us to love others. Jesus is telling them to love one another truly. Someone taught me this and I want to share it with you: you can respect someone without loving them; you can honour someone without loving them; you can like someone without loving them; you can do very nice things for people without loving them. But, to truly love someone you have offer up something, you have to sacrifice something for them without expecting something in return. To love the LORD God, it calls for more than mere respect and honour, but it calls for sacrifice. He calls us to sacrifice our wants and desires, to pursue His. He calls us to hold Him higher than any other person or thing in our lives, higher than our loved ones, higher than money, higher than food, higher than anything that has been created by either Him or a person.
God says that we are not supposed to have any idols, love any person or thing more than we love Him. If we truly do not have any idols, we will not devote all of our time and attention to one person or a group of people, we will not relentlessly pursue something or someone, we will not sacrifice parts of ourselves or our things someone or something, because we are giving everything that is within us to the LORD God. We will not stand in awe and revere others more than the LORD because He has created them. We will not do these things because the LORD has called us to stand in reverence and awe of Him and Him only. By fearing the LORD we will also learn to love truly and completely the LORD.
If we can align our hearts, minds, and souls to truly love Him then we will be abiding in Him, keeping His commands for us, and ultimately we will be fearing the LORD. We will not be afraid of the LORD because we know how truly great He is and how far we have fallen from what He has created us to be. We will know that He is gracious and willing to save because He has received the gracious gift of eternal life only His Son can provide through His death on the cross. We will not be afraid because we know that the Father sacrificed His one and only Son as an act of love for us, and we stand in awe of it. We will not be afraid of Him because we know what He did for us, a people He saved by grace, and stand in awe. We will not despise His commands for our lives, because we know that submitting to them results in wisdom and knowledge that He lets us have and stand in awe. We will think about all that He has done, all who He is, and all that He is doing throughout all of the world, and stand in awe. We will not be afraid because we are so captivated and enamoured by Him, because when you truly stand in awe of the LORD there is no space to fear Him, just like it says in (I John 4:13-19).
Like I said earlier, the LORD God has called us to stand in reverence of His glory, His power, His grace, His love, to stand in reverence of Him. Fearing the LORD helps us to have a proper and humble perspective of ourselves in relation to God (Prov. 23:17-18), to move away from sin in times of temptation (Prov. 14:27), and to become more like God the Creator (Prov. 19:22-23). I have one last question for you: is there anything in your life that is preventing from you fully loving the LORD, keeping His commands, and fearing Him?
