Fear of the Lord = Love

As I’ve been pondering Fear of the Lord as a Gift of the Holy Spirit, my first instinct is to say, “I’m not afraid of God!"

And I’m not, in a “hand-wringing” sense. I don’t sit around wringing my hands, wondering if I’m doing enough, wondering if I’m serving enough, wondering if I’m praying enough, wondering if I’m loving enough. First of all, I KNOW I’m not doing enough! And I'm incapable of doing enough without total dependence on God. And I'm not there yet. As in nowhere near! (Not to be considered a salvation issue.)

But that doesn’t lead me to Fear of the Lord.

I trust in Him. I love Him. I do what I can (always imperfectly) to follow His Most Holy Will. But Fear Him?

And then I read Isaiah 11:2-5:

” The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD -

and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;

but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.

Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.”

So according to Isaiah, I’m supposed to DELIGHT in Fear of the Lord! Hmm. That bears thinking about.

I think that Fear of the Lord equals love. And where the fear comes in is when I offend Him. When I fail to obey Him, fail to cooperate with Him, fail to follow Him, I offend Him. If I love God with my whole heart then I should always have Fear of offending Him.

If I am truly afraid of offending God, then I will seek to follow Him out of love.

And yet every day I fail at this. I do offend Him because I’m a stinky, lowly sinner who can’t seem to remember to ask for His help to keep me on the path of righteousness.

I also think that because of the faith tradition that I grew up in, I’ve had this idea that the “little sins” in life don’t really matter.

Do we really think that the “little” sins don’t offend God? When I have the least little bit of pride, I wound Our Lord. When I choose my own self-interest over God’s Perfect Will in my life, it’s a direct assault on God. Any time I break one of the Ten Commandments, I always break number one:

Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me

Even the little sins should fill me with Fear of offending God. Not the hand-wringing kind of fear, or the “scared” kind of fear, but a genuine fear of offending the Lord, my God in my lack of charity.

So my prayer today is that I gain greater insight and understanding of this Gift – Fear of the Lord. So that I can truly love Him with all of my being.

Amen!