Hello Brothers and Sisters:
I just wanted to ask that some of you may pray for me for the fear of the Lord. I was listening to some of the Revival Conference 2011 sermons and think that it is a missing part of my life.
Al Whittinghill said he thought the problem with pastors falling into sin is because they've lost the fear of the Lord. What do you think?
How does loving God and fearing Him fit?
Hi Brother Noah. I'd like to share what I believe with all of my heart.
I believe that GOD's First Commandment is the total foundation of relationship with Him - from the O.T. where it was first mentioned onto forever.
I believe that, because "GOD 'is' Love" [not human love] but equally GOD is Holy as well, that falling in love with the One True GOD initiates our desire to have relationship with Him. We'll seek Him, search Him out and through His Word as well as prayer. Just as when a man or woman falls deeply in love with another person, especially a potential person that they'd like to marry.
Once that love takes that person into the depth of relationship, they are brought closer to GOD because that is the key that He has established with His first commandment and once that depth of love is reached, when we draw nigh onto Him, He does in truth draw nigh unto us.
Once we've experienced that drawing nigh - we see His GLORY - the Beauty of His Holiness - His Awesomeness and we're brought to that awesome "reverence" of Who we are in 'relationship' with. We're humbled that such a Mighty and Awesome Creator All-Powerful GOD would draw nigh unto us ... so that we find that the more that we love Him - the more that we'll Reverence Him or fear Him for Who He is.
There's a Beauty in it all. It's Relational. It humbles us in a good way. As those men that have literally been in His Presence have fallen to their faces - even John the beloved disciple, when He saw Him in Revelation 1 --- we're brought to our faces by the Majesty of His Glory but He lifts us up and says "Fear not" and "I Love you more than you know".
Daniel had this experience towards the end of Chpt 10, as well. Also Isaiah, Ezekiel, Abraham and Jacob.
I don't believe our relationship with Him need be any less that this.
It may not be visual - but when that love comes to where you feel your heart will burst - as many experience toward those they'll marry or when they see their new born baby for the first time - How much more worthy is He that loved us enough to suffer what He has to redeem us and make us His. No greater love story has been told on earth.
John understood this type 'love' more than the others. John first walked with John the baptist, because he already loved GOD and left John to follow Jesus ... and we see John given Revelation that no other man had seen.
Love for Him brings revelation of Who He is and revelation increases our reverence for Him - so that the more that we love Him, the more we'll reverence Him, because we've come closer to Him and His Love and by coming closer, we've seen more of His Glory.
I don't believe He holds His Hand up and says, "OK, that's close enough." No, I believe we can get as close as a human body can contain of both His Love and His Holiness. Seeing and feeling it. The more that we love Him, the more that we'll reverence Him and the more that we reverence Him - the more that we'll love Him - realizing this is GOD the Almighty that wants this intimate relationship with us, enough to take our form - speak and have interaction with us humans while He was here on earth and the price He paid to redeem us.
We would "Seek" our loved one on earth with all of our heart - so it would stand to reason that we'll seek Him even the more, 'because' we love Him.
I believe that's where the lack is - in Loving Him Who first loved us.
If you can be alone sometime, go to where you can look up into the sky and see beyond the stars or clouds and fathom His greatness and just talk to Him. He truly is up there, in all of His Glory, majesty, power and love for you.
Pray one for another that we can all reach the highest heights of relational revelation, in spirit and in truth.
Thank you!
I am listening to Edgar Reich's sermon from the Revival Conference 2011 and I am more convinced that fear is the missing part of my life. Just letting the fear of God come over me listening to this sermon changes the way I look at the world and myself and my relationship to God. In a good way. I feel like godliness WANTS to flow in my life but my lack of fear hinders it.
I've tried the "love" way but I still sin. I need something that will stop me from thinking its OK to sin. Do you know what I mean?
Edgar Reich says God will cut off those who do no cut off sin (in so many words).
I also feel I can't really repent when I sin. Like I'm a fraud. I just totally disobeyed God and now I'm coming to Him like I didn't just sin to His face. Sometimes I can repent right away with the right heart, but sometimes my heart is hard on the matter. In short, I can't just sin and think I can just ask for forgiveness over and over. The sin needs to stop. I'm hoping the fear of the Lord is the answer because nothing else is working.
Thanks for listening and praying
Noah
Hi Noah,
I think the sister said it as well as it could be said. This passion that she was talking about, this relationship that is akin to " as the deer panteth for the waterbrooks so my soul longeth after thee," is this the passion that you have walked in in times past? In Revelation Jesus says to the church at Ephesus that they had left their first love, can you relate to that? Have you had a passionate relationship with Jesus and now you have wandered from Him?
You say you " have tried the love way." Perhaps you should get a hold of Edgar's testimony, it will shed more light on what he shares, its a wonderful God glorifying testimony. I will see if I can find it for you and post a link............ bro Frank
Jude 1:21-23 Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
In my mind, Noah, and in my post - I don't seperate "Love and Fear" for & of GOD.
You say that you "tired the love way", but you still love yourself more than GOD, because if you loved Him, you couldn't bear being seperated from Him and the mere thought of being seperated from Him would and should cause fear.
If it's just the fear of Hell - it won't last without loving Him with all of our heart, mind, soul and Strength.
At one time in my life, I loved movies that were "beautiful love stories" - but now I can't stomach them, because they show people going to the ends of the earth in love with another human - but when most imagine loving GOD in such a dramatic way, they can't grasp it or they'll scoff at it.
The type of Love that He's asked for, goes hand-in-hand and is equally balanced with that Biblical fear/reverence. One without the other is heresy or an unbalanced relationship.
Would you want a wife that only treated you nice and remained faithful to you, Only because she feared you - but didn't love you? Wouldn't it be her love for you that causes her giving her all and her faithfulness to you?
GOD wants "a Bride" and not just a bunch of folks that are afraid of retribution from Him.
Many have spouses that are mistreating them because they don't love them and the one being mistreated would have the perfect excuse to go "need some love from elsewhere" - but they don't turn to commiting adultery also, because they love GOD and not because they feel love for their hateful adulterous spouse and not even because they fear 'of' Him but their love doesn't want to hurt Him.
When we love ourselves more than we love GOD, we sin.
If a person believes OSAS, they'll seldom get the fear that Brother Edgar preached on.
Will continue to pray for you.
GOD Bless you!!
Hi Noah,
Blessings to you and your pursuit of God. What you are describing is what Spurgeon called "A Fear to be Desired." Godly fear is something that is spoken about from Genesis to Revelation, and not only spoken about but taught, lived and passed on by the patriarchs and forefathers of Christianity. David said in Psalm 34 "Come little children and I will teach you the fear of the Lord." It's meant to be passed on from generation to generation. The shocking truth is that we have not been passing it on for the past several generations because we have a skewed understanding of God and therefore we cannot reconcile the fear of God with the love of God because we have redefined love and redefined God.
I think the greatest argument for the fear of God comes straight from Jesus' mouth. Remember when He gave the sermon on the mount He would say things like "you've heard it said...but I say unto you." He was re-instating something. He was introducing new light and understanding to the people. When Jesus taught about fearing God He could have said the same thing. "You've heard it said to fear God, but I say unto you..." But He didn't say that. Instead He said these words:
Luke 12:5
But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!
To me, Christ is re-inforcing the entire subject of fearing God, and not only that, but actually giving the motive for why we should fear Him. God has the power to cast a soul into hell. If that's not motive enough to fear an omnipotent Holy God I don't what is. We understand that slightly on a human level. When a cop begins driving directly behind you there is somewhat of a fear that comes with it...not because you are necessarily in the wrong, but because he has authority over you.
The fear of God is not hostile to the love of God or the grace of God, but rather it's in complete harmony and unity with them. If we do not have a proper fear of the Lord then our understanding of God's love and grace will actually be perverted into less that what the scriptures teach it to be.
The best way to be renewed in the fear of the Lord is to soak your mind in the Word of God concerning His fear. I have a microsoft Word document full of just scriptures that relate to fearing the Lord from Genesis to Revelation. I would love to send it to you. It came about from doing a word search on "fear" in Bible gateway and I read every single verse to determine which ones spoke about the fear of man, fear in general versus the fear of God. Please let me know if you would like it.
What you are experiencing in your life regarding sin is exactly what proverbs describes...without a fear of God we will not hate our sin.
Proverbs 8:13
The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverse mouth I hate
Proverbs 16:6
In mercy and truth Atonement is provided for iniquity; And by the fear of the LORD one departs from evil.
It's clear that the fear of the Lord produces a holy hatred of sin, and also gives you the power to depart from it. Joseph feared the Lord and that is why he was able to flee from Potipher's wife.
I wish that i could go on, but this is a great beginning.
Lord bless you brother,
Kevin
How does loving God and fearing Him fit?
Brother, let me explain it to you with a simple illustration.
As a father I want my son to obey me because I love him and I want to do only Good for him. But when my son is young say 5 years old, I cannot expect him to fully understand my love and hence to be obedient to me. So I have to be hard at him for disobedience so that he will fear me and be obedient to me. I do this not because I want to be hard to my son but because I want him to obey me and I understand that he is too young to understand my love for him.
Same applies to our heavenly father as well. When we come to Christ first we are like babies, we may not able to fully understand what exactly Jesus has done for us and how much he loves us. We can hear and read so much about his love but we need to mature to obey him because he is loving us just like how my Son has to reach at least 10 years of age to understand that his father loves him. Mean while this baby Christian should obey his Heavenly father out of fear until he grows to maturity.
So when you are new to Christ you need to fear him first and then gradually he will show his love so that we can obey him out of love and more than fear. But fear should be the first thing like ABCD in English. That is why it is said that Fear of the Lord is beginning of all wisdom.
I'm not sure why, but this thread has stayed on me and even to where I fought tears at one point from the burden of it.
If we type in "fear" and look under the Old Testament - in the KJV we see that fear is mentioned 307 times. Then if you do the same Search but in the New Testament, we see that word is used 78 times.
There is a difference between the Old Covenant and the New.
The person that needs to fear, is the one who is in rebellion - if we read how that word is used in the N.T..
We've probably all seen a movie depicting what Jesus went through for us and the great drops of blood that He shed by taking on the sins of the world - past, present and future. What wondrous love is this?
We're not children. We are probably not even teens here. If we can't see His love and love Him because He first loved us -- [he who has been forgiven much, loves much, Jesus said] - so most of us have no excuse for not loving Him.
What brought the tears to me earlier is that it was asked that we pray for this situation. If someone says that they 'tried the love way' and it didn't work - HOW are we to pray now? This is the hard part for me, because now I must pray, "LORD, scare the 'hell' out of this person so that they don't go to Hell. Bring them down to their knees with broken gratitude for all that you've done for them!"
Do you have any idea how painful that prayer is to pray - even for someone that we don't know - when you know that so many followed Him out of sheer love alone and are dying for Him even now as we speak because of that extreme devotion?
Yes, OK - we'll pray for you and anyone else here in your state. So be it.
brother if you lak fear and love towards god , i think your are on the right path
keep drinking ,the word of god preached by men of god who have fear for god ,,like paul washer ,and cater conlon ,,
that is often wye we listen to thses saints ,is to keep the fire of the fear of god burning
its obvious you should reAD YOUR BIBLE ,,AND PRAY,beliving god will give you the fear of him ,,,but do baptise your self with with the washing of the water of the word of god spoken by men with the fear of the lord
if you want to love the lord more ,,then find out more about the gosple of grace ,and the holyness of god
the more you know god through his word, the more you will love the one whom you know
brother you cant love sombody you dont know
find out more about your wretcherdness and gods forgivness towards evil men
jesus him self said ,,,he who is forgiven much ,,LOVES MUCH
THE GRACE and mercy of god seems great to those who, have seen them selfs as the laest of all the saints ,and a cheif of sinners
the brighness of the stars ,is only visable ,with a backdrop of darkness
the beauty of god ,is seen in the back drop ,of our dark past,,,and a love and gratatude ,will rise up as the sun rises to give light to the world ,,love will spring forth from a humilated heart ,and a contrite spirit
with out gratatude towards god , there can be no love towards god
of course beseting sins in them selfs will rob us from the love of god and vital union with him ,,and and quench the love that we might want to express to god in prayer
we love him BECASUE HE FIRST LOVED US
seek to understand the love god has for you as evil as you might be ,,and you will not be able to not love god ,,find out ware his evalasting arms are ,,they are not far from you
we cant love him till we know he first loves us
it is a supanatural transactions that begines in heaven
and ends in heaven has a flow of loving water spiring up to life eturnal
let the river flow through the dark forest of your sinfull heart and bring pure fear ,and love to a jungal of thorns ,and tares
night and day be washed by the washing of the water of the word ,,be it spoken by men who have this river of water in them ,,,and you will depart from sin by believing him
believing his love for you
believing his promises to you
and believeing in the power in him
what is imposable for men is possable for god
and he that is in you is greater then he who is in the world
he who is born of god over comes the world
blessings
This discussion is locked.
