So today I gave a message at my school about fearing God and what that really looks like to us. What I'm basically going to do is just give that message to my blog now, so that I have both my in person audience and my virtual audience up to date with what my message was about! Let's dive into it.
I feel that the church today (building wise) focuses on the feminine nature of God, and kind of puts away God's masculine traits. For example, we all have been preached to about God's love, how it is everlasting and that because of it, Jesus died for us. Nothing can separate us from that love of God. We've also heard about God's grace and how undeserving we are of it. Rarely, though, do we speak about God's severity. God's severity is so important, that we are even told to fear it! Well, how are we supposed to fear God? And what exactly is His severity? We'll go into that.
God's severity is so glorious and so wondrous, that we as humans sometimes mistake it as misfortune and painful. God's severity comes from His power to judge all and His power to bring justice to His world. An example is that in the Old Testament, God's severity was revealed when He commanded the genocide of millions of Canaanites. Now, obviously to us, that was a little painful to hear/read/know about. However, that plan was much needed in order for God's plan to fully be revealed to Israel. The same happens in our lives, just maybe not as severe. We may go through something like a car accident, a bad break up, maybe a death in your life, or something else that I haven't mentioned. Either way, we need to start loving God for His severity and His just, rather than being angry at Him when we can't even see the full picture of what is really going on.
Now the main point: fearing God. Fearing God is not being terrified of Him; fearing God is not being too scared to pray to Him; fearing God is not cowering at the thought of Him. Fearing God is paying Him respect and giving Him praise for what He has, can, and will do. Fearing God is loving His grace and appreciating His mercy, while loving Him when death happens and when pain is amongst us. Fearing God is loving who He really is, and not loving what we want Him to be. Too often do I hear people only loving God because of certain good things about Him. What about the God described above who killed those Canaanites? Don't you love and appreciate God for that too? In order to truly love God, we need to learn to love everything about Him, not just what we want to love.
Another way to talk about it is in Matthew. Jesus tells His disciples not to fear men, for they can only kill the body. Instead, we should be fearing God who can destroy both the body and the soul in hell. He's not telling us to be afraid of God and not love Him because He has that power, rather, He is telling us to respect God and go to unimaginable lengths for Him. Don't worry about what other people will say or do, the least they can do is kill you. God deals with our eternity. Fearing men and not faring God is like running away from the kitten and slapping the lion across the face: it's stupid.
These are just some thoughts that I've had as I've gone through my study in Matthew. I pray that something that was typed hit hard and that we all begin to truly love and fear God for who He is, and not who He isn't. Grace and peace!
No comments:
Post a Comment