The Fear of the Lord or Perfect Love?
Upcoming in November we will be helping with the FREEDOM Retreat. What is the Freedom Retreat? It is a weekend event intended to help people in their spiritual journey of healing and hope. As part of the retreat, participants are given the opportunity to receive a time of prayer and ministry. A small group of team members prepare for the retreat in a number of ways, including prayer, fasting and reading.
My challenge is associated with the fact that I am not super confident in the arena of personal ministry to help others. Others are very passionate regarding this and are very gifted but for me, it is a struggle. So I was praying about the upcoming retreat and my participation. It happened to be September 14th so I was reading the 14th Proverb and sensed the Holy Spirit would give me wisdom in this regard. Verse 26 leaped off the page.
“In the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence,
and his children will have a refuge.”
This was my answer! My concerns about this kind of counseling prayer ministry is: will I be capable? Will I hear the Holy Spirit? Will I say the right things? Will my prayer be effective? The focus of my concerns are on me. However, if I am willing to focus on the Lord; His ability, His power, His anointing, than I can proceed in confidence. Plus, those who I am helping will have a refuge. This brought great peace to my heart and I decided to share this thought with our Sunday evening fellowship group as they make up a significant part of the Freedom Retreat ministry team.
This group of Holy Spirit listeners ran with the idea and the revelation began to freely flow. The discussion focused around the concept of the fear of the Lord and what it means to be confident. Most of the time we think of fear as a negative thing. But there are many areas where fear is very positive and normal. It is normal to fear going into a burning house or jumping out of an airplane. The result of this fear is being very careful how to do it. The fear motivates one to learn how to use certain specialized equipment and spend time in careful preparation.
God is the creator of the universe and that is a pretty big deal. If He wanted to, he could quickly smash me back into dust. The good news is that this is not His desire. His desire is to love me in every imaginable way. But this love does not change the reality of His authority and power to do whatever He wants. At least one aspect of the fear of the Lord is realizing the greatness of God and wanting to be on His team in every imaginable way.
One of my favorite illustrations of this understanding comes in the C S Lewis fantasy story, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The four siblings have discovered the magical land of Narnia and are being briefed on the situation by some talking beavers. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are explaining how the true King of Narnia, the lion Aslan, has been spotted and is coming to take back Narnia from the wicked witch. One of the children expresses a fearful concern, “Is the Lion safe?” The response from the beavers is key to the whole story, to our own understanding of God and why it is important that we “fear the Lord.” The response from the beavers is this, “Of course he is not safe! But he is good.”
A few days after reading Proverbs 14:26, I was awakened to a tremendous thunderstorm. I could see the light flash and count the seconds before the crack of thunder to determine the distance it was from our house. All of a sudden, the lightening and the thunder were simultaneous. The storm was right over our house. It was very loud and a reasonable cause for fear. After it passed, I decided to get up and noticed the clock read 4:44. I know that 4 is a number that represents the 4 seasons and the 4 directions and therefore relates to creation but certainly the whole number 444 must also have a unique meaning. At Sunday night fellowship, after our discussion and sitting around the dinner table I asked our numbers expert, David, about 444. He was, of course, excited to hear that number and said that it represented perfect love. Scripture tells us that perfect love casts out fear. Hmm, is it possible that part of God’s perfect love is found in our fearing the Lord. Is it really about fearing the right thing and in fearing the right thing, we have no room for fearing the wrong thing.
The photo I included was a ministry time in a small rural village in India. The young Mexican ladies have a heart to serve as missionaries and part of their learning is to respond to prayer needs at the end of an outreach. In looking at the photo I see in the faces both a "fear of the Lord" and a "perfect love that casts out fear". Who knows the impact of this simple powerful ministry time?
I am so grateful that God is not safe but He is so so good!
PS I noticed in one of my titles a typo that is proving to be the better title. I had intended the title to be a question, "The Fear of the Lord or Perfect Love?" God wanted to make it a statement: "The Fear of the Lord OF Perfect Love."