Healing and the Fear of the Lord
Those wondering why they aren’t seeing more miracles might want to check out whether they walk in, and encourage others to walk in, the fear of the Lord. This to me is the biggest theological gap in current popular teaching.
The gospel literally means “good news,” and in some people’s efforts to present it as “good news,” they try to make sure that all their messages are positive, uplifting, encouraging, and so on. But in an effort to do so, they cut out parts of the gospel, like the ones that mention hell. Jesus talked about hell more than he talked about heaven, yet He said that the gospel that He preached was good news. It IS good news – the good news about hell is that you don’t have to go there! But Jesus warned people repeatedly about the awfulness of hell, while some of His modern followers don’t even use the word because they think that their message would not be positive, uplifting, and so on. Some don’t even mention sin for the same reason! Or maybe they’re just telling people the parts of the gospel they want to hear because these preachers lack the needed fear of the Lord and really fear the PEOPLE who might stop listening if their ears aren’t tickled. The modern preacher is happy to encourage his hearers, but Paul also told Timothy and Titus to rebuke and exhort their hearers (2 Timothy 4:2, Titus 2:15). Some pastors are afraid to do those necessary things, and their congregations lack the fear of the Lord as a result.
The problem is that any time you willfully OMIT part of the gospel, you make the rest of the gospel you’re preaching a distortion of the real thing. If you have a small engine that requires a mixture of gasoline and oil, what would happen if you stopped adding oil because you decided that gasoline is really the important part because it’s what combusts? The resulting fuel would wreck your engine instead of run it, not because of something you added but because of something that you left out that was an essential part of the mix.
Jesus commanded His followers to tell people to observe ALL that He commanded (Matthew 28:20); He did not give His followers the right to cherry-pick which parts of His teaching they liked.
The Fear of the Lord is Basic to a Godly Life
Scripture tells us that the fear of the Lord is wisdom (Job 28:28) and the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 9:10), the instruction of wisdom (Proverbs 15:33), the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), and what lets you find knowledge (Proverbs 2:5). It causes you to depart from evil (Proverbs 16:6) and have riches, honor and life (Proverbs 22:4). If you claim that the Holy Spirit is directing you, the fear of the Lord should be evident in your life because the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2)! The early church walked in the fear of the Lord (Acts 9:31). We are to perfect holiness in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 7:1) and submit ourselves to one another in the fear of God (Ephesians 5:21) while working out our own salvation in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12).
The fact that we are forgiven for all our sins in Christ should not make us flippant toward sin, but rather to have all the more love and respect for the God whose mercy caused Him to send Christ to redeem us.
Preachers sometimes distort the meaning of the fear of the Lord by saying that it only means reverential respect. The ACTUAL meaning of “fear” (phobos) of the Lord is FEAR as we would generally use the word! Hence the idea of “fear and trembling” we saw above. That doesn’t negate the fact that we are accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6), nor does it turn God into a horror movie villain. But presenting God only as a great source of self-esteem-building helpful hints for living a nice life takes away the needed fear of the Lord for TRULY having a good life. He is Holy and awe-inspiring and we should have the attitude that we don’t DARE do anything that He is against. If we do, though, we have an Advocate and we have His forgiveness, but that doesn’t mean that we can have the attitude, “I’ll do this now because I can always claim forgiveness later!” That kind of attitude shows NO fear of the Lord.
When pastors allow shack-ups on their worship teams, fornicators on their greeter crews, and other blatantly immoral people serving in other positions, it only shows that they have no fear of the Lord themselves. They can forget about “revival” – the only thing they should expect their churches to be famous for are meltdowns.
God Isn’t Just Your Fishing Buddy
Jesus is the best friend you’ll ever have, one who sticks closer than a brother. But that doesn’t mean that He and His Father are to be “ol’ buddy ol’ pal” to you. If all you ever know is that God is a “good good Father” but you never know that He is also a “holy holy God” you will have a distorted view of Him. He does not exist just so that you can have more material blessings, though He does take pleasure in your prosperity (Psalm 35:27) and He even promises that fearing Him will bring you riches (Proverbs 22:4). He is awe-inspiring. (That’s the meaning of the word awesome if you see it in your translation; it’s not the modern version of the word where you might say, “I can buy an awesome new video game with the raise I just got, aw, gee whiz, God, you’re awesome!”)
When you walk in the fear of the Lord, you walk in true submission to the Father’s will and do what He wants, just as Jesus did. You realize that He loves you and wants to bless you, but He does not exist for the sole purpose of giving you everything YOU want. Do you think that Paul wanted to be whipped, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked and imprisoned? It’s great to receive what grace has given, but there’s no submission in that. When you truly fear God, you submit to Him and you would NEVER want to be out of His will, even when His will makes your flesh uncomfortable. You can STILL walk in everything that grace has given without getting lopsided about it.
This doesn’t at all take away from the fact that you can curl up in His lap and say, “Daddy, I love you.” If you had a good earthly dad, you could have done that with him, too, but he would not have been happy with you if you had come up and said, “Hey, what’s up, Dad Ol’ Buddy Ol’ Pal?” You still needed to show your father honor and respect even though you could curl up in his lap. It is the same with your Heavenly Father, who deserves all the more honor and respect.
The Results of a Return to the Fear of the Lord
If we fear the Lord as they did in the early church, we should see the early church’s results. If we don’t fear the Lord as they did, perhaps we’ve put our finger on a major reason that we aren’t seeing more moves of God today. We like to hear wonderful stories of past revivals, but we don’t necessarily want to hear about how consecrated the people were back then to the purposes of God. We are kidding ourselves to think that we can have similar moves with lousier consecration. Let’s make the early church our model, return to the true fear of the Lord and see if we don’t have more Holy Spirit manifestations!