What we fear

I’ve heard that: Do not be afraid or take courage have been listed as the most repeated commands of the Bible. Yet the beginning of wisdom, the prolonging of life, the fountain of life, a great treasure, boldness and confidence, righteousness and great blessings, all come from the fear of the Lord.  

You know how so many people suggest the Bible is full of apparent contradictions? I have quit trying to argue against that because it’s just simply true. It’s a book that demands humility, contemplation and revelation because there is not a rule-book for life available. With any truths I’ve learned the core always comes down to: it depends.

Also I woke up one morning in that time between the worlds, that barely awake moment when you have a foot in both places, the unconscious and the conscious… and heard a phrase: Maybe it is not about true and false as much as it is about what is true, and what is TRUER. Such as: we are commanded not to fear, this is true, yet the fear of the LORD is the beginning of all wisdom, this is truer.

This creates tension in life because it isn’t as simple as we might like it as humans. However if we are willing to seek understanding and spend time in the discomfort of the tension of truths, we can grow in wisdom.

I have revisited this particular tension from time to time seeking understanding. Many wiser than I have unpacked the scholarly and spiritual layers of the fear of the LORD. I believe it’s one of the beautiful mysteries we get to walk out in our maturing process over time, and this entry won’t settle the questions for anyone. However, I had some personal insight I will add to the layers here for anyone interested in such a diversion.

God doesn’t spend so much time and space telling us not to be afraid because we are ridiculous creatures with a propensity to dramatics. I think the reason we are so often commanded not to be afraid is because we live in a dangerous world with a prowling roaring lion enemy who seeks to devour us at any ripe moment [1 Peter 5:8]. Aside from the evil that has been unleashed on this planet in the great fall of humankind, we also carry our own weaknesses that threaten to self destruct us and anyone around us with pride, jealousy, anger, control, and everything that stems out of these human tendencies. If that wasn’t enough, the entire planet is groaning awaiting the revelation of the children of God [Romans 8:19] and we have real lions and tigers and bears along with extreme weather, gravity, unseen germs and viruses, and the natural order of things that can take us out in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. 

We actually have pretty good reason to feel fear.

I’ve been reading two books simultaneously recently that seem to be overlapping in an unexpected way. A Heart Ablaze by John Bevere addresses the lack of passion in many Christian lives and how much more is available to us if we are willing to do what it takes to seek after God and his presence at all costs. Next Generation Leader: Five Essentials For Those Who Will Shape the Future is by Andy Stanley, and in very practical language, lays out what makes for a powerful leader and how to grow in leadership where you are gifted and called. They both interested me, and since I couldn’t decide which to read first, I began to dive into them both. I have enjoyed watching the messages compliment one another as I walked them out each day. 

The particular overlap that came up today was in the fear and courage dynamic.

Andy Stanley writes that:

Courage is essential to leadership because the first person to step out in a new direction is viewed as the leader and being willing to step into the unknown requires courage. 

Organizations (and many people) by nature resist change and growth; leaders are given the assignment to take people and organizations where they haven’t been before. This is always scary. However, as Andy points out, great leaders are not fearless. They are people who refuse to wait until all the fear is gone to make a move. They are more willing to take risks. They are the ones willing to do it anyway, and once they begin the steps into the unknown, others can see the way forward. 

Fear of failure is common to humans. Leaders view failure differently. At some point their fear of failure is overtaken by their fear of never moving forward into progress. Failure is something that most leaders can live with. Those with leadership gifts can more easily live with the prospect of having tried and failed than the legacy of never trying at all. Leaders know that failure looks completely differently in the rearview mirror than through the windshield. This perspective enables leaders to summon the courage to take risks. 

Leaders fear. It seems what they fear makes a stunning difference.

Meanwhile, in Chapter 5 of A Heart Ablaze, John Bevere discusses the fear of the Lord and what it requires to come into a presence relationship with God that promises treasures of knowledge and wisdom. In this chapter John walked through the invitation of the Israelites in the wilderness to join God on the mountain giving me a glimpse into the story I had not considered before.

Most of us know that God’s chosen people had become slaves in Egypt, and that God brought up Moses to bring them out of their bondage servitude into freedom. What I always found strange was how Moses went in to speak to Pharaoh and requested that Pharaoh allow the people to go into the desert to hold a feast or a festival and to worship God. At one point Moses says they want to take a three days’ journey to sacrifice to their God in the wilderness.

So… I’ve read the story, don’t we all know the God was busting them out of jail to take them into freedom and their promised land? Why doesn’t God just say that? God doesn’t lie, and we all know He is plenty powerful not to have to negotiate with a human king by playing down his true intent. I realized in reading John’s book that I had inserted my own language here in my mind to match what actually happened later in this story. 

I went back to the original text and sat with it for a time considering… what if Pharaoh would have allowed them to go for their festival and then come back to work. Would that have been the end of it? Did Moses get confused in all of this? Moses knew God had called him to liberate the people and take them to an entirely new land. Yet he was told to go in and ask for a three day holiday. Even more interesting to me is almost none of the people or Moses would be going into that promised land, and yet God doesn’t clarify all that at the time even though he undoubtably knew this. The whole thing still has to play out on the stage of time…

Ok, back to the point. God wasn’t lying or downplaying the true intent he had. God was calling the people first into the wilderness to feast and to worship him. God’s heart was to reconnect with his people on the mountain and as John Bevere explains, not to simply visit them, but to habitate with them. He wanted to live among them in relationship. My human brain sees the entire point as the promised land. They left a place (Egypt) so the point would be ending at a new place (the promised land). I don’t think this is how God sees things. The Israelites left bondage (not only literal, but spiritual we are shown in this story) and God wanted to take them to freedom, which has to begin in the spiritual place then can play out in a physical way. 

I am always looking at the question: what are we doing? This was a reminder that God wants us to consider first: How are we doing it and who are we doing it with? He can do anything, I think there is ample evidence to suggest he is more interested in the connection with humans, the doing a thing together above what the thing even is. 

Note: Moses also never gets to set foot in the land that was promised, but he walked out many years of the desert as an example of the most stunning friends in intimacy with God on record. I now notice more clearly… the most stunning example of someone who walked closely with God did not do it in victory into the promised land, but wandering in the wilderness out of love for broken lost people. By the way he chose this. God told him he would send them on into the land with an angel to deliver it to them but he was too fed up with the people to go himself. Go without me then! God told him. Moses said no way. I’d take the wilderness WITH you over the promised land WITHOUT you every day of the week [Exodus 33]. Moses feared NOT having God with him more than he feared never seeing the promised land. 

Does my heart say that? I desperately want it to.

The people had been delivered out of Egypt through great signs and miracles and high drama showcasing God’s power and his goodness toward those he loves who are willing to follow him. To get the ticket through the Red Sea you had to make a few choices: you had to pack some things, put on your shoes, kill a lamb and put the blood on your doorpost, and then you had to hit the road when the call came. We do play a part. They had to follow Moses who was following God’s lead out of town. 

After a few months in the desert, God invites them at the base of the mountain to get ready for the big day. He told them to consecrate themselves for three days, this is preparation. It was a call to purify and clean their clothes and examine their hearts. After this preparation, God was going to invite them in. When God showed up on the third day we read there was a great disturbance. There was thundering, bright lights as such they had never seen or heard. The mountain was on fire with great dark clouds and smoke. God invited them to come, and they turned away terrified. Moses tried to reason with them- do not be afraid, he loves you, he has chosen you! Still, they cowered in the presence and asked Moses to be the go-between. Moses was disappointed, and when he came to God, he was told that God had heard the people, and they were right in all they said. They should return to their tents. 

John explores the sadness that would have come in this time from God who had wanted the people in relationship to him, all of them, not only Moses their leader. Yet the people feared the wrong things and that fear kept them from meeting with God, and in the end it was this moment that began the series of events that culminated in their inability to go in and enjoy the promised land. Standing before God’s holiness, the people began to be laid bare- their innermost hearts. Everyone who comes to the presence of God in this way falls as if dead on the ground feeling totally undone. When we can stay in this place of humility and be willing for God to reveal and burn away (heal!) the sin in our own hearts, we become refined and we enjoy closer and closer fellowship with God.

The people instead were more afraid of being so striped naked in their hearts, of being so seen, and were unwilling to let God cleanse the Egypt out of them. They weren’t willing to partake in their part of the process to come into God’s presence. They weren’t truly willing to let go of the Egypt in their hearts. They ways of the “world” whatever that means for each of us. We see evidence of that because even though they were horribly mistreated as slaves in Egypt, they continuously, every single time things became hard, cried out they wish they were BACK IN EGYPT. This is crazy to me. But… how often do I have echoes of that in my own heart. Less and less I hope.

John Bevere explains a thing I had not noticed before. He says it was here, when they turned away from the invitation of God to let go of the junk they were holding on to and come closer in to his heart, that they already lost the inheritance that was set aside for them! It wasn’t when the “bad report” from the spies came. That was only the inevitable response to a people who had been too afraid to actually trust God- even in all the amazing miracles and signs he had done for them. The truth of their hearts is they wanted the miracles, but they did not know God really, and you can’t trust one you do not know.

If we look at our own choice today, having the same (only better) opportunity to come into God’s presence and have a relationship to know him through Jesus it is interesting that we still have to sort out this fear of the LORD question. We know that perfect love casts out fear and we do not fear punishment but we must not forget that God is HOLY and set apart, and not like us in his full glory. Anyone who has had a glimpse of this is undone and falls on their face in awe. When is the last time you’ve fallen down as if dead in awe? I have honestly never YET been compelled by the glory of the presence to fall on my face as if dead. I don’t think faking it is what we’re called to either- I think some people get this kind of visitation in their lives where the glimpse is so real they have no choice. I am afraid honestly of that kind of experience, and yet also I welcome it. 

I have to consider that we have crashed into some ditches in this theological mystery. On the one hand we do live in the new covenant, so our connection to God is not exactly the same as the Israelites at the base of the mountain, we know that we have adoption as children and through Jesus we don’t fear the inability to be clean enough on our own to stand before God. Yet my own observation of those around me I see in a more mature faith, I see that no one can come into the presence of God and determine to hold onto intentional sin in their heart, we can’t insist on hanging onto the comforts of this world or anything that won’t stand the fire of the holiness of God. We are kidding ourselves if we think the new covenant makes allowance for that kind of theology. The presence of God, the living Creator King, IS indeed available to us, but we lie if we say there is no cost for admission.

That cost leads us to the question of what is it we fear? 

Most of us fear losing control. We fear looking foolish to the world around us. We fear that the thing we grasp in our tight fists – our family, money, sense of security, our own (unrefined) hopes and dreams, relationship, power, protection – whatever it is, we fear that if we come to that mountain, we risk Him removing the things that have become our number one (idol). So like the Israelites that day when they realized exactly who it was they were being called to meet with, they were faced head on with what the cost would be, and they declined the invitation.

Maybe it’s when the fear of living a small, insignificant life that doesn’t have an impact for God’s purposes… when we realize we are given the opportunity to become a real FRIEND to God, when we fear not ever having that chance to truly KNOW God’s heart… when the fear of missing out on the life we are called into with God here on earth finally overcomes the fear of the other stuff, that is when we learn the fear of the LORD. 

Fear is everywhere, but those people I see living a passionate life and burning with the fire of the spirit of the son of the living God in their eyes- what they fear is not persecution, or being misunderstood, or not having basic needs met, or even death… they fear losing the connected presence of God in their lives and the intimacy they have said yes to.

They came to a point at the base of the mountain when the lightning flashed and the thunder pealed and the fire burned before them, and the dark clouds obscured the view, their knees probably shook in fear but they could not turn back to the tent village on the desert floor. They had a sense that everything impure was going to get burned away, and that could be painful and it could leave them fully consumed with nothing left, but the fear of not coming overcame it all, and they had no choice in the end of it. 

Moses knew God’s ways; he learned them on the mountain. The rest of the people could only know God by the miracles he did in their lives. How many today only know God by the miracles He has done for them? They may have experienced healed bodies, met needs, financial breakthrough or other answered prayer. These people never had the courage to go to the mountain to learn God’s ways and character for themselves because their desire for what the world can give was greater. They do not fear the LORD. God is calling us all to His mountain to know Him intimately. The pass to the mountain is holiness birthed out of a heart that fears God.

John Bevere

It is the fear that we may never know God fully that surpasses the fear of all other things that finally gives us the courage to approach. God isn’t going to punish us for our shortcomings, or for the things we hide in our hearts and are ashamed of, but they will be revealed and come into the light as we approach him, to be healed and burned away and in that process we are refined and made more and more spotless as we have the courage to draw near. You see when we actually draw near to God, our faces are changed. People can see it on us. Moses had to veil his face when he came off the mountain because being in the presence changed him. 

We are called to purify and consecrate ourselves, but we know we are not able to accomplish that on our own. What we can do, especially now that we have Jesus available to us, is agree to be a willing participant in the process. We have to put ourselves on the table, on the altar, hand our old garments over and accept the newly washed ones. We have to agree to lose whatever will not serve us in that journey no matter what it is. It is the willingness to say yes that opens the door to being changed, refined, restored. We begin to carry pieces of that glory back into the tent city!

What could hold us back from partaking in that? 

Fear of the wrong things. 

What is that thing that you know you cannot honestly trust God with? The thing you look at in your hand or your heart at the base of the mountain, and then drearily walk back into the camp deciding the fear of losing that is still stronger than your fear of never fully knowing God’s heart. That is what takes courage. Lay it down and take a step! Change what you’re afraid of and draw near today! 

I have never heard of someone regretting that step.