Are You Afraid Of God?

AI Generated Transcript (I only fixed the mis-spelling of my name and added random paragraph breaks - I left the rest of the mess just the way AI delivered it haha):

Are you afraid of God? Welcome to Jon's Voice Notes, where I, Jon, go off and ramble about some topic that I'm interested in talking about today, whatever it is I want to say today. Stream of consciousness style with no planning. I force myself not to plan. I just go from my initial thought and see where it leads us.

I'm in my favorite Jon's Voice Notes spot. It's kind of a mildly muggy, mildly warm, but not hot. Spring, early summer. Late spring, early summer day. Everything's green. The birds are making a wonderful, beautiful racket. Visually nice. I do wish it was a touch less humid. Looks like it might rain later. But here we are.

So are you afraid of God? God? My whole life, whenever the fear of God came up, I went to a Christian school as a kid, and I remember we had to talk about that because people feel like they need to explain that away. The fear of God. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge. All of these from Proverbs. Some of the parables of Jesus talk about a judge who neither fears man nor God. So there's something about the fear of God that is important. But what does it mean?

I was recently watching the, whatever it's called, I think it might be just called The House of David. It's a TV show about King David. It's quite good, actually. But there's one scene where one of David's sidekicks, it might have been Jonathan, had been captured by the Philistines, and they were talking to him. And they said, the guy was talking to him about God, and Jonathan was telling him about Israel's God, Yahweh. And at one point, the Philistines said, are you afraid of him? And then Jonathan just looked with an intense look on his face and said, Yes.

So yes, there's a place for being afraid of God. But I want to suggest to you that there's a couple ways to look at the fear of God. There's a couple ways of fear. One that pleases God. One that does not. One that is beneficial and actually helps you in your relationship with God and your walk in this world and one that is harmful.

So here they are. Here's the two. One is the kind of fear that shrinks back from God out of rejection. You hide yourself from God, which is kind of absurd, like Adam and Eve did after they sinned. When God showed up, they hid. They were afraid of God and they hid from him. Or they tried. Of course, there's no point trying to hide from God. But we're a bit silly, we human beings, sometimes.

So somewhere in Hebrews it talks about we are not of those who shrink back. So there's a fear of being rejected by God that causes you to shrink back. Run from him. This kind of fear is not good. It's not good for you. You will use this as an excuse. I can't go to God and get help because God's angry at me. You avoid him.

Probably a great example of all this is in the Chronicles of Narnia, whenever they encounter Aslan. Because on more than one occasion when the four children or any of the other children that come into the stories later when they meet Aslan they have done something that they know is wrong and they want to shrink back. They want to hide. And Aslan says come here. They're afraid. And they come. They come anyway. And he asks them, whatever, what did you do or what's been going on? And he's kind of stern with them until they admit, I did this. Why did you do it? I was proud. I was arrogant. I was trying to show off, whatever. Then he says, good answer.

So there's this fear of God that shrinks back, and then there's this fear of God where you go to him anyway. But there is a fear, there's a respect there. I believe it's actually fear.

When I was younger, they tried to tell me, well, it doesn't really mean be afraid, it means respect. So, well, why does it say fear then? It is a form of fear. And I'm sure I've talked about this before, but like, here's an example in the natural world of fearing God's natural laws.

You're standing on top of a building, you know, 30 stories high, and you look down and you realize you could fall off of this and you could die and you feel afraid and you step back. Your fear is already there. Respect for the laws of God. Gravity that will pull you down to the ground. The fact that your body is not designed to hit the ground at that level of acceleration. It's fear. And it's right. And it's good. You step back because you're afraid. And it's not unhealthy. Right?

So I would say the same thing goes like morally and ethically with God. The fear of God is an understanding that he is perfectly just. He is perfectly righteous. He judges perfectly righteously. So when we go to him in any way, if there's a way we're not living rightly, there's a place for fear.

Now, I think sometimes we take the blood of Jesus in such a way as to kind of dismiss this in the wrong way. It isn't something, in my opinion, I submit this to you for your thoughts, that you would use the blood of Jesus to no longer feel any sort of fear towards God. It's more like this is the answer to the fear.

So it's always true. The blood of Jesus is always enough. But sometimes we experience it or encounter it in real time. And in that case we afraid because we realize what we did could have consequences. What we did was wrong. God might be angry. God might be upset. And that real. He might be.

But the issue is, don't shrink back. While you feel the fear, go to him. Tell him the truth. He already knows, but he seems to like it when we confess the truth. The truth about our sin. The truth about our unrepentance.

I've told God before God, I did this sin. I'm not even sure I'm sorry. I want to be sorry, but I don't know that I am. I'm kind of like want to keep living that way, but I want to not live that way. I'm just dishonest with God. I'm not saying you should not just repent. I'm just saying I'm dishonest with God, even if it's bad. I believe it's led ultimately to the defeat of my enemies and freedom in my life in various ways. But it's you, you feel the fear but you go anyway.

We were talking amongst some friends about imprecatory prayers like David. King imprecatory prayers are like you pray that your enemies or the wicked will be destroyed and punished and all those sort of things. You know, when you read the psalm sometimes King David is like Lord smash the teeth of my enemies. You know, crush them into dust. Destroy all the wicked.

And you know my friends and I were talking like can we pray that way as Christians? Should we? And I don't 100% know the answer to that, but I can tell you how I've applied it in my life.

When I have been angry at the wicked, people doing wickedness in the land, you know, unjust judges, unjust politicians, unjust governors, presidents, whoever it may be, they're doing something wrong and evil, and I'm angry, and I want to pray, and I, for one, or someone did injustice to me. Somebody did something wrong to me. Maybe they, you know, overcharged me, and they won't fix it or something, or some other form of unjust treatment of me. There's a part of me that wants to be like James and John in the New Testament. Shall I call down fire, Lord. Jesus says, you don't know what spirit you're of.

Seems like Jesus did not want them to do that. But I, for one, if I'm praying, if I'm tempted to pray for punishment for someone else, for their sins or judgment to come on them, what I actually feel in all honesty is afraid. God if I... you said judge not lest you be judged, which you got to read more context. God is not saying to never judge there. He's saying don't judge unrighteously. But by the measure you judge, you will be judged.

I'm afraid of this. I am afraid that if I'm angry at someone and I'm like, God, you know, destroy their life, destroy their business. I'm really upset with them. I want them to suffer punishment for what they did. Maybe you're better than me and you never think such thoughts. Congratulations for being better than me. That's really not much of an accomplishment.

However, I can't pray that way. I just can't do it. Because I wish I could say it was love. Sometimes, maybe. But a lot of times, it's because I'm afraid of what God's going to do to me if I start praying like that. I'm afraid of the consequences. Will God put that back on me?

I don't believe he's going to take away my eternal salvation. I'm not afraid of that. But he might. I'm not convinced that God doesn't still judge in the world. But it's discipline. For those of us who are believers, who are children, it's discipline. I don't particularly want to be disciplined if I can avoid it by just not sinning in the first place.

So I'm afraid of God in a very real way. But it's not. Not a way in which I shrink back. And if I find myself shrinking back or I want to shrink back because I'm afraid, I press in. I press in. I try and take that fear the way it's supposed to be, which is I remember that I need the blood of Jesus.

The blood of Jesus was there, whether I'm consciously remembering it or not. But it sure seems like whilst we can't make any new sacrifices, like in the old covenant, you could just get an animal and make a new sacrifice for your sin. We don't have that option. And however, it does seem that calling to remembrance before the Lord, Father, I, you know, I appeal to the blood of Jesus. It's a real, it's like a process. It's true always, but like you can, sometimes you go through this process of approaching God.

So fear God, understand that choices, every time you don't make a choice in a bad way, because you know, there's consequences, you're actually fearing God. Every time you do something that's just and fair and right, even though you don't want to, like maybe you're a businessman and you make a choice that harms yourself financially, but it's the right thing to do, that's the fear of God.

Mostly we talking about ethics, you know, like morality, but also there the natural fear of God too that I talked about earlier. When I don’t, you know, do things that I know are going to kill me or harm myself it’s because I fear God. I understand that he has made these laws and they don't change for me.

If I were to jump off that building and say, but God loves me, I'm going to know that he loves me all the way down to the ground where I will die.

So if you want to wonder, does God really have immutable, unchangeable laws that he will not back down on, even if it's someone he loves? Look at natural laws. I don't mean natural moral laws. I mean the laws of science, the laws of how nature operates.

Now, God does do miracles. He does intervene. There are times when he does. But as a general rule, nature operates according to his word always. And if you violate it, you will suffer the consequences. You can't say, I'm a Christian, so I'm going to roll around in this poison ivy, and nothing will happen to me. Something might happen.

Now, you know, let's say you're being persecuted, and somebody kidnaps you, and they roll you around in poison ivy. God might deliver you. He might. You know you can trample on snakes and scorpions. I think he’s probably talking about demons there, but nothing’s going to harm you. You handle deadly snakes and they won’t harm you, that sort of thing. I think he’s probably talking about spiritual things.

But God can deliver you. But that doesn't mean that the laws of nature are suspended. They're here for our benefit and they need to be respected.

So respect his natural laws, but also respect his moral and ethical laws, even as a Christian. You just remember if you do screw up, you have an advocate. Jesus Christ. You can go to the Father and say, Lord, I'm sorry, or I'm trying to be sorry. I appeal to the blood of Jesus.

So can you see how the fear of God can be good depending on what you do about it? So it's really almost the choice that you make with the fear. If you go to him understanding with respect, he is the just judge of all the earth, you're handling the fear correctly. If you run from him and hide, in addition to that being absurd that you can hide from God, you're following the fear incorrectly.

So fear the Lord. The beginning of wisdom is this fear of God. I respect. God made the world a certain way. He made human beings a certain way. He made the way humans interact with each other a certain way. It’s all been tainted by sin so sometimes they're not acting the way they should but it’s still the way the world really is.

So like a fear of God is respecting the way God actually made everything. Ethical, relational, personal, physical, natural, spiritual, all of it. He really made it a certain way, and it's going to happen according to his rules, no matter what you wish for.

So fearing God is to respect all the rules in all these areas and understand: choices have consequences. That's the proper fear of the Lord.

So I hope you get inspired to fear the Lord and begin your path, if you haven't already, towards wisdom, learning how the world really works and how everything really works and learning God's ways. And I hope that you remember, do not shrink back. If you screw up, do not shrink back. Your only hope is to run to him. Your only hope is to appeal and remember the blood of Jesus. Run to him in your fear, in your terror, in your concern that he's, what he might do to you. Go to him anyway.

Thank you for listening to Jon's voice notes today. I hope you're blessed and encouraged. Jon's voice notes and Jon signing off.