“Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.”

— Sir Frances Drake

tyrongasaurus asked:

What does it mean to fear the Lord?

Okay brother, first of all: I laughed really hard at your avatar picture.  It just makes me so happy, and now it’s hard to look away.

So I’ve seen two camps on this “fear of God” thing.

1) The fear of the Lord is a face-melting shake-in-your-boots kind of terror that is some real serious business, because God is so holy He will blast your face off.  The go-to passages on this are often Isaiah 6, Philippians 2:12, or Proverbs 1:7.  Not to mention all that scary-movie stuff in Genesis 35 and Exodus 23.

2) The fear of the Lord actually means “awe” in the original Hebrew language and is like the reverence we have for a beautiful sculpture or a majestic castle or a sweeping landscape.  Everyone’s go-to verse for this is 1 John 4:18.

I’ve really been back and forth on this between Fear #1 and #2.

My thoughts now —

Continue reading “Question: What’s Up With The “Fear of the Lord”?” →