Devotions - Fear of the Lord

What Does It Mean to “Fear the Lord?”

 

There are upward of 138 occurrences of the term in a wide range of Old Testament books but most prominently in Proverbs, Psalms, Isaiah, Chronicles, and Deuteronomy.  Yet, “do not be afraid” is in the bible over 70 times, so how are we supposed to live in “fear” of the Lord?   

The word Fear, translated in many versions of the bible comes from the Hebrew word, “yirah,” which has a range of meaning in the scriptures.  Sometimes it refers to the fear we feel in anticipation of danger or pain, but it can also mean “awe” and “reverence.” In this latter sense, yirah includes the idea of wonder, amazement, mystery, gratitude, astonishment, adoration and even worship.  (from Hebrew4Christians.com). 

In his book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, Eugene Peterson writes about it:

Fear-of-the-Lord is about living in reverence before God. We don't so much lack knowledge, we lack reverence. Fear-of-the-Lord is not a technique for acquiring spiritual know-how but a willed not-knowing. It is not so much know-how we lack; we lack a simple being-there. Fear-of-the-Lord, nurtured in worship and prayer, silence and quiet, love and sacrifice, turns everything we do into a life of "breathing God."

The fact that fear-of-the-Lord cannot be precisely defined is one of its glories - we are dealing with something that we cannot pin down, we inhabit mystery, we can't be cocksure about anything, we cultivate an attentive and reverent expectation before every person, event, rock, and tree. Presumption recedes, attentiveness increases, expectancy heightens.

The primary way in which we cultivate fear-of-the-Lord is in prayer and worship - personal prayer and corporate worship. We deliberately interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to God, place ourselves intentionally in sacred space, in sacred time, in the Holy Presence - and wait. We become silent and still in order to listen and respond to what is other than us. Once we get the hang of this we find that this can occur any place and any time. But prayer and worship provide the base. "Fear-of-the-Lord" is the best term we have to point to this way of life we cultivate as Christians.

I’ve seen “fear-of-the-Lord” on faces at Trinity on Sundays, from the Communion Table to Passing of the Peace.  Our communal worship each Sunday inspires us to keep living in heightened awareness and expectancy of the Lord.  Simply “being-there” is something we do on Sundays.  Bible study and personal prayer keep us nurtured in the Word and in relationship with God.  And sometimes, our lives are transformed in an instant:  when living in fear-of-the-Lord actually feels like “breathing God.”  And in these moments we experience a fusing of our human feelings and behavior with God’s being and revelation.

Shared by Lynn Byrnes