The Right Kind of Fear The right kind of fear of God is the sort of fear that drives you to prepare yourself that when Jesus comes you will have no shame, your life will be in order. The wrong kind of fear is just trying to escape the judgment of God by appeasing God… these sorts of people try to, they try to cover up their sinful life by giving money to the poor, going on mission trips, doing good things outwardly so they can sort of buy their way into the Kingdom of God. They fear God, they fear hell, so they are trying to do “good deeds” to erase their bad deeds. If that does not make sense to you, I want to give just an earthly example. Imagine you work for a company that has a boss or general manager that comes around once a week. All the bad employees are scared of that manager or that boss coming around once a week because they know that they are lazy and they haven’t done their work. So, they work their HARDEST, NOT at pleasing the boss, but they work their hardest at NOT GETTING CAUGHT. Those kind of employees fear the boss only because they fear losing their job and getting caught. The right kind of fear or respect for the boss would be if you did everything he asked BEFORE the end of the week when he comes. You would prepare everything, and you wouldn’t be fearful that you would be losing your job or getting in trouble because you would have everything lined up for him. But our initial fear or respect would lead you to do what was right in the first place. So, there is a right kind of fear and a wrong kind of fear. Do we fear God out of reverence and respect? Do we love Him? Or are we just fearful that He is going to cast us into hell, are we trying to escape His judgment and we are just appeasing Him (with dead works) but not getting right with Him? Are we lazy? Are we trying to get as close to sin as we can without the judgment of God falling on us? Where is your heart today? Do you really fear God? Or do you just fear His punishment and you are just continuing to live in sin, trying not to get caught? Is your heart really right with your creator today? May the grace of Jesus be with you.
0 Comments