Fearing God?

 

The last few days have been emotional for me. I’ve been reading Charnock’s incredible descriptions of God’s sovereign power at the same time as the OT prophets. For some reason, my focus has been negative when it should not be. The previous section of Charnock’s book was about the goodness of God and I was reading the Psalms and Proverbs. Today this verse challenged my negativity:

The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant. (Psalm 25:14)

Fearing God is not about being fearful of the unpleasant things He could do. Instead, it is being so in awe of Him that He is trusted completely. I might not understand His ways, but this verse says that having that kind of fear means He will give me greater understanding of what He is doing, particularly regarding His covenant promises for His people. 

He wants holiness in my life and may use unpleasant circumstances to deal with anything that should not be in my thoughts or actions, yet when He works that way, the results are worth any pain I might experience. I need not fear my heavenly Father with dread, but with anticipation.

That said, one of the minor prophets heard from God that He was going to use Assyria to punish Israel and Babylon to punish Assyria and Judah. Habakkuk’s question was how can God use a wicked nation for His divine purposes? God judges all nations eventually and this didn’t seem to fit His nature. However, this prophet was able to say, “the righteous shall live by his faith” and those words are later quoted several times in the NT.

For me, this fear I’ve been feeling gets a smack on the side of my head. Instead of dreading what God could do, I need to remember His promises and that He uses all things for my good, not to harm me.

One of the other OT prophets also gives me a kindly smack with this:

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his just commands; seek righteousness; seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord. (Zephaniah 2:3)

The ‘perhaps’ could put more negative fears in my mind, but the promises of God and the words of Habakkuk remind me that God wants my attitude to be in awe of His power but also to be in awe of His desire to protect and keep safe those who humbly rely on Him. In this world it seems those who are evil are being used to wake up the people of God to a deeper trust and obedience. This prophet’s attitude is to be ours, to be mine, rather than letting all the bad news scare me:

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. (Habakkuk 3:17–19)

One more passage speaks to the current attitude of many who claim faith yet are not cooperating with God to build up His church. I am thankful for all that is good in our church, yet see the needs of many who have become complacent. The OT prophets reveal this from God about a need in the lives of His people then, and perhaps even now:

“Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. (Haggai 1:4–6)

PRAY: Oh Lord, too often we pray for our comfort level to be preserved and not so much that Your family (also called the household of God) is built up and godly. Jesus, this concerns me, but also applies to me. It is not right to withdraw into a fearful ‘what happens next’ mood rather than share the confidence that You alone give. Even if the world falls apart, You can enable me to walk in high places and have joy in You and Your power to make good out of what seems entirely negative. So I give You my anxieties about a world with so much brokenness, ongoing threats of terror, and increases in illness and drug use. I cannot add one minute to my life through fear but can ruin my life through trying to carry burdens You alone can carry. Change my “what if” thinking into praise that You, my loving God are in control. 

When Joy takes a holiday

 

Since the middle of January up until two days ago, I had many hours of wondering if this was the way God would take me home. Much of the time I felt as if I would not survive or not ever feel normal again. I joke that normal is only a setting on the dryer, but when illness hits and does not go away, normal takes on a different meaning.

Not only that, my joy vanished. All through the years, the joy of the Lord has always been there, deep in my heart and through good and bad, but this past few weeks, it was missing. Knowing self-pity drives it underground didn’t help. Praying that I would not feel sorry for myself didn’t help. All the kindness shown to me in the hospital and after at home didn’t help. Whining like OT Job with “why this” questions went unanswered.

Finally I stopped all my asking and surrendered to the will of God without knowing what that might be. I belong to Him and He would do whatever He wanted for me, and I accepted that. The very next morning His joy returned. Still coughing and somewhat more tired than usual, but “normal” came back in that when I asked for the joy of the Lord, He granted it to me — and those who know this joy also know that hardships lose their power when joy takes over.

Today’s devotional says joy is not a thing to rejoice over, like the return of health or an outside event, nor is it to be idolized as something to put on a pedestal. Instead, it is the gladness of truth, of realizing what Christ has done, that I know Him, and that no matter what might be happening, He brings delight to my heart. Outer well-being does not do that. Joy goes beyond circumstances in this world with a clear comprehension of who God is and who I am because of Jesus.

The devotional author says we “do not on an earthly plane rejoice in our joy but in the thing that causes our joy. And on the heavenly plane it is the same. We are not to rejoice in our joy, but we are to rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of our salvation.” The OT prophet put it this way:

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places… (Habakkuk 3:17–19)

Not only can no man or devil take this joy from us, and no earthly sorrows can touch it unless… and God answered my “why” questions with this final paragraph:

All the spiritual writers of past generations have recognized this joy in God, and all of them have written concerning the stripping process that seems necessary to bring us to it. They have called this process by different names—“inward desolation,” “winter of the soul,” “dispensation of darkness”—all meaning the same thing, which is the experience of finding all earthly joys strained or taken away in order to drive the soul to God alone.

PRAY: Jesus, I would not thought of being so sick as a stripping process or even these other names for such an experience, but am thankful that in it, You have shown me in a deeper way than ever before that You are enough. No matter what happens, I can rejoice in You, the only One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.