Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be
afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself, is
my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation. Isaiah 12:2
FEAR is the byproduct of the original sin in the
Garden of Eden. Fear steals our joy and
holds us back from experiencing the fullness of God’s blessing on our lives.
But fear is also a healthy thing.
Webster defines fear as both “to be afraid or apprehensive” and “to have
a reverential awe of God”. Reverent
AWE.
As a child,
I was in AWE of my daddy. My daddy was
tall, handsome and exhibited a quiet strength that gave me comfort and
assurance when I was near him. I
believed and now truly know that my daddy loves me unconditionally, but he has
very high expectations for me. He wants
the VERY BEST for me. He expects me to
do what is right and is disappointed in me when I don’t. That disappointment is a source of great
fear. I want his approval and to make him proud.
In college, I lost my way. I felt very alone, because I was not meeting
the expectations that I thought my mama and daddy had for me. Though my parents had always been supportive
and loving, I did not reach out to them.
I withdrew from them. It was a
very lonely and dark place. I hid from them my fear and my struggle because I
didn’t trust them to understand. Then
one day, my parents showed up at my room.
They confronted me. They wanted
to know why I was not going to class and why I was withdrawn from them. I was forced to tell them that I was lost. I
hated my major, I didn’t know what to do, and I was a failure. But the most beautiful thing happened in that
moment; my daddy said to me, “You know, Jill, there is nothing you could do to
make me not love you.” Those words freed
me from my chains of fear. They gave me
the hope that I had lost in myself and in my future.
That one sentence taught me everything I needed to
know about Jesus. You see, God is worthy
of our fear and our awe. He is a MIGHTY
God, capable of turning us to stone or striking us down in an instant, but HE
LOVES US. He wants to have a
relationship with us. The fear that
keeps us from trusting Him and being honest with ourselves and others is
not a reverent awe. Reverent awe is the
fear of being separated from the love of God.
To have that awe, we must first know Jesus. Jesus made a way when there was no way. Once we accept that He loves us no matter
what, we can trust that God is always on our side.
