Love and Fear

7/14/12…Oh Father, as I sit here this morning, I desire Your presence. Strangely I feel so calm, reassured and peaceful. Seeking You soothes my soul. The days passing me by are restless. Within I sense a need of seeking out instruction, guidance and wisdom. Yesterday I turned to Proverbs in the hope of uncovering seeds of knowledge. I long not to stray, and certainly feel going to Your Word and connecting with those who came before me is the most sensible thing to do. Strange how thousands of years ago I seek the knowledge today’s world is unable to provide. One would think the advancement of our technological intellect would lead to a direct correlation of the advancement of our souls. Sadly though, it has not. We remain slaves to our sin and oppress ourselves. I know this. Therefore I seek the words of wisdom from Solomon, knowing before his fall, You inspired Him with thoughts of who You are, and guidance to travel well.

I pray for insight and humility, for I fear pride is my largest obstacle.

As I go through Proverbs, I realize circumstances in my life and the experiences behind me may shape how the Spirit within chooses to speak to me. As I start, this initial verse stands out to me:

1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. For some reason this verse caused me to pause before reading on. The word fear stood out to me like a monolith. I read this verse again and wonder why I am compelled to go no further. Indeed, the greatest commandment consistent throughout the Old and New Testament is to love, not fear, my Father with all my heart, soul and mind. On a personal level, the word fear brings up bad memories for me, especially from a fire and brimstone religious upbringing. So I think to myself, to even begin knowing God, I must fear Him first? Loving someone is much better than fearing someone. After all, with fear, how do I build relationship? With love, yes. With fear, hmmm. So I look up the word fear in a dictionary to try and grasp more of what this word means. What I find is this among the many definitions: fear is extreme reverence or awe, as toward a supreme power. Okay, in this context, I can better live with the word fear because I am in awe of my God, and the word reverence speaks of respect, which I desire to have for God.

Still I am not quite grasping the depth yet. Hmmm. Let me look up reverence and understand more of what this word means. The definition of reverence is a feeling of profound awe and respect and often love. I am sitting in my chair and my eyes open wider and my face moves suddenly towards the computer screen. I am somewhat dumbfounded by what I just read. Am I really seeing this correctly? Did I just read the word love? I look again at the screen and indeed yes, I just read the word love.

Somehow…the definition of fear led to the word love.