Gen 22:12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now
I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son,
from me.”
To fear the Lord is to trust the Lord, to trust is to fear the Lord; the two go hand in hand. We tend to focus so much on the negative connotation of fear that we have forgotten about the positive. When we fear God, it is evident through the respect that our lives demonstrates to Him that He is in control of all things, while at the same time we trust that He will provide the needs to accomplish His plan through our lives.
Do you know that God knows you fear him or are you still guessing?
To know would mean a selfless life knowing that the one who gave you what you have owns it all. To know is to trust that if He desires it back, He will still provide a way to fulfill His purpose through our lives!
Abraham believed God when He said that He would bless Him with a son that would bring about His promised. Through the disciplines throughout his life Abraham came to learn that God would take care of fulfilling His own purpose through him. God would be the one to provide Abraham with everything he needed to ensure that His purpose was fulfilled. Therefore when the time came, Abraham, trusting that God would fulfill His purpose through Him, even if it meant that God would raise His son from the dead! (Hebrews 11:19) Abraham had one responsibility and that was to obey God! His Fear displayed his trust that God knew what He was doing!
The opposite would be to live selfishly, withholding back from God what He has freely given us. Living and not understanding that God is the one who has provided us with everything we have and that it is all for His purpose. To not fear God is to live questioning God rather than simply obeying Him. As with Abraham, God through His love for us will continue to discipline us.
How do we get to this point? What do the examples in the Bible show us? We wait on the Lord. Abraham was simply living life when God called him, the disciples, they were going about their ways until Jesus said come follow me. When God does call us to Himself, we don’t need to try to help God fulfill His purpose in our lives but we simply live everyday in fear; respect and reverence to God, obeying and trusting that in His timing, He will provide and He will accomplish His purpose through our lives. When the time comes, we too, like Abraham will be ready to present our offering to the Lord, we will simply say Yes Lord!
Fear! – Do you know that God knows you Fear Him?
