Latest / BECOMING | Biblical Truths, Purpose, Identity in Christ, Grow Towards God / 6. The fear of God is life itself
Transcript
- Elly: Hi friends, welcome to Becoming. My name is Ellie Nelly, your host of this Becoming Show. And if you are new here, or honestly, it's episode six, so it's a good time to recap. If you've listened this long, I don't want us to forget the plot of why we're here, what we're doing. the reason I chose the word becoming for this podcast is because we are all becoming someone. We are formed by the world around us, constantly, consistently formed. And so we're all becoming someone based off of people we know, things we do, experiences we encounter. And are we letting those things, people, experiences form us more than we are actively choosing to be formed by Christ into the person we were made to be? And I know thinking about the concept, who are you made to be? It's scary, it's big, it's kind of overwhelming. But when we look to Christ and keep our eyes focused on him, then we are able to charge forward with a plan and with excitement and with endurance. So that's what this podcast is all about is charging forward towards Christ and who we were created to be. And this week we are talking about loving people well, loving people who hurt us. really well and having a heart of compassion towards them because you know they say teach what you know and guys I don't even know if I'm qualified to teach this because I just lived it three days ago but I want to talk about it because I feel like this is a very common lived experience. And so today we're talking about how to be kind to people who hurt you and how to truly have the fear of the Lord in our hearts and why it's actually a good thing. I know we hear so so many times that Fearing fear is bad, the Bible tells us all the time do not be afraid. But why the one fear we're actually allowed to have, the fear of the Lord is so, so good for us. And then at the end we're gonna identify where we may be lacking and allowing the fear of the Lord to be imperfect. And when it's imperfect, when it's not all that it's supposed to be, often it can feel frightening or it feels like we're trying to do it, but something just is missing. It's it's not quite right, it's falling flat. So all of that is what we'll be talking about and more in this episode of becoming. So let's get into it. Okay, so talking about the fear of the Lord and why that is such a such a good thing and actually a blessing in our lives. weirdly, the only fear that we're called to have in the whole Bible is the fear of the Lord. And we'll get into it with some verses, but for context, the reason I picked this passage was actually because one of my students, Audrey, brought it up in our Bible study this morning, but it was because I had a really hard time. being a nice person this weekend. And I am a pretty easy-going gal. I'm pretty friendly at my church. I work in my church and I work in our communications department, but I also do some hospitality stuff right now, which means in the back there's a welcome table where new people can come to get information or people who are already attenders can come and sign up for events or ask questions or honestly anything. I'm just there to be a resource to anyone who needs it. Or if some people just want to talk, I'm there for that too. And so I really enjoy my job there. I enjoy my time at the welcome table. But this Sunday was especially hard for me because working in ministry is fantastic for so many reasons and it is such a blessing to do it. However, I often forget that the people who I am coming into contact with are just as broken as I am if not more. And broken people hurt other people. And so this weekend I encountered some very broken people, and there was just some issues with I moved a table in the hallway from one side to the other side. That ministry is still being promoted, all the ways according to our promotions handbook that we're supposed to promote them. They get upset, they talk to a pastor during the week before leading up to Sunday, they talk to a pastor Sunday morning. And then they still come and they talk to me and they're upset that I move their table. And it was really hard because I am a pretty polite person as well. My mom raised me to be polite and respectful. everyone deserves to be treated like a human being. But Sometimes I think older people look at younger people and go, I already know they're gonna be mean to me, so I'm just gonna be mean to them back. Don't super love that behavior. And that's okay. Some people, you know, it may not be old people for you, it may be other people your own age are just not nice because they either expect you to be nice or because they know you're gonna be nice, and so they're just gonna treat you like crap. And it's so, so hard sometimes to love them well. And so I was having a conversation with this person, having to explain. why we moved their table, but it was for safety concerns. Like there were actual reasons. It wasn't me trying to be petty. And genuinely, I thought it would be better for them to be on the other side of the hallway. It's a whole thing. I do not need to get into it. I have people who I can vent to and I vented to them. But all this to say I was struggling to have this conversation over and over again. Multiple people coming up to me and my heart just started to get hard and upset and bitter and other people who weren't upset at me weren't saying that I messed something up. were coming up asking for information and it was hard for me to give them my full attention because I felt like I mentally I was stewing on these people who were making me upset or making me feel like I had hurt them when I quite literally was treating them with kindness and respect and politeness. And then this nice older gentleman who is so lovely and he helps at our church every week came up to me and said, I have a problem with you. And my reaction was not one of kindness. I said, you're the fourth person this morning, let's just just get out with it. Let's have it. And that was not the nicest thing of me to say, but I at that point was kind of done. And it was a very minor issue that I was able to rectify, and it was my fault. I did something wrong. And so I had to deal with this with these people that were very challenging for me. And I went home and I told my husband, I told my parents, because we had family dinner later that day, and I was like, I'm just so over. People not being nice to me, people not treating me well, All this to say, I was working so hard to represent Christ well, to give them no reason to complain about me, and I just had this upsetness, this bitterness that I felt just like weighing on me. And I went into my Monday meeting where we talk about Sunday stuff, and honestly, I was pressed. I woke up that morning, I got an email, someone was just trying to rage bait me from a spam Gmail account. Like, all this to say, I go into my Monday meeting and I'm pressed. I'm very upset. And sometimes I feel like you know what I'm talking about, where you're just like, I feel like I need someone to like say that I deserve justice for this experience. And one of my coworkers sitting next to me, she does worship, and she said that a lady cornered her in the bathroom and complained to her about not doing enough hymns and she just had this look of like peace on her face and she goes I wasn't affected by it at all and in my mind I'm like my gosh first of all she's awesome second of all I suck because I am super affected by this like majorly affected by this like I I was thinking about it on my way to work like I'ma use that meeting to just talk about these people who are not being nice to me and Our sermon that Sunday was about loving people well, about anytime you interact with people, loving them first, choosing to have love be your first action towards others. And her point was, she said, as she was talking to me in the bathroom, I just felt like my heart hurt for her because she didn't get it. Like she just listened to a sermon on love, and the first thing she says is something that's hateful and mean and discouraging, and it's tearing somebody else down. And Which my coworker said, I just my heart hurt for her because she clearly doesn't get it. She like doesn't have her heart is so hard, she's not letting the Holy Spirit move inside of her. And you can tell because she's saying harsh words and she's not being kind. And I thought about that and I felt so, so convicted that I was so bitter in my heart and realizing my heart when people treat me poorly, yes, I am. Totally allowed to be hurt, you are totally allowed to be hurt, you are totally allowed to feel frustrated and angry and all of those things. But at the end of the day, before you lay your head on your pillow, our hearts should feel compassion towards people who don't know how to treat us with love. Because clearly they don't get it. Because when we know God, the Bible says that God is love. So if we know God, we know love. If they don't know God, they don't know love, like true love, ever. In any part of their lives. They've never experienced true abiding in Christ's love. And that's so sad. Like that makes me so sad for the people I talked to on Sunday that they listened to that sermon and walked away and didn't get anything out of it. Like they didn't get any closer to Christ. They weren't that much more excited to be in community. They were just bothered and angry and upset and thinking about how hard their hearts must be. It makes me sad. And I've been I've been praying that the Lord would continue to convict me about this, which is what leads me to our topic today, a fear of the Lord. My my Tuesday Bible study with my senior girls is so special to me. And one of them read this verse. She's like, this verse in Hosea reminds me of Proverbs 1923. And Proverbs 1923 says, The fear of the Lord leads to life. Then one rests content, untouched by trouble. And I thought my gosh. I have the fear of the Lord and I can rest fully content in God knowing that other people weren't nice to me. I can rest content in him because I know that he has got me. And so that's what we're gonna talk about today. How the fear of the Lord is good, can produce fruit, can help lead to growth in your life, can give you so much peace and comfort. And I want to look specifically at this verse because I looked it up in a few different translations, which is something I like to do because I am a Bible nerd And okay, I'm just gonna read it in a few different translations because I feel like different translations emphasize things differently or word them different ways that can really help us build a full picture of what this verse is saying. And pay attention for the things that are consistently repeated translation to translation. So mine says, N I V, the fear of the Lord leads to life. Then one rests content, untouched by trouble. C E B, which is Christian English Bible says, the fear of the Lord leads to life, then one rests content, untouched by harm. CSV says, the fear of the Lord leads to life. One will sleep at night without danger. Hmm. ESV, the fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied. He will not be visited by harm. E B, which is the modern English Bible, says, The fear of the Lord leads to life. He who has it will abide steadfast, he will not be visited with evil. And lastly, the message says, fear, the fear of God is life itself. A full life and serene. No nasty surprises. I like that. Sometimes these different translations make me chuckle. Not only will you not be fizzed with evil or you will not be in danger at night when you sleep, but your life will have no nasty surprises when you have the fear of the Lord. The fear of God is life itself. I feel like that summarizes pretty much this whole thing: why the fear of God isn't bad and life-taking. The fear of God provides freedom and is life-giving. And I think I Don't I don't know how much fear of the Lord I have in myself, but I know I have enough that at the end of the day I can have compassion for these people. I can pray for those who have afflicted me, and I can lay my head down at night and rest content knowing that I am I am safe and I am untouched by harm. Their words really can't do anything to me that I don't let them do to myself. So they have no power over me. So How can fear lead to life? Now, this fear that we're talking about is not paralyzing terror that strikes fear into the heart of tiny children. It's not like the way that you would feel as a small child laying in bed with all the lights off, thinking there's a monster under your bed. That is not the same fear as this fear. That is a very different type of fear. This fear I've broken down into three, in my mind, three different categories. Reverent awe, deep respect, and humble submission. What I mean by Reverend is it's big picture. It's thinking about the God who created the heavens and the stars in the sky, and like the fact that there are so many stars in the sky we can't even see all of them, let alone see all of them from our location on earth. It's like having this like joy and in just being included in God's creation and this like. Big picture, breathtaking, insurmountably undescribable. It's like a gasp of like excitement. You know, that's reverent awe. But to have it not in a way that's childish, but in a way that's childlike, where it's genuine, it's honest, it's serious somehow. it's not lighthearted, but it's it's like a moving moment that's felt like a warm blanket of excitement. the second one is deep respect, which is devotion, knowing God's character. Deep respect means you're being actively intentional of the whole, the whole being all of God. You're not just looking at part of God, you're not just like, God's over there, that's cool. Okay, I know him informally. We talked about two forms to know earlier so that we can know there's two forms of the word to know. There's a formal and there's an informal. And so deep respect means the informal to know. It's that closeness. It's that intimate relationship. It's that not just knowing that someone has brown hair, but knowing that their favorite part of a sunset is the color orange. Like it's It's those little tiny details. So deep respect means knowing God, like really getting to know him and his character. And then the last one, humble submission, being servant-hearted, willing to obey, and align with God's will over your own. Because we can have and we can have this like intimate knowledge. But if at the end of the day we're able to walk away, we're not willing to submit, we're putting our God at arm's length, we're not really able to do the other. Other two things fully either. So humble submission. So all three coming together to make fear of God and why that's good. So I have come up with three different labels of people I feel like fall into missing one of these characteristics. I will just out my out myself. I am the sober servant. I'm the last one. We'll get there. The first one is the agreeable independent. This person has reverent awe and deep respect. they can know and agree, but in the end, they go their own way. They're not willing to abide. They're not willing to obey. They're not willing to submit to the will of the Lord. They're like, yes, this is great. Yes, I know God. I love him. But when it comes time to put the pedals to the metal, they're just not willing to yield to God's way and they want to pave their own way. And I know that some of us Why having a fear of the Lord is hard because you get so close, you get your toes gripped over the edge, ready to free fall into complete and total submission to the Lord, and then you realize it's a free fall. It's scary, there's risk, but also it seems like the other people who do it have great rewards. So it's one of those things where it's hard. You can't halfway do it. You have to all the way do it. And what these people need, what I think this person needs so desperately. Is they need the want to obey God. We know we need to obey God in our minds, but our heart's desire is selfish. Our heart's desire is self-protecting. And if we think following God is going to cause us harm, we won't let ourselves do it. And so we have to want to obey God. We have to pray to want to let our hearts submit to the Lord instead of our own way. The second one is the religious congregate. This person has reverent awe and they have. Humble submission, but they lack deep respect. And what this means is you formally know God. You know God from afar. You keep him far, far away. He is the God of the Bible that you pick up on Christmas and Easter and maybe a few other times, and you kind of know some stories about him, and you know that he raised from the dead and he sent his son and he's three and one, and that's kind of confusing, but you don't know God's love for you. You don't understand God's character. You don't see this book as one big story with one main character that's God. You see it as 66 separate books with other main characters and God sometimes shows up. That's just like let's just be honest. Like that's how I was seeing the Bible probably up until three or four years ago. Was 66 unique stories that I could read if I wanted to and some of them were really long and I don't understand numbers and God is hard to understand and this is confusing and keeping him far away because this is a lot. this person formally knows God, has lacking relational intentionality, which fathers fosters respect. You follow, but you follow pointlessly. You're amazed at God, but you just don't understand. You don't have heart, you don't have passion, you don't have the oomph. Behind your faith that it just feels like other people have because you're lacking that relational element. the need for the religious congregant is to go deeper in knowing God's character, to understand the why from God, you know, why God lets bad things bad things happen to good people, why God is willing to let you suffer when it seems like no one else is suffering. Why, why, why? To ask those hard questions, to press into the tension, to seek the answers, to push through the uncomfortableness of not knowing for the sake of knowing God. And I'm not saying you'll push through and get all the answers, but I'm saying you'll push through and understand God's character and why you can trust him despite not knowing the answers. The last one is the heart of the sober servant. Feeling super called out by writing this, but I No, it's me. So here we go. has a deep respect and humble submission, but not as much reverent awe. You do the right things out of relational deepness and a willingness to obey, but you miss the awe and soul-stirring wonder of being truly loved by God. I know this is me. I have tendencies of being a Martha instead of a Mary if you're. well acquainted with the Bible, you'll know what I'm meaning. But there are two ladies in the New Testament, one of whom sits at the feet of Jesus. Every time she's mentioned, the whole time in the New Testament, she is sitting at the feet of Jesus. She is never mentioned not sitting at the feet of Jesus. She is always right there, dropping everything, just paying attention to him, not distracted. Her sister Martha is kind of just a busybody. She's out doing things. When she encounters Jesus, like there's this part where her brother dies, she's upset, she hears Jesus is coming. And her sister Mary waits for Jesus to come to her. And Martha, being the proactive queen she is, charges out on the street, runs to Jesus, catches him on the street, and just starts yapping his ear off. She's like, Jesus, if you were here, let me tell you what you should have been doing. If you had been here, all this stuff. She just goes goes off on him. And Jesus just, you know, is so, so kind and compassionate to her. And he goes, I know Martha. I know. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. And he comforts her and he is compassion for her. in all of her busybodiness. And I know, me personally, I am a Martha and I'm missing the awe. She doesn't run to Jesus and ask for a hug and feel completely loved in his presence. She goes and starts yapping about all of her problems. That's me. Maybe that's you too and that felt convict because it feels convict to me. the need for the heart of the sober servant, is to learn to fall in love with God and be loved by God. In a way that is exciting, in a way that brings joy, and a way that gives you that awe and childlike wonder and that like you know, like when you were a little kid and you would experience Christmas and it just felt too good to be true and too magical to be real. And maybe this is just me, but I love, love, love Christmas and I've loved it since I was a little kid, I remember being probably five or six and going to bed a few days before Christmas Eve, thinking, I hope I don't wake up and it's a dream and we're really back in summer again because this just feels like it's not even real. Like I'm having so much fun and things are so wonderful that I can't even can't even believe this is real. And I hope I don't wake up from this dream because it just feels like it couldn't be reality. And I want to have that wonder about my Faith, but I know I'm lacking it. And so for me, the sober servant, it's a need to learn to fall in love with God and being loved by God in that way where I feel like, it's so sweet and it's so special and it's so unique that I hope I don't wake up from this dream because it's just so wonderful to be loved by God like this. so those are the three archetypes of person. There could be more, there could be way more, and these could be completely off, but This is just what I'm feeling like is what it's breaking down to. So are you the agreeable independent, someone who has reverent awe and deep respect, but you're missing that humble submission piece? Are you someone who's a religious congregant who has reverent awe and respectful submission, but humble submission, but you're missing that deeper, deeper respect, deeper honoring of the Lord. And then the sober servant who is respectful and submissive. But is not unfortunately filled with the awe of what God is doing. And also by submissive, a lot of people take submissive, I think, especially as women, we take submissive to be like weak. But submissive is having the strength to let other people lead and trusting God enough and praying for people enough and being strong enough in your relationship with the Lord to go, I know that God's got me. So I'm trusting that he's empowering other people to lead me well. And it's also saying when things feel like they aren't being led well, to have the confidence and boldness to stand up and go, this is ungodly. I'm not doing this. I need you to lead me well. So, okay, homework for today would be, if you want to, completely optional, to go through and kind of try to figure out what personality type you are. Are you someone who is fully fearing the Lord? And if you are, that is amazing. Props to you. If you have any tips, please let me know. and if you aren't which one of these personality types you are, or even coming up with a completely distinct personality type that's separate from any of the three I came up with. and then lastly, looking at what it means to have the fear of the Lord and the way that I went through and I looked up all these different translations of the same verse, I want you guys to do that with other verses. So other verses that you could look up potentially that all talk about the fear of the Lord. Proverbs 9, 10. Ecclesiastes 12 verse 13, Proverbs 14, 27, Psalm 111, verse 10, this one, Proverbs 19, 23, Acts 9, verse 31, and Hebrews 12, verse 28. In case you need a starting point or you can go find your own. But that is what I have for you this week. I know that sometimes when you hear sermons about people not being nice, it's in the midst of people not being nice. Or it's right before people start not being nice. And if that is the case, I'm really sorry because it's hard to have people be unkind to you. But I think it's really important that regardless of the way other people decide to act, that when people interact with you as a person of Christ, when people interact with me, that they're getting the same me every time that is kind and compassionate and full of joy of the Lord. And has a fear of the Lord and is willing to see them as a person who doesn't and to love them accordingly because clearly they're hurting kind of a lot if they're willing to take it out on you. So I'm sorry if that's the case. And if you have any prayer quests, you can always reach out. I'll be praying for you. But stay strong in your faith. I believe in you. We're getting there, we're becoming who we were made to be. And it feels pretty good to be like, wow, I feel like I'm growing. And that's really cool. I like it. I like feel like feeling like I'm growing more towards God. So maybe that's just me, but I'm excited nonetheless. So may the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you and be gracious to you this week as you interact with people. Choose to love them first and learn to have the fear of the Lord. And we will see you next week. Bye.