TheoBros Memo Issue #28: Growing in the Fear of God
We want to be people living more and more in the reality of God’s presence.
The one who kneels before God can stand before men. The fear of God always displaces the fear of man.
—Steve Lawson
TheoBros and TheoSistas, fearing God is a matter of spiritual life and death.
Why do so many Pastors and supposed “Spiritual Leaders” unushamedly promote a social gospel that steals from the glory of Christ and is anathematized by God?
Why is it no big deal, a minor thing to them, to break 1 Timothy 2:12 and permit women to teach and have authority over men? Why do these scoundrels feel such liberty to undermine the sufficiency of Scripture and add godless ideologies into their counseling sessions? Why do false teachers feel so much unrestrained freedom to give ground to gender-confusion and preferred pronouns in their churches?
Romans 3:18 tells us why they do it: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Why do we fail to disciple our wives, speak to them in harsh tones, ignore their needs, or force them into a place of leadership in the home?
We want to be people living more and more in the reality of God’s presence.
Why do we fail to teach our children God’s Word regularly, do the hard work of disciplining them in love, or ask for forgiveness when we’ve sinned against them? Because others, even ourselves, are becoming bigger, and God is becoming smaller — we need a healthy dose of the fear of God.
Jesus warns us in Matthew 10:28, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” It is the height of stupidity to fear what mere mortals think of us knowing the Omnipotent, Omniscient God of the universe holds the sovereign right in his hands to pardon sinners or condemn them to Hell for eternity.
Proverbs 29:25 says, “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.”
According to Jerry Bridges, “The fear of God is the animating and invigorating principle of a godly life. It is the wellspring of all godly desires and aspirations. Do you desire to be a godly person? Then you must understand and grow in the fear of God.”
If you want to be a pastor that doesn’t budge when the Woke Mafia comes after you or when the government makes your ministry more costly, then you need to grow in the fear of God. If you want to be a man who pleases God in your family and in your vocation, you need to cry out to God to increase your reverence and awe of Him.
J.I. Packer writes in his book Knowing God,
I can hide my heart, and my past, and my future plans, from those around me, but I cannot hide anything from God. I can talk in a way that deceives my fellow creatures as to what I really am, but nothing I say or do can deceive God. He sees through all my reserve and pretense; he knows me as I really am, better indeed than I know myself. A God whose presence and scrutiny I could evade would be a small and trivial deity. But the true God is great and terrible, just because he is always with me and his eye is always upon me. Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator.
My prayer is that I would be so consumed by the Almighty God, the Creator of the Heavens and earth — so consumed by His glory, His power, His holiness, His wrath, His seeing eye, and His Son that I would fear God and nothing else.
We want to be people living more and more in the reality of God’s presence. As Spurgeon wrote, “He who fears God has nothing else to fear. We should stand in such awe of the living Lord that all the threats that can be used by the proudest persecutor should have no more effect upon us than the whistling of the wind.”
Here are some resources to increase your fear of God:
Show Me Your Glory, by Steven J. Lawson
YouTube: How Do I Grow in the Fear of God and Decrease in the Fear of Man?
The Fear of God, by John Bunyan
The Joy of Fearing God, by Jerry Bridges
Episode 39: Matthew Tuck: The Perspicuity of Scripture, Credentialism, Hermeneutics, Rick Warren, and Peeps
Matthew Tuck is a servant of Jesus, the husband of Frances, and the father of Thomas and Joanna. Find him on Twitter as @Skippyman2099. He lives in Los Gatos, California, which in Spanish means, The Cats.