DAY 303 - The Gift of Neediness

Deuteronomy 4:9-14 (NIV) ⁹ Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. ¹⁰ Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when he said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.” ¹¹ You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. ¹² Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. ¹³ He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets. ¹⁴ And the Lord directed me at that time to teach you the decrees and laws you are to follow in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.

Do you have the fear of God, or is this notion strange to you?  The fear of God is not something we can conjure up for ourselves. The fear of God comes as a response to the reality of God, coming to us in some sudden and subtle ways. It is our response to an encounter with God, to a personal meeting with God, to an event that happens. The fear of God is not just an idea we want to believe is true.

Have you ever been loved by someone and you felt so unworthy and so good? That is what the fear of God is like. Have you ever felt someone’s unreserved commitment to you, and felt so undeserving and so grateful? That is what the fear of God is like. But feelings don’t last, and the fear of God is kept active and alive by what we call discipline, habitual actions that nurture that event and help keep that event active in shaping our life.

And when the disciplines are done for the sake of our own spiritual survival and our of our own sense of need, those around us pick up on it and receive something of this value though we may not be aware of it at the time. Others, including our children, see the need we have. The need we have for God is our strength and is what undergirds all our other values. The need for God could be called humility, but that does not quite capture it. I believe the need for God is best described as the fear of God.

Among the Hebrew people, the fear of God was the definition of true religion. The fear of God was also proclaimed and practiced in the early church. The fear of the Lord describes a spirit of trembling adoration. It tells of a person who is very much conscious of God and sense a responsibility to God. And the fear of the God is the disposition of mind and heart that makes us teachable and opens the gate of our soul to receive the truth of God and the gifts of God.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October 29, 1995

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)