What is it that causes you ‘fear’? Is it everything beyond your ability to comprehend, those things beyond your understanding or experience? Remember the fears of childhood when the boogeyman lurked under the bed, in the closet, everywhere that was dark. Or, what about new experiences like the first day of school or your first test. Then you grew up and put away the childish fears only to discover the possibility of wrong choices, unknown consequences, lost relationships, even deaths.
Not all fear is inappropriate as some protect us from danger—driving faster than our skill level, hiking in bear country or avoiding care of our health or well-being.
The fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ is a righteous fear but is closer to our understanding of respect. Yes, the Lᴏʀᴅ is all-powerful, has all-supremacy, transcends our ability to comprehend but this should be cause for respect rather than avoidance. While we hid from the fearful when a child, with understanding, fear should be the response only to the known. Toward God, respect replaces fear as we are willing to accept what He reveals about Himself, His desire for relationship with us, His using His ability to make intimacy with Him a possibility if we accept…
‘The beginning of knowledge’ is to respect God more than self and how life should be on our terms. As when we were childish, fear without definition is debilitating, we shut down, cease to interact. But the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ begins opening our mind and spirit to the One beyond ourselves and yet desires to enter into life with and in us.
Thank God for the knowledge and then relationship that comes in respecting Him as He has revealed Himself.