Holy Fear

“So fear the LORD and serve him wholeheartedly.”  Joshua 24:14

 

One Friday afternoon you hear a knock at your front door. You go to the door and it’s Jesus! It’s really Him, in the flesh, standing there in jeans and jacket, with a backpack over one shoulder. He smiles in delight to see you and says, “Hey, I’ve come to hang out with you this weekend. What are we gonna do?” Freeze-frame that moment and think about your next move. Would anything change? As you walk before Him into the living room, are you nervous? What is lying around that you don’t want Him to see?

 What plans need to be cancelled immediately because you already know He would not like them? Would you watch the same movies? TV shows? Would your plans change if Jesus was going to be with you for a couple of days? 

The reaction you had at the thought of Jesus sitting next to you and participating in whatever you are doing is what the Bible calls the fear of the Lord. If you have given your life to Jesus, then you wouldn’t be terrified to see Him standing on your front porch. You love Him; He’s your friend. But a sudden conscious awareness of His presence would grip you and dictate everything you said and did. When the Bible tells us to fear the Lord, that’s what it means. We should live with the continual awareness that Jesus is sitting next to us. If we wouldn’t say or do it with Him in the room, we shouldn’t say or do it at all—because He is in the room. His does see. We will give an account to Him of every single choice we make. God wants us to practice living with the fear of the Lord, because it keeps us from making the kinds of decisions that we will regret for eternity.

Are you living daily with the fear of the Lord? If Jesus showed up at your door today,

 what would change?

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