I recently noticed that my prayers sounded more like instructions to Papa God than prayers of faith. I was telling Him what was wrong, how to fix it, and who needed what. Then it hit me: I wasn’t praying from trust—I was praying from fear.
Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I’ve pondered that verse for the entire 20 years I’ve been a believer. Over the years, people have tried to explain it by saying I should be terrified of a holy and wrathful God. They painted frightening pictures of a God I did not recognize.
Because the God who met me in the dirt of my addiction—the One who found me in my need, loved me back to wholeness, kept no record of my wrongs, and died for me—looked nothing like that. So, I never accepted the idea that “fear of the Lord” meant cowering before a God poised to destroy me.
Besides, why would fearing Papa God make me wise when later in Proverbs I’m told to “trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding”? How am I supposed to fully trust someone I’m terrified might incinerate me? None of it made sense.
Until recently.
A few weeks ago, something deeply important to me fell apart, and I had to make difficult decisions. So, I sought the Lord—and the book of Proverbs. As I began to pray, I felt Him whisper to my heart, “What decisions would you make if you weren’t afraid?”
Immediately, I knew the answer. I knew exactly what I would do if the fear of failure wasn’t shouting in my ear. And instantly I sensed Him say, That’s the way. That’s the path. And suddenly, “the fear of the Lord” made sense to me.
The Fear of the Lord means this: deep down, I am far more impressed by the size, power, and goodness of my God than I am by the size of any problem facing me.
It means the hugeness of God—the star-breathing force of Psalm 33:6, the God who is for me in Psalm 118:6—is more real to me than the hugeness of what I fear.
King David knew that kind of holy fear. It was that awe and confidence that made him run quickly to the battlefield with nothing but a slingshot and a stone while he was still just a teenage shepherd. David knew his God, and he trusted Him. Therefore, when he heard Goliath taunting Israel, he didn’t hesitate. He picked up his slingshot and ran toward the giant—not because he feared God would punish him if he didn’t, but because he trusted God completely.
That’s the fear of the Lord: a reverent awe that makes you bold because you know who fights for you.
And that’s why I’m learning to surrender my opinions about what God needs to fix in my life—and in the lives of the people I love. When I see giants standing in front of them—addiction, affairs, mental illness, heartbreak—I don’t have to direct God on how to handle them.
I can simply run straight at those giants with confidence that what’s in my “slingshot” is bigger than anything they face. And I can pray:
“Father, let Your Kingdom come.
Let Your will be done,
on earth as it is in Heaven—
right now in their heart.”
No responses yet