Word of Encouragement (10/03/2024)
Sing to the LORD, all the earth! Tell of his salvation from day to day. 24 Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! 25 For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and he is to be feared above all gods. 26 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens. 27 Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and joy are in his place. (1 Chron. 16:23-27)
Yesterday, we reflected on how we should fear the Lord above all gods. Do we fear Him as we should? Are we mindful of the weightiness of His glory, which makes even the angels of heaven tremble in fear even though He is the greatest desire of their affections? If we do not fear the Lord, there is a sense in which we are worse than the devil: “Even the demons believe—and shudder” (James 2:19)! Because we are in Christ Jesus, our interaction with God is not in abject fear like the devil’s. But fear God, we must.
If we don’t fear the Lord, we are living in a dangerous illusion. There is a reason that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Mountaineers, who don’t have a healthy fear of the world’s highest mountains, will die. Surfers, who don’t have a healthy fear of big waves, will die. God is infinitely more terrifying than the highest mountains in the winter and the biggest rogue waves at Nazare. He is the One, who is holding the world together (Col. 1:17), including our lives. If God should let go of the world, it will disintegrate into nothing right away. If God should say, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be” (Luke 12:20), what can we say or do to resist Him? He, who does not fear the Lord, is arrogant. We know how God deals with the proud: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). If the almighty God should oppose us and all our endeavors, how frustrating and terrifying that would be!
It is not that we don’t know we should fear the Lord, is it? If we know anything about the Bible, we know that God should be feared above all gods, above all men, above all things. Then, why do we not fear the Lord? It is because we do not meditate on the Word of God and what it says about God’s glory and our frailty. Whatever knowledge we have about the Bible does not take root, easily driven away like chaff by the smallest wind of distraction. What causes the seed of God’s Word to take root in our hearts is the biblical art of meditation, which is a focused, sustained reflection on a specific verse or a theological idea. The goal of meditation is to have our knowledge transformed into affection (which we can say is the devotion of the heart to something) toward God and the things related to God.
This is important because we live by faith, not by sight. We must live by faith because the ultimate reality, which is eternal, is invisible. How can our faith compete against the visible reality, which surrounds us 24/7/365? If the Lord does not sustain us by His power and love, our faith will soon be uprooted and withered. But we cannot grow strong in faith unless we grow competent in the Word of God not only by reading, studying, and memorizing but also by meditating and applying the Word of God diligently and consistently. How deeply rooted is God’s Word in your heart? Pray that the Spirit of Christ would help you see the absolute necessity and urgency of deep communion with God through meditation on His Word!