What are you afraid of?

If someone were to ask you right now what were you afraid of, what would you say?

Would you say that you were afraid of God?

Did God even pop into your mind, or were you thinking of something else, like sickness,
or spiders, or even being alone?

We have talked about the fear of God in Bible study before, mostly about how you don't really hear people talk about it very much.  I suppose that is just a sign of the times. People don't want to hear about it, so we just don't talk about it.

Does that make it any less real or important?

All throughout the old testament are stories of a loving God, saving his people from slavery, and hardship.   And all through the old testament are more stories of those same people falling away from God, and suffering the consequences for doing so.

They lost their fear, you could say they got a little too comfortable.

Do you feel like you sometimes get too comfortable?

How many times when things are going good for us do we thank God for our blessings, because that is exactly what they are, blessings.  And how many times do we reach out to him when things are hard?  Most likely we pray more when we are hurting than we do when we are happy.  That doesn't apply to everyone of course, but I'm certainly guilty of not praising him enough when things are good.

I wonder if we don't like to talk about fearing God because we only want to think of a loving God, but God is still loving, but he also just and Holy and deserves to be respectfully feared.  He doesn't want us to be afraid of him, he longs for us to know him. 
He is much like the loving parent who loves their children so much that when they do wrong, they are punished.  

I truly believe that he wants to have this same kind of relationship with us, he loves us like a mother loves her children.  He wants so much for us, and like any parent he only wants what is best for us.  And like any child all we are asked is to be obedient.

God is good!

God is loving!

God is Holy!

“Don’t be afraid,” Moses answered them, “for God has come in this way to test you, and so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning!”

Exodus 20:20