The Fear of God

The fear of God is what you experience when you have traveled as far as your brain can possibly take you in knowing a truth about God and then the Holy Spirit takes you one step beyond the farthest point that your brain can reach.

In order to understand this we need to spend a few moments thinking about an attribute of God, so let's think about God's omnipotence.  God is a being of infinite power.  The sun is approximately one million times as big as the earth.  The surface of the sun is approximately 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  If you want to know how many starts there are (again approximately) write the number 10 and then put 24 zeroes after it.  Many of these stars are bigger and hotter than our sun.  All of the power to fuel these stars came from a person.  It came from God.  And when God got done forming all these stars and lighting the nuclear fires within them, He still had just as much energy inside of Himself as He had before He began to create anything.  That's what we mean when we say that God has infinite power.  His power is limitless.

The paragraph you just read represents just about everything you can know about the omnipotence of God.  There are others who could say it so much better than I can but at the end of the day the information in that paragraph pretty well sums up everything the human mind can grasp about the infinite power of God.  This is true because our brains are not wired to really be able to grasp the concept of infinity.  We can reach a certain point and once we get to that point, no matter how much you strain or try, your brain can't grasp anything beyond that point.

Fortunately for us our hearts are much bigger than our brains.  With the Holy Spirit's guidance and enabling our hearts can take that one step beyond what our brains can know.  The Holy Spirit can communicate immediately and directly to your heart a sense of the omnipotence of God that is beyond what your brain can know.

Is it Biblical to expect such revelations?

"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him."  (John 14:21)

"He (the Holy Spirit) will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you."  (John 16:14)

So yes, it is Biblical to expect such revelations.  But what is this business about the heart being greater than the brain?  Is this just a loose, mystical use of language, or is it Scriptural?

"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know ... what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe."  (Ephesians 1:18, 19)  Now lets take a moment to analyze that passage. 

When this happens to you your emotions are not going to sit on the sidelines with their hands in their pockets.  You are going to experience a range of emotion that can be characterized by words like awe, wonder, and fear.  The intensity of the reaction will vary from person to person and from experience to experience.

The emotional response might be so strong that it would literally cause on to tremble.  To tremble is to shake involuntarily with quick, short movements as from fear or excitement.  With that as a background, let's look at some uses of the word tremble in the Psalms.

"Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still."  (Psalm 4:4) 

"Worship the LORD in holy attire; tremble before Him, all the earth."  (Psalm 96:9) 

"The LORD reigns, let the peoples tremble; He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake!"  (Psalm 99:1)

"My flesh trembles for fear of You, and I am afraid of Your judgments."  (Psalm 119:120)

We might consider trembling to be a mild response to the glory of God compared to what John experience when he had a vision of Christ on Patmos.  "When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man."  (Revelation 1:17)  A number of Old Testament prophets had similar experiences.

Some lessons to be learned about the fear of God.

We should spend our whole lives praying for deeper revelations of God to our inner man.

We are simply kidding ourselves if we embrace a teaching that would limit the fear of the Lord to a deep sense of respect or even reverence.  A direct revelation of God may be accompanied by powerful emotions.  At times it is possible that we will be temporarily overwhelmed.

As always the ultimate test of any experience is the impact it has on our lives.  Any experience, no matter how deep or powerful the emotions involved, that does not change our lives for the better is suspect.  On the other hand an work of the Holy Spirit, even one that is accompanied by very little emotional response on our part, is to be cherished if it results in a closer walk with God.

One final word of exhortation.  We are never to seek an emotional experience for it's own sake.  We must always be seeking to know more and more of Christ.  But as we come to know Him better and better, we should no be shocked if we have the occasional experience of His presence that packs a powerful emotional punch.