I like to think that I have an open mind. I try not to have preconceived notions about things before I experience them for myself.
For example, I will try new foods to see how they taste before I decide if I like them or not. I don’t make decisions based on their name or the way they look or because someone else tells me they don’t like them. It used to make me crazy when my kids would just look at a food and say they didn’t like it. Most of the food they used to say that about they now love – all because they took some time and a little risk and they tried them.
I was flipping through the channels on my television the other day and I came across a preacher I had never heard of before. So, I decided to listen to him and see what his message was. He was a little bit too much full of fire and brimstone for me but, as I said, I like to listen before I make any judgments.
He basically told me I was a sinner. He told me what God liked and didn’t like about me. He told me how I was supposed to act so I would please God. In addition, He supported all of this with scripture.
I was blown away – and not for the good.
I sat there wondering who gave this person the authority and the knowledge to judge me and everyone else listening to him. Who made him the spokesman for God about us?
It saddened me to think that there were people listening to the message being given who might be starting to feel bad about themselves and their inability to live up to how God wants them to be.
In terms of relating a message, I couldn’t be further apart from this person. The message I like to share is a message of hope and encouragement. That God loves each and every one of us even though we are not perfect.
I like to motivate people to try to find a closer relationship with God not turn God into a God we should fear.
When I was growing up we, as children, were told we must fear the Lord. I could never understand why we needed to be afraid of God. If we were afraid of someone, how would we ever really feel comfortable becoming close to that person.
If you look at a dictionary, there are two definitions of fear: the first is “to be afraid or frightened of” and the second is “to be in awe or reverence of”. If you were to read the Bible passages that use the word “fear” and alternately substitute the words “afraid of” and “in awe of” I would think that being in awe and revering the Lord would, most times, be the better choice of words to use.
Through a lot of prayer and reflection on God’s word and my life, I have come to my own personal belief that I am in awe of and revere God rather than being afraid of God.
The person on my television also wanted me to be afraid of God.
Nevertheless, still I listened. After listening, I decided that I didn’t like his message or the way he delivered it. Moreover, its not that it just didn’t fit into what I believed, it was that I also didn’t understand how he could speak with so much authority on how God sees you and me.
God gave His word directly to YOU and ME. We can pick up a Bible and read it ourselves.
Ministers can help guide us and teach us but I don’t believe any person today should stand between you and your relationship with God.
I can tell you what I think God’s word says to me. I can tell you how I apply God’s word to my life. But I am not in a position to tell you how God views you or your actions. That is something very personal between you and God.
God has given us through the Bible, guidelines and examples of how He would like us to live. But God knows that we will all, at times, fall short of the mark He has set for us and that is why He gives us His forgiveness. He knows we will stray but He is always there waiting with open arms for us to come back. His love for us is unconditional. And that is what I am in awe of.
In the end, no matter what others may say, it is up to us to develop our own relationship with God and see God through our own eyes.
This is great! Having been raised in a works based religion witha works based mentality, I was always terrified of God. Then, having an earthly father who strayed and detested me as his daughter did not help my view of authority or father figures. It has been such a bumpy road for me, yet God Blessed me with love and Graced me with His Forgiveness. I fell quite a few times before I actually looked up and understood just how much He loved me. Since 1995, my life has drastically changed. We cannot reach people with anger and threats. Jesus’ example was the one I try to follow. He never forced anyone to follow Him. I want people to experience the mercy He has shown me. His Love in my heart has allowed me to stay strong and go to places where most ‘Christians’ would never go. His Love has opened opportunities for my husband and I to share to people who have actually told us they will not even walk in a church! We have to love people, no matter what they are doing or where they are in their lives because when we truthfully look into our own hearts we realize how short we fall and that except for His Grace and Mercy…there we are!
Great teaching!
Last thought “I believe there is a place for strong preaching…with Love” With ‘LOVE.’
been askin about “fear” for so long… somebody gave me an answer back last may/ beginning of june that has stuck with me… in fact it was the only answer i ever got! Not even my pastor would answer that for me… i was always curious why. it didnt make sense. why was that a hard question? so the one answer i got, i pondered every time i heard we should fear the Lord. i liked the answer, it was something along the lines of ‘recognizing His awesomeness” – here i only had to look up fear in the dictionary to understand his answer and see it had another meaning. now definitely it makes sense. it seems to me, the more i am around church people… the more it seems they are awful hard on the people around them. makes you wonder how you can live up to what we are supposed to be.
with that in mind… your words today, while leave me crying, touch me deeply. i love the Lord’s words. i get so much out of them… but i am not so sure i like the words of the pastor and i wasnt sure what to do with that… and now i think maybe it will be ok… and i’ll figure it out if i keep listening for Him. For Him… and maybe not so much the people at the church that seem to think they have Him all figured out for the rest of us.
thank you…
After fowarding this article to my friend Irma this is what she wrote me back:
Brenda, I also think God will allow you to hear what you need at that moment. If it is meant for you, your soul will listen and not forget, it will keep coming up. Remember, God wants to not only bring us closer to him, but to save our souls as well. If we get to complacent with his mercy, we might miss the message. Blessings, irma
This is so true.
Once again I Thank You,
I can’t believe you are telling people that they don’t need to know that they are sinners and need the forgiveness of God. How else are they going to know that they need Jesus as their Savior. We all have sinned and have fallen short of the Glory of God, that’s why we confess our sins every time we mess up. Also we need meat not just milk. We have to grow and in order to grow we can’t just get encouragement every time we hear the a preacher on t.v. yes it’s good to be encouraged, but we also need to be told we are still sinners and will be until we are raised to perfection with Our Lord. Thanks for the thoughts of the day I have been reading and I have liked all of them until today.
This article was about being afraid of God versus being in awe of and revering God when it comes to using the word “fear”.
I don’t believe that I was telling anyone that they don’t need to know they are sinners. The first book of the Bible makes it very clear that sin is a part of man. Later in the Bible, God sends His Son to us in order to save us from sin.
I also think I did say that God is very forgiving when we fall short of the mark He has set for us (and we all do).
Everyone has free choice. I choose to try to be a better person because of my love for and sense of awe of God.
Granted there are two ways of bringing people into the fold: out of fear or out of love. I would rather be in the company of people who are full of love rather than full of fear. As a father, I know that I want my children close to me because they love me not becuase they are fearful of the repurcussions of not being close to me.
It’s a matter of perspective – fear or love. I choose to be close to God because I love Him.
to Joyce, may I, respectfully, say that Jesus did not “focus” on the fact that we are sinners… His focus was on spreading “Good News” and He summed up what He wanted us to do as “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27) To tell myself i am a sinner everyday will not have the near the affect that telling myself to love others will have. “I am a sinner” will sink people down into themselves whereas “Love your neighbor” will tell them something positive to do for God.
I respect all opinions… but its seems focusing on the ‘love’ – something we can change and make better… would be much more pleasing than focusing on the fact that we are sinners… something we cannot change.
As a sinner…. I wanna know something I can do to please God. Telling me I am a sinner… doesn’t draw me closer to the Lord.
I promise I mean no disrespect for how you see it… but it hurts to see people throw stones. For me… a continual reminder that i am sinner… feels a lot like stones.
Fear can be a healthy thing. I believe fear of our Heavenly Father is much like our Earthly Father. In the same way we are raised to strive and please our Earthly parents. Our Heavenly Father is whom I go to over mere man, as a child, even though I am an adult. In the Bible it states that God is a jealous God. He doesn’t want us to place anyone/anything above Him. The consequences are merely due to that freedom of choice which sometimes can be very humbling. I understand that our “healthy fear” for God keeps us in line with His Word to always be obedient. When I go to God, I know that He knows my heart but I feel such a closeness that I am very specific in my thanks for all He is, was & will be continually blessing me with His goodness. I have my wants, needs etc BUT He KNOWS my needs and wants better than I. Thanks to Him I don’t get what I ask for because if I did it would be putting my will before his. That is what I need to be afraid of: my controlling my life instead of him. Believe me, when I start to do that, it’s like an angry Earthly Father – he’s not happy so therefore He let’s me know by natural consequeces which remind me -I am NOT in charge of this rodeo!! Thank You Gog – what a messier mess I would have!
Re: prev article-last sentence. “God” NOT Gog”.
To keep proper balance however, we should admit our society has gotten very immoral; unfortunately even some Christians are a little lax about sin & don’t focus on God’s holiness as much as they should. We can all tend to get out of balance really quickly either way; either only focusing on God’s love, mercy & forgiveness or only seeing Him as a “cosmic cop” & being afraid of Him. I like the Amp. version of 1 Peter 5:8 – “Be well-balanced, for your adversary, the devil . . .” In my experience sometime there needs to be more humility, repentance, & realizing that we ARE all sinners saved by grace.
Hey Elmer! I’m new to this site, a friend led me to it from the Facebook page you have up here. This is honestly the first article I’ve read up here and I enjoyed it because you have a good mindset about keeping an open mind. This is something I also try to do. I was saved when I was 12 years old after seeing a drama done in church about a girl who died and went to Hell. It terrified me and I did not want to go there. I decided to accept the Lord in my life at that moment.
I have some misgivings about that. I was saved, and I do not regret that decision. I was saved out of knowing the lord could save me and I wanted tobe saved so I wouldn’t have to go to Hell. The play they were putting on was one to reach out to people and I am glad they did that.
A message of fear of God in both ways is one that should be taught, but not in a manner of self-righteousness. We are ALL sinners. However, I don’t think that fear of God should be taught without the LOVE of God.
God IS something to truly fear, but not as an abusive or oppressive rule. It’s more like how you fear your parents because you know they will discipline you when you step out of line. The punishment is done out of love, but that doesn’t make the punishment any less scary.
Elmer, you surely know that these times are producing hard-hearted people who have heard the word of salvation and all the upbuilding messages for years, and only use it as an opportunity to continue to buy into the ‘fire insurance’ offered by a belief system promoted by dark forces that seek our destruction and continue in people-pleasing behaviours devoid of real belief, and churches emptying of people whose pacification mindset is unable to see a harvest for life. Nearly everyone in this country has heard and rejected the word of salvation in favor of the teachers prophesied by the apostle Paul, who give their hungry egos and itching ears some new pseudo-spiritual self-help strokes that exalt the sinner’s needs and minimize Father God’s role as sovereign and Jesus’ role as the spotless Lamb of God sent to pay our enormous sin debt and necessary to our eternal life, relegating Him instead to the status of a teacher and admirable person. We’ve become a complacent nation devoid of any consciousness that we need to endure or real respect for our heavenly Father’s desires for us as His servants, and we will be spewed out of Jesus’ mouth. The LOVE OF YEHOVAH GOD has provided the payment for our sin so that we might not become like the Pharisee who continually praises himself for his own safety in righteousness, not so that we can turn Him into an erstwhile Santa Claus who lives only to make us happy, and the hard-hearted amoung us needs a spiritual ego adjustment occassionally, a ‘Billy Sunday’ or an Elijah to turn the hearts of the children back to the fathers and the hearts of the fathers back to the children! I love your encouraging ministry and your teachings, but for nominal Christians to be truly saved there must needs a realization that we have no right to rest in man-pleasing behaviours and complacency, this will take us straight to hell along with the rest of the decievers who reject the saving message of Father God’s love in Jesus Christ! God bless you and give your ministry fruit for eternity in Father God’s guidance and Will as the ruach ha kadesh guides your figurative pen and provides His nourishing words to refresh our hearts in Him!
‘j’, God bless you today, but you’re wrong…Jesus certainly did focus on the fact that we’re sinners. The first message Jesus preached after His cleansing wilderness experience was actually a reminde of sin and consequences…Mark 1:14-15 records “Now, after John was put into prison Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God and saying, The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand! REPENT, AND BELIEVE IN THE GOSPEL!” In the gospel of John (8:34-36 and 8:44) Jesus clearly and very unpopularly delineates the fact that some of us are children of the devil and slaves to sin who cannot/will not listen to His teachings because of the lack of warm fuzzies therein…His other teachings stand in agreement with and squarely upon this foundation as He traveled around the countryside with His disciples and revealed Father God’s nature and requirements to us so that we might do good and walk in humility in His presence. Micah 6:8 God bless you and give you growth and insight as you continue to take in the sweet word of salvation!
One of the most wonderful things I am learning about my walk with Christ is revelation of the Word. For many years I found the Bible to have conflicting messages. In Proverbs we are told not lean on our own understanding. In Micah it says we are to make a plan and in another area of the Bible says that who build without first calculating the cost. You remember sayings like, have faith — You do what you can do in the natural and and then God will apply the supernatural. So what do you do or think?
You want to build something and you make plans and you do the math. You do the research, calculations, etc. and you cannot see how it is possible but the Bible says that everything is possible to those who believe.
I believe that the role of the Holy Spirit is to guide you into all truth. I thank God for His plan. The Holy Spirit will only tell us what He hears from the Father. If you are in a position or time in your life when you must literally FEAR the Lord then the Holy Spirit will lead you with that revelation. Later, as you continue with your walk with the Lord, the Holy Spirit will give you a new revelation of fear as awesome and reverence as He reveals how great and loving GOD is for saving you by telling you the Word from Timothy stating that God has not given us the “spirit” of fear but of Power and Sound Mind.
The Whisper of God is right on — we must learn to listen. As we grow in our relationship with God we learn to hear Him. What and how He says something to me in my spirit will be based on our relationship. What He says to YOU in your spirit will be based on YOUR relationship.
My brain are too small to try to figure out GOD’s thoughts. I know that He loves me and I have gotten to the point where — regardless of the circumstances — I know that He loves me, has no plans to harm me, always has a plan for escape, is always with me, will supply all of my needs, takes pleasure in prospering me, will not leave or forsake me, is a present help in time of trouble AND I believe it and AND I trust Him because He is faithful.
There are many promises GOD makes in the Bible. He cannot lie. The Holy Spirit will guide you into all Truth.
Healthy debate is probably a good thing. I find it sad when people who love Jesus appear to show anger in there words. Thankyou so much for your thoughts. My faith is steadfast and Jesus is my saviour no matter what.
We are one in Christ
Love Kim
I agree with you,God has shown himself to us through his word.
His love for us is unconditional,as my life has pretty much been a roller
coaster ride with my walk with Jesus.
I have not always been in the light.But God has always been there
to bring me back.
But I do find that it is not easy to return,sometimes the darkness hangs on.
As in the forms of depression that still lingers in me even after I have asked Jesus
to come into my life again.
But I continue to take a step at a time in the process of reaching the light of Jesus in my life.
Thanks for sharing this message:} it helps.
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