(v.2-6): "Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, life your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding."
What is the fear of the Lord? How do we discern it?
There are a million different sermons about the Fear of the Lord, but I'll be the first to say that none of them really make any sense to me -- until I heard the Fear of the Lord explained like this. Let me start off by saying that the Fear of the Lord is NOT being afraid of the Lord as if He was angry and was going to destroy you for doing evil things. It's not fear of punishment from Him. It's not really Fear the way we think of fear. So then, what is it?
I'm going to back-track a little bit and go back to Proverbs 2. It says that if we seek wisdom, knowledge, and understanding we will discern the Fear of the Lord. So, lets take a look at them:
Wisdom - Wisdom is knowing what to do. It's the action step. More specifically, it's knowing exactly what God wants you to do in a situation.
Example: You ask the Lord how you can influence your city for the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Lord tells you to go and pray for the sick. This is a word of wisdom (an action step).
-James 1 declares that if you ask for wisdom, it will be given to you. Wisdom is promised to you by the Lord.
Understanding - Understanding is the "why." It's the explanation behind the action.
Example: You ask the Lord why you should pray for the sick, and He tells you because that was one way Jesus manifested the Kingdom of Heaven to those around Him, etc, etc...
-You can have wisdom and simply do what the Lord wants you to do without knowing why you're doing it. You can be a robot and things in your life will still work. The Lord will always build His kingdom whether or not you are ignorant of it. However, the work that the Lord is trying to do will not be established in your life (He will have to keep telling you to do something) until you UNDERSTAND why He's having you do something. When you come into understanding it is cemented into you.
Knowledge - Knowledge is the specific piece of information.
Example: The Lord tells you to go across the street to the coffee shop and pray for someone named "Bob" to be healed from cancer.
- A word of knowledge deals with specifics. Once you know the specifics of something you can begin sowing into them on purpose. This will gain you great reward when you not only know what to do and why to do it, but you have the specific information to follow through.
Discernment - if wisdom is knowing what to do in a situation, then discernment is knowing what NOT to do. I'm throwing this in there because it's important.
Okay, so now that we got those defined, lets take a look back at the Fear of the Lord. According to Proverbs 2, the Fear of the Lord is defined through wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and discernment (like I mentioned above). So, here's the scenario:
The purpose of having wisdom, understanding, and knowledge is to be made FULLY AWARE of what is expected of you. If you seek after all these things you have no excuse not to know what the Lord is wanting from your life.
Realize that in the end you will be held accountable for everything the Lord called you to, whether you were ignorant of it or not.
So the Fear of the Lord is defined like this: Knowing fully what the Lord is expecting of you.
Now, if that doesn't scare the pants off of you, I don't know what will. Get this: if we understand exactly what the Lord wants from us, how willing are we going to be to do it knowing that we will be held accountable for it? I would say there's a good chance we will be fighting for the things the Lord has called us to. That's the Fear of the Lord... because if we know what we have to do and don't do it, we are in deep!
Proverbs is full of exhortations for the pursuit of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. These are very important things to have in our lives.
The reason I'm sharing this is because its something that has changed the way I do business with God. The more fully aware of what I'm suppose to do in any situation I'm thrown into is greatly beneficial to me. I know that I won't stray from the path and that in the end I will receive the prize.
And look at what is promised when we pursue these things (Proverbs 2):
v.5 - we will discover the knowledge of God! (what greater prize is there??)
v.7 - He will be our shield
v.8 - He will guard our paths
v.10 - wisdom will be in our hearts and it will be good for our souls! (our mind, will, and emotions)
v.11 - we will be delivered from evil
etc...
The list goes on and on. Read through Proverbs sometime and mark anytime the Lord talks about these things. Trust me, this is something we want to seek and pursue! So... I urge you brethren, to pursue the Fear of the Lord with all your heart, soul, body, mind and strength!
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