Thank you. It was such an honor to be here.
First thing I'm going to do is thank God Almighty, the creator of Heaven and Earth. Jesus, I honor you today, and I give you praise for counting me worthy to share the word that you have for your children this morning. I'm excited; that's why I'm crying, because it's so amazing. Thank you, God.
I just pray right now that you open the hearts of your children, that they look beyond this young lady standing before them and they hear the word that you have for them, God, and that their hearts are ready and excited to hear and also live out what you have for them. Thank you for Discover Life Church. Thank you for our leaders. Thank you for every soul that is in this room.
I just surrender this time and I sanctify it in the blood of Jesus. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, Discover Life Church! I am so thankful and so excited to share what God has given me. First, my name is Glory Tomi John. I want to first give honor to Pastor Manny and Pastor Victoria because this platform cannot be taken for granted.
They shared that announcement at our lead team meeting, and the whole team just cracked up because of my face when they were like, "There's a guest speaker coming." I was like, "It's PV!" because I love how she brings the word of God. I was so excited; I was like, "It's her!" And then they were like, "No, it's not PV." I was like, "Okay, it's Pastor Ivan." I was just so excited. And then they were like, "No, it's you!" My face—I wish someone had a picture—because I was like, "What?"
But I know that God has put me in this place for such a time as this. I've heard that word actually ten times this morning, so I know that it is not an accident that this is why the Lord has me here. I want to give honor to them, and I want to thank my family that's watching online, and my mom, Peace, who is also in the room right now. I just want to say thank you to everyone that has allowed me to be here.
This is so amazing. The title of my message is "The Fear of the Lord." I know a lot of times people say, "Okay, I like that; that's really cool." We don't get to see that, so "The Fear of the Lord" is the title of my message.
I don't know about you, but I have a couple of fears. I'm scared of dogs; I don't like water, and I have a couple of other fears. The list goes on and on. One thing I realize is that they stem from unhealthy experiences that I've had that established a lie that I believed to the point that I began to partner with those lies, and I allowed it to be how I live my life and let it be the premise of my life.
Although those fears are real and valid, they're not the truth. At the foundation of those fears, they're centered; they're self-centered. They're designed to protect myself. It's a focus on how I protect myself. I remember when I was getting baptized over there, and because I don't really like being submerged in water, I was holding Pastor Andy's hand so strongly. I wish we had pictures. He put me down, and that fear was so strong, but I came out a new woman.
Another situation was when we went to the retreat, and I was paddle boarding because I was like, "I'm going to be brave; I'm going to go into the deep end." So I got on the paddle board, and I was going, and I was like, "Yes, I got this!" They were cheering me on—Pastor Andrea, Paula, and some other people were over there, Michelle too. They were just chilling by the deck, and I kept going farther and farther because I had gotten comfortable with the water.
Guess what? Two speedboats zoomed by, and I'm wearing a life jacket, but I can't swim. Two speedboats just went by, and I could see the waves coming slowly but surely. So I sat on the paddle board and tried to hold on, but it wasn't working, guys. My paddle board started moving. I was like, "Oh God!" I was waving; I was like, "I need help!" And they were waving back; they thought I was just saying hi. I'm like, "I need help! I can't swim!" But they were like, "Just keep coming, keep coming."
Paula gracefully started coming closer to me, but I started paddling, and I didn't realize how far I had already gone. They were like, "No, you're there; you're almost there!" But that was not my focus. I was just like, "I just need to be alive! I can't fall off this!" I just have to live!
So I kept coming and coming, and then Paula came closer and just helped me till the end. I didn't go back on there for a while; it just wasn't for me. God has been helping me overcome fear.
But I say all of this to say, when we hear "fear," we have a lot of negative connotations to fear. We think about it in such an easy way, but I'm here to demystify that this morning through the help of the Holy Spirit.
If you don't mind, I would love for us to stand for the reading of the word. Wherever it is bold and underlined, I would love for you to come back with a loud "Amen." That's why you guys are awesome!
We're going to be starting with Genesis 3, verses 9 and 10.
"But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, 'Where are you?' And he said, 'I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.'"
Genesis 22, verses 9 to 12.
"When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven and said, 'Abraham!' And he said, 'Here I am.' He said, 'Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now, I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.'"
Last one, Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction."
May the Lord bless the reading of His word. Thank you, Pastor Adrian. You may be seated.
If you've been here a little longer, you would know we've been talking about moments, saying yes, and living on the other side of our yes. We've transitioned from recognizing that there's a moment that we engage with what God is telling us to do, and then from there we say yes. Now we're on the other side of our yes, and we get to live it out.
One thing that I have been understanding just through going through scripture and what the Lord has been teaching me is that there has to be growth from stage to stage. We can't just say all these things, and there's no manifestation of that in our lives. You know that people are watching us online, and they're like, "They said yes; they're now on the other side of their yes," but they still act the same way at work or they still react the same way at school. It has to be evident in everything that we do.
We must graduate from knowing about God to knowing Him as our God intimately, which then now initiates a reverence for Him. That's the fear that I'm talking about today. It initiates an awe, like, "Wow, you are God!" Then it makes us change how we live our lives.
Some believers have mastered the art of moving back and forth. It's like a limbo dance; they just keep going back and forth from various seasons. They commit to this; they're like, "Yes, Jesus, I'm going to do this for you!" But then next week, they're here, dealing with the same thing. The next week, they come back Sunday; they're living there, and then Wednesday afternoon, it's a whole different story. It's a limbo dance back and forth.
That is why you hear them say, "God is still dealing with me with this; God is still working." I believe as a believer that story has to change at some point. You should get to a point of, "God has given me victory over this; God has let me overcome this."
If you've been walking, and this is not condemnation, this is what I want to charge you to be like: "I want to be able to experience that victory and that freedom that He has." That way, they're able to break out of the cycles, and they're able to release the things that God has told them to release.
The Lord is beckoning us; He's calling to Discover Life Church. He's calling to everyone here. We must be committed to maintaining our yes, even on the other side.
I don't know if you've met some people that committed to something, and then somewhere halfway there, there's a whole other story. That's not the calling that God has. Imagine if Jesus, on that walk to Gethsemane or to Golgotha, got there and was like, "Ah man, nah, not doing this again." None of us would be here.
We must be committed. When we say, "God, I am going to seek you with all that I have every morning at 7 a.m.," even if we wake up at 7:05, we're not going to be like, "Oh well, it's done." No, I'm going to come back, and I'm still going to push through. That's the commitment that the Lord is asking us for because we cannot afford to go back.
One thing that I've learned is in the spiritual realm, when you commit to something and then you take one step back, to you it might be physically one step back, but spiritually for some people, it's five, six, ten steps back. We can't afford to do that. It might be just a little bit of compromise, but in the Kingdom of Heaven, compromise is not something we deal with. It's something that when you commit 100%, it's 100%.
Are you with me this morning?
But that also means there's a price; there's a cost that comes with saying yes to Jesus because He also paid the price for us.
In Proverbs 1, verse 7, that we read about the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom, if you've read Proverbs, if you read Psalms, that's something that is everywhere. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Understanding is the beginning and initiation of something.
Dr. Tony Evans, in his commentary, says it is impossible to be wise without fearing the Lord. This does not mean you're walking around terrified; it means holding Him in reverence and taking Him seriously.
I believe we can cultivate a fear of God, and we can do that through a personal relationship with Him. Jesus is so sweet, and He wants us to be intimate with Him and to know Him.
In Psalm 89, verse 7, it says, "God is to be greatly feared in the assembly of the saints and to be held in reverence by all those around Him."
The fear that I'll be talking about today is, in Hebrew, "Yah Ray." Fear has different connotations and different meanings, like we just talked about earlier. But this kind of fear, it's a verb; it's an action. So it's not just a statement; it's something that you live out day to day.
To stand in awe of, to fear, to reverence, to honor, to respect—we can go through many synonyms. To be in astonishment, just like, "You're so amazing!" Fear initiates worship. Many times in the Bible, if you notice, when someone encounters the presence of God, for example, Isaiah in verse 6, when he saw the Lord, he was just like, "Woe is me!" and he bowed in reverence.
When Paul encountered Jesus on the way to go persecute the Christians, he was like, "Lord, Lord!" He fell; he bowed in worship. Mary at Bethany, she bowed. We've seen that over and over again because one thing about the revelation of God is that it puts them in a place; it puts them in recognition of their place in God's place.
It's like, "Oh, okay, this is where I am, and this is where the Lord is." It's like, "Wow, God, I honor you! God, I give you praise!" The immortal, invisible God is conscious of mortals like us. He gave us the breath in our lungs, and He's still mindful of us. I don't know about you, but that's more than enough for me.
The fear of the Lord in the Old Testament, where they continually talk about the fear of the Lord, is a designation of true piety. It is a fear conjoined with love and hope. It's not dread, but it's reverence.
You can have reverence for so many things. In our culture today, if a president of a country walks into this room, we're going to stand, and there will be silence. When you sing the national anthem, you pause and give reverence to the flag or to America. For some people, when their favorite artist is on stage, they can't even breathe; it's just so much excitement. They have that reverence, that excitement for them.
I'm talking about the reverence of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. But can we be honest? He gets the shorthand of our reverence. Some of us pause for our children more than we pause for God. Some of us pause for our partners more than we pause for God. Some of us pause for our jobs more than we pause for God.
I love how John Bevere puts it: "To fear God is to love what He loves and to hate what He hates." So to fear God is to love what He loves and to hate what He hates, meaning you're coming in alignment with Him.
To understand the fear of God, we must demystify how Western culture has defined it. There is a healthy and unhealthy kind of fear, right? We have to distinguish between fear and dread. We have to distinguish between reverence and being terrified.
I don't know about you, but I was born in Kaduna, Nigeria, and that means you had to have an honor and a respect for your elderly. It was instilled in you as a child in various ways. I know a lot of you got the memo. It was instilled in our culture. We honor; we respect; we kneel; we bow. When you hear your name once, it must not be said twice; you should already be in the room.
For someone like my dad, even being thousands of miles away, even over a phone call, sometimes I'm like, "Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Yes, sir!" because of the reverence and the honor, because of how much of a structure and authority he demands from us.
Sadly, though, sometimes that fear and that honor has, I know for me, brought me to a place where I don't get to fully be who I am with them because I'm scared that they won't get to accept me—not just my father now, but people that I don't have a healthy fear with or things that I don't have a healthy fear with.
Remember in the Garden of Eden when they sinned and they ate the fruit—not an apple—they ate the fruit, and they realized, "Oh crap, I messed up." What did they do? They covered and they hid, and he said, "I was afraid." God was like, "Who told you?"
I feel like in that moment too, God was still willing to bring them in, but that fear and that sin had brought a place of being terrified. It's like, "No, you don't want me; you're too holy, and I'm not." But that's not what God desires from us.
In Christianity today, we have two extremes of the pendulum. We have those who take grace for granted all the way. It's like, "I don't have any reason to fear; I'm loved; I have grace; I have everything. I don't need to fear anything."
Some people use scriptures like 2 Timothy 1:7, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of self-control." Some people use that scripture, and they're like, "There's no reason to fear." Some people use 1 John 4:18, and so there's like, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."
All fear, because fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. That is all the truth; that is all in scripture. However, this is a different kind of fear.
The fear that we talked about in the beginning was "Yah Ray," and this one is "Delia," and "Delia" is the Greek for fearfulness and fright. The word denotes cowardice, timidity, and that's never used in a good sense. The spirit of God is not a fear; it's a power of love and of a sound mind.
That's something that you declare for yourself; you declare for your children because that other kind of fear, "Delia," is not what the Lord has given you. He has given you power; He has given you love; He has given you self-control; He has given you a sound mind. That's the fear that—that's the spirit that He has given you.
We need to understand the context in which fear is used. If you—this is something we're learning in young adults—the exegesis and hermeneutics of scripture. Sometimes you can't just read the word and say, "Okay, Psalm 23, the Lord is close," your Bible, read the word for the day, yay! Sometimes you have to go deeper.
What does the word mean in Hebrew? What does the word mean in Greek? What does the word mean? Then you have a different lens through which you see scripture because God is revealing so much more than just the print.
This is not diminishing the word of God, but it's telling you that there's more insight; there's more depth in the scripture when you go deeper. God has given us a spirit of boldness, of power, of courage, but that does not remove our fear and our reverence for Him.
His love and His presence displace that kind of fear—the fear of being dreadful and being scared. His presence displaces that fear.
In Psalm 23, verse 4, it says, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."
So the fright and the being terrified, and sometimes anxiety—for some people, I'm not saying that it's some of it is clinical, yes—but some of it, remembering His presence and tapping into it displaces that kind of fear.
Remembering the presence of God and being there, it's like, "Yes, God, you are with me! I shall not be afraid, for you are with me! For you are with me! For you are with me!"
And then we have those on the other side who are so scared of God, and they relate to God from a distance. To be terrified is to be away from God; it's not a personal, intimate relationship with Him. Some of them are in a place of shame and guilt.
I used to struggle with this as a new believer. If I committed to do something or a temptation that I had, I would be like, "Okay, God, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this," and then if I mess up, it's like I run away from Him, and I go hide. I won't be able to pray anymore; I won't be able to lift my hands in worship. I might just do a little bit, but not fully because I feel filthy.
He doesn't want to see me. That's a lie; that's a lie from the pit of hell. He already paid all the price, so we don't need to be terrified, and we don't need to be away from Him because, again, He desires intimacy to reveal who He is.
So that's the extreme—being super, super scared and being terrified, or "I don't need to fear." Those are both lies. The truth is we are to honor and reverence God, and we begin to see things change in different ways.
Are you with me?
Okay, here are a few effects of the presence of God. So if you're taking notes, I know some people like to have points, so I did this just for you.
1. The fear of God will motivate how you live your life. This is how we live on the other side of our yes—continually fearing God. When we continually fear God, we continually say yes.
I don't think you guys heard that. When you continually fear God, you continually say yes. As Pastor Manny teaches us consistently, he's like, "God has to be the center of our lives." He's the one that guides and reveals Himself to us.
With what God is doing among young adults—guys, if you're a young adult or student here, you need to continually come because the tangible presence of God is being experienced, right?
One thing that our pastors will always encourage us is it doesn't stop on Sunday night; it continues every day. We have to allow God to lead us every single day, and that's how we sustain the encounters and the experiences that we have.
Have you met people that cry and weep at the altar, but then once they step out of the door, my goodness, it's a different person? They're cussing, and I'm not—they're fighting, or the words that come out of their mouths are different because that encounter was not sustained from the altar to the door.
That encounter stopped maybe at that third row; it wasn't sustained because they did not say yes at the door. They did not say yes.
How God motivates how we live our lives is He begins to reveal secrets to us. That way, then nothing catches us by surprise. Have you ever experienced something, and it's like, "Oh yeah, the Lord showed this to me a few days ago?" How does that feel? It feels great because then you're not like, "Oh wow, what just happened?" He already knows everything, so we just need to tap in, listen, and receive what He has and what He's saying.
In Psalm 25, verses 12 to 14, it says, "Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will He instruct in the way that he should choose. His soul shall abide in well-being, and his offspring shall inherit the land. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He makes known to them His covenant."
So even when you fear God, it's not just for you, but it's for generations. It continues; He instructs you; He guides you. That's why someone is like, "Oh, I took the wrong exit," and then they took the wrong exit, but guess what? An accident just happened a few miles away. That's how He instructs; that's how He guides.
When the Holy Spirit leads, it's like, "Oh, okay, let me go do this," and then you look back, and you're like, "Oh wow, that's why that happened."
I'm going ahead of myself because number two:
2. The fear of the Lord causes you to do right. The fear of the Lord causes you to do right. When there is no fear, people sin.
So you ask me, "Okay, causes us to do right by who?" By God—obedience. Like I just talked about earlier, this one is the one that I had to live through in the past year—doing what I don't want, what I don't feel like doing, but doing what He's calling me to do because I have my own plans.
I promise you, I had my plans, and standing here was not part of it. Just going to be honest and vulnerable with you guys. Being in Georgia was not part of it.
But obedience is better than sacrifice. It's way better than sacrifice, guys. It's way better than sacrifice. The peace, the joy that comes when you are where you need to be, right?
Even if it hurts, at the end of that hurting and that process, it stretches your capacity to have more of God. One thing I had to learn is that obedience is right away. Obedience is when He says, "Go do this," you right away go do it.
You're willing to pay the price right there and then to completion and not halfway because delayed obedience is still disobedience. A lot of times—actually, all the time—delayed obedience is still disobedience because there are some lives and some circumstances that are attached to our obedience.
Sometimes we know what God does; He just finds another person and takes that person and moves forward.
So you can't fear God; you can't tell me you fear God and consistently follow your feelings. You know how in our culture it's like, "I feel like doing this," and then I do that? That's a lie. The Bible does not say, "Follow your feelings." Why? Because the heart is desperately wicked.
That's something that we learned in lead team culture. It's like, "Just do you, boo." Don't do you because you would do you into a pit and fall. You can't do you, man! You can't! Because if you do you, you will fail, and you'll fall flat on your face.
You know what? He's going to call you back and bring you again through it because He's very merciful and kind. It doesn't mean, "Oh well, I messed up; that's the end." No, there's grace; there's mercy that comes with it.
So what do you do? You let the word of God guide your path. You know the word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Some people are like, "I don't hear God."
I wish I had my physical Bible; I always do. It's in my bag. That book is where He speaks. You don't need a prophetic word every Sunday morning. You don't need a prophetic word on Sunday nights or prayer nights.
Prayer is for the church, not for you. Corporate prayer is for us, yes. There are times where we come together and we intercede for someone, and we pray over them. But corporate prayer is where we've done our work at home; we've spent time in the secret place.
When we come in, guess what? The fire just burns, and we run, and we're able to pray, and we're able to intercede because we spent time in the word of God.
One thing that has penetrated the culture right now is when I read the word and I didn't feel anything. There are sometimes you're not going to feel anything. I was listening; it's been trending online where the lady was explaining how when you eat, you don't always remember what—if I ask you, Pastor Ivan, what you ate on May 4, 2014, you don't remember.
But guess what? That food nourished your body, and that's part of the reasons why you're here. You don't remember what you even—some people don't remember what they ate last week Tuesday, but that food continually nourishes your body; it gives you the strength that you need.
You know, that's how the word of God is. There are sometimes you would go in and come out; you won't feel anything, I promise you. But that doesn't mean He wasn't there; that doesn't mean something didn't happen in your life because sometimes we don't even get to see what's happening until years later. We're like, "Oh, that's what happened in that room that day."
Are you with me?
Sometimes when He tells you to do something, it might feel weird, but obedience is a command; it's not a suggestion. He said it in John, "If you love me, you obey my commandments."
How many times, I don't know about you, have you obeyed and you're thankful you did? You're like, "Oh, thank you, Jesus! I did not follow my feelings!"
Sometimes we don't even get to know the product of our obedience, and that's hard. Can we be real? That's hard. You're like, "God, you told me to pray for that lady that just cussed me out on my way out of Walmart," and she just looked at you while you were praying like this.
Then you finish praying and you walked away, but you don't know what that seed has planted in her life. You may never get to know, but in heaven, you will, I hope so.
We get to live out the word of God through the Holy Spirit because we can't do it in our own might. I know some people are going to be like, "Well, Glory said live it out," and then you try it for like two weeks, and then on the 12th day, you crash and you mess up because we are not of this world, but we're in this world, and we still have flesh.
So that means we're going to mess up at some point, but we have the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "I'm not leaving you alone; I'm giving you the Helper."
He empowers us. He's not just a comforter and someone we go to. No, He leads our steps every step of the way, and He empowers us to do the things that we're scared to do when He calls us to do it.
How is this connected to the fear of God? Because when you hear the Holy Spirit say, "Don't take that job," you don't take it because you fear God, and you obey, and you lead, and you follow what He said.
God told Abraham, "Now I know you fear God." When I saw this scripture, it was very like, "Wow, God!" It's not that God didn't know, but He declared that over him.
He said, "Oh, okay, I know you fear me now." In Genesis 22, verse 12, it says, "And he said, 'Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him, for now, I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.'"
That's what the angel told Abraham on the mount when he was about to sacrifice Isaac. I know some people might struggle with, "Why would God tell him to give his only son?" I know that's a challenging scripture to receive, but in Hebrews 11:19, it talks about how Abraham reckoned that God would be able to raise Isaac from the dead.
That's the kind of fear and hope and love and reverence that he had. He's like, "God, you're telling me to lay my son on the altar, but it doesn't make sense; I'm still going to do it right away. I'm still going to do it."
Remember, the Lord told him at night, and early in the morning he rose. He didn't wait to say, "Let me discuss with Sarah; let me..." Early in the morning, he was like, "Okay, Isaac, grab the wood and his servants," and he started going to the place that God had not even told him.
He said, "God will tell me when I get there where we're going." That's obedience! People are going to be like, "Why are you doing this?" "I don't know; I'm just going."
Isaac saw this example lived out in his father in his life and his reverence. You know, to the point that God is actually called "The Fearsome God of Isaac." When I saw that, I was like, "Wow, this makes sense!"
Because Isaac knew, seeing his father do it, I don't know about you, but being laid on wood and having a knife pointed at me would change my life for real.
But Isaac knew that fearing God meant revering God's greatness, obeying His commands, submitting to His authority. His fear of the Almighty became a defining characteristic of who he was—the Fearsome God of Isaac. That's what God is known by.
3. The fear of the Lord causes you to seek Him and His face, not just His hand.
Some of us—okay, I'll take a step back. We see this many times in scripture with the Israelites. A lot of times when they were in times of trouble, they would seek God. They'd bring the ephod; they'd bring the Ark of the Covenant. They would tell the priests, "What does God want us to do? What does God want us to do?"
They'd seek Him, and once the battle is over, they're over there worshiping the different idols, worshiping different things. They move away from Him because they don't need Him anymore. They're like, "Oh, we're good," or they think they are. They acted like they didn't need God anymore.
I'm going to go back to what I said earlier: some of us are in church when things are hard, but when God provides and He protects, we move on.
That was deep, guys. Some people, you can tell by their attendance when life is hard. I'm not coming for you; this is not coming for anyone in this room, but it has to change.
It has to change because when you seek Him, you will find Him. When you seek Him and you seek His face, not just His hand, how would you feel if you—I don't know about you guys, but there's always that friend that only calls you when they need something.
How do you feel about those friends? They're not real. They're constantly like, "So, once you see that call, you're like, 'Ring, ring!'" So this is what happened, and then you're like, "Of course, they don't care about you."
Some of us, that's the relationship that we have with God. When our marriages are tough, we're like, "Jesus!" When our children are acting up, then we start reading the Bible, and we're telling them, "The Lord says obey your parents!"
Yeah, but you didn't read and obey the Lord. Why should they?
It's facts! We have to live out what He says.
So we seek Him, and there's a promise in Jeremiah 29:13. The more you know, "When you seek me and you seek me with your whole heart, you'll find me." That's after the verse that we all love, you know, "The plans and the thoughts I have towards you."
He said all of that, but then He's like, "Then when you seek me, you'll find me when you seek me with your whole heart."
Because the more you know God, the more you fear Him. It's beyond head knowledge; it's intimacy. Like Pastor Andy was talking about, it's like Adam knew Eve. That's the intimacy that we experience with God, and that He begins to reveal.
So that's why before you do anything, you seek His face. Before you take a job, before you get into a relationship, before you follow the butterflies in your belly, before you begin a career, before you begin a business, you seek God, and then He leads you and reveals to you—not when things are then messed up that you now come to Him.
I'm telling you, sometimes we do it flipped. It's like we create our own plan and our own strategy, and I've done this before, so I can tell you from experience. Then things are not working at the end, and you're like, "So, Lord Jesus, remember that plan?"
He's like, "I didn't ask you to do it." That's not what I told you to do. It's flipped now; we have to flip the script.
We seek Him before we go. David is so loved by God. Why? Because he inquired of the Lord before he did anything. When things are chaotic, he's like, "Bring the ephod," and he inquires, then he obeys, then he goes.
Why do you think he was so victorious? Not because he really knew everything and all that; no, because he inquired of the Lord.
Last point:
4. The fear of the Lord causes you to honor people.
This one's not common in the American and Western culture. I love you guys, but sometimes I'm like, "Wow, you honor your church leaders; you honor your family; you honor everyone."
In this culture, it's very typical; you just write people off. "I don't care about them; canceled! I don't agree; canceled!" But He says you're supposed to love because everyone is made in the image of God.
When we talked about when He says to love what He loves and hate what He hates, He didn't say hate the people; hate the sin, not the people.
It also says to forgive; it says to forgive.
How do we get there? It's our heart posture. Writing this sermon, God has been revealing this to me for a while. I thought it was a message that I was going to get to teach young adults, and then everything changed because the posture of our heart, especially now for our generation, is so vital.
The world is working very hard against this generation, but then I thought about it; it doesn't leave out the older generation. I'm not calling y'all old, but the older generation is part of it too.
This fear and this reverence is not just for the young people; it's for everyone in this room, including the kids that are jumping and saying yes to VBS. It's part of them too.
So a question I had is, is there something that you hold in reverence more than God? Check your heart. What or who has your ultimate awe? What has your full attention?
There are some people, when they're playing that game, nothing can move them from that space. For some people, when that guy calls, everything's gone. For some people, it's their job; nothing can shift that job from them, forgetting who gave them that job.
One thing I've learned too is that you can love God and not fear Him because, you know, there are a lot of people like, "I love God! I love Jesus! Jesus, yes, my God!"
But they don't fear Him; they don't live their lives as they're supposed to.
It's not for us to live in fear because of the consequences of missing it or from a place of, "Oh God, I just want to give it to you because now I have to fear you."
No, guys, it's a place of honor, of love. It's an inward acknowledgment that is then expressed outwardly. It's like you've acknowledged it inside, then it just pours out of you.
You don't even have to make the effort because, why? I was wondering why is this message so paramount for Discover Life Church?
It was like because the fear of the Lord ushers the presence of the Lord.
As something that my mom would normally say, she's like, "Do you remember back in the day when you walk into the church and your body is like, 'Oh!' You can feel the presence of God?"
That's how we should always be. Every Sunday morning, Pastor Manny doesn't have to push you to get to that place. No, it should already be you walk in.
Imagine when different torches come together; then you can make a bonfire; you can make a bigger fire. But if only one person is coming, that fire is not going to sustain the heat for 150 people.
But if 150 people come with their own torch, can you imagine? The kingdom of darkness has nothing on us!
Then we get to know God as our Father and as our King.
To close this message, Isaiah 11 gives us the picture of the fullness of God and a full revelation. Isaiah was talking about Jesus, and he was prophesying and speaking about Jesus and how Jesus revered the Father.
It says, "The spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. He would delight in obeying the Lord. He will not judge by appearance or make a decision based on hearsay."
The spirit of the Lord will rest on Him; that will motivate how we live our lives. The spirit of wisdom and understanding will make us do right regardless of anything.
The wisdom of counsel and might will make us seek His face and not His hand. The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord will cause us to delight and honor Him because it says His delight is in the fear of God.
So even Jesus has the fear of the Lord.
So Pastor Andrew was saying that part of the fullness of the Lord is the fear of the Lord. Are you a woman? Are you a man that fears the Lord?
on Nov 05, 2023
