Living in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the church increased.

 

Saturday, June 17, 2023


Psalm 106:1-24

1 Samuel 14:36-48

Acts 9:19b-31


Living in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the church increased.


Having had my fill of dry, technical, theological documents, the biggest relief of the freedom from academic work probably comes from being able to jump back into some well-written prose. Trying to find the correct word seems to be a different set of problems for the novelist than it does for the academic. Where academic works contain words with plenty of syllables, they aren’t very pretty words; they lack entirely any sense of dexterity or grace. Novelists (or at least the good ones), by contrast, jump deep into the ocean of verbiage and dig up all sorts of lovely and pleasing terms for the rest of us to enjoy.


Trying to find the correct word to describe something about the relationship between humans and God is on another level entirely. God is so expansive that any words we come up with only scratch the surface of what we are trying to say; and quite often, we only want to take a part of a meaning from a word anyway. “Fear”, as in, “the fear of the Lord”, is one such word.


Looking at how King Saul and his son Jonathon each respected God in their own way gives us some insight as to what it means to fear the Lord. Saul was terrified of God: he walked as if on eggshells, trying to negotiate with God as he would any other man, but rightfully concerned about doing the wrong thing. Jonathon gave us that fantastic reflection, that whether he was to win or lose a battle, it would be God’s doing.


Perhaps we could combine them: instead of treating God like any one else, we should recognise that God is completely different. We should hold this in mind when we are faced with important moral decisions, because God is the ultimate standard of holiness, and the last thing we want to do is be anything other than holy before God. However, we should also remember that everything is God’s doing: God works things through people, but we are merely following the instructions given to us by our Lord. Finally, look at this sentence from Acts again: does it not seem like it is saying that to live in the fear of the Lord is synonymous with living in the comfort of the Holy Spirit? How is that for trying to make mere words describe the ineffable glory of God? Fear that is consistent with comfort is of God; whatever it is that those two words combine to describe is what it means for God’s family, the church, to grow.

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