Who among you fears the
LORD? That is an interesting question.
Do I? I think so, or at least I hope so!
Not an irrational being afraid of, but an awesome
respect for the God that keeps my lungs breathing
and my heart pumping without me having to worry
about it. What did Isaiah mean by "fear"?
In the truest sense of the Hebrew word used, that we
transliterate to sound yaw-ray' , it means to be
morally reverent. I like that. It is
wise to be morally reverent before God.
It is also wise to be obedient to Him, at least the best we
know how. We all have some degree of
understanding of how God speaks to us, be it a
prompting or still small voice as some call it, or
maybe through confirmation of a Bible verse by
someone else, or maybe through some circumstance
that we understand couldn't have happened without
God's hands all over it. What ever it is, we
need to pay attention and obey when He "speaks".
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Everyone walks in darkness to some degree. If
we understand that God is the only light by which we
can truly see, and since we rarely understand what
He is really doing, then we also must understand
that we are more in the dark than we want to admit.
The question Isaiah raises is, what do we do with
the darkness - in that season of seemingly no
direction or word from the Lord? Do we pray
and wait or attempt to provide some light of our own
to walk in?
I've known many a solid
God fearing believer who have decided that the
darkness was too much to bear and lit their
own torch. With the best of intentions
saying,"If God isn't going to do something I'm
going to do it myself". That's very dangerous
territory to tread. Its deceptive because
there is an initial feeling that everything is OK as
things seem to fall into place "as expected".
There is also the initial relief that there seems to
be less darkness because something (anything) is
happening.
But what is really happening is exactly what Isaiah
warns - our efforts only ignite sparks, not provide
any sort of real light. If we attempt to do
anything outside of God's will and economy those
sparks only illuminate bits and pieces of our
own plan and the darkness beyond is still where His
plan is which we can't see at all.
It isn't until all of our kindled fire is extinguished
and we are back in the darkness, in more emotional
torment from our own failure than before, that we
say,"Wow God, maybe I should have waited on you".
Maybe we should have!
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