Words hastily penned on a torn scrap of paper. I don’t know
where I heard or saw them. I just knew I wanted to remember them, to move in
the direction of believing in my heart Christ is worth it. To that end, I want
to share another excerpt from my book, Holy His: Hope for a Life and a
Nation Wholly His.
I believe the Lord is drawing a line in the sand right now, and we must
choose whether we are entirely for Him or entirely against Him. With every
natural disaster, personal disappointment, loss, frightening news report,
financial threat to our security, and threat to our health, we must choose:
will I believe, trust, and follow the Lord or not? We will either cross the
line and determine to love Him and obey His word no matter the cost, or we
won’t. There is no in between, and I am convinced that it is on the other side
of the line that we become holy as He is holy. The journey across that line
begins with the fear of the Lord and a love for Jesus that compels us to do
what He says.
As a whole, the American church, and certainly America as a nation, has
lost the fear of the Lord. A large majority of preachers have forsaken the fear
of God for the fear of man and a message of love, joy, forgiveness, tolerance,
and peace. Without the fear of the Lord, evil prevails, and that is what we are
experiencing right now. Proverbs 6:27-28 warns, “Can a man take fire to his
bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals, and his feet
not be seared?” Messing with the wrath of God is playing with fire. If we
continue in habitual sin, we will get burned. Regardless of how loud others
shout a message of tolerance, as if sin is simply neutral, the word of God
stands true: “He who despises the word will be destroyed, but he who fears the
commandment will be rewarded. The law of the wise is a fountain of life, to turn
one away from the snares of death” (Prov. 13:13-14). We will either fear the
Lord and His commandment, or we will despise Him and His word. Proverbs 14:2
tells us, “He who walks in his uprightness fears the Lord, but he who is
perverse in his ways despises Him.” There is no in between.
The answer, then, is to renew our fear of Him. Psalm 111:10 and Proverbs
9:10 both tell us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” It is our
greatest means for gaining the understanding we need to avoid sin and choose
the way of life. If we look at the word fear
in Hebrew, it is both a reverence or awe of the Lord and terror of Him. He
alone must be the object of our worship, adoration, and amazement, and we must
have a healthy fear of His wrath when we sin against Him. God is holy and just.
He cannot tolerate sin, and Proverbs 16:6 clearly states it is “by fear of the Lord
that one departs from evil” and preserves his soul (Prov. 16:17). When you fear
the Lord, “your days will be multiplied and years of life will be added to you”
(Prov. 9:10-11); you will have strong confidence, and your children will have a
place of refuge (Prov. 14:26-27). Riches, honor, and life also come by way of
humility and the fear of the Lord (Prov. 22:4).
So how do we fear the Lord? Proverbs 8:13 gives us the answer: “The fear
of the Lord is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the
perverse mouth I hate.” When we fear the Lord, we will hate what He hates and
depart from it. We will not tolerate it. We will not even let it be named among
us.
In my walk with the Lord, He has peeled me like an onion. He deals with
me in layers. Each time He peels away a layer of disobedience or a layer of
lies I’ve believed or a layer of worldliness, there’s another layer ready to be
peeled away. The same has been true of how He has revealed His truth to me. He
has dealt with the “big, obvious stuff,” and then He has continued to give me a
deeper understanding of His word, along with a greater responsibility to
continue to purify my thoughts and actions. Gently, lovingly, and firmly, He
has led me to a few key verses that have opened my eyes to understand in a new
way what it means to be holy as He is holy. One of those verses is 2
Corinthians 7:1, which says, “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let
us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness
out of reverence for God” (NIV).[1]
I remember the moment the Holy Spirit revealed the heart of this
scripture as it applies to my life. One of the things that stood out was the
fact that we are told to purify ourselves. Previously, I thought only the Lord
alone could purify me, but this verse makes it clear that I have a part in purifying myself
through the choices I make. The word contaminate stood out and really convicted me. To contaminate is to
defile, pollute, or stain something. We are not to allow anything into our
thoughts, bodies, or spirits that would defile, pollute, stain, or make them
filthy before the Lord. That is our part in cleansing or purifying ourselves.
Starting in my teens, I battled bulimia. In the beginning, and for a
good eight years, I was physically, emotionally, and spiritually a prisoner in
my own body. In college, I reached the point where I knew I was on an
irreversible path of destruction. I realized the physical danger I was
inflicting on myself, and I stopped physically engaging in the behavior of the
disorder. But I remained entrapped in the spiritual and mental bondage of it.
The Lord has been faithful to deliver me, slowly and tenderly peeling back the
layers of this onion. In my mid-thirties, I lived in freedom like never before,
but there were still times when I would fall back into the debilitating cycle
of focusing solely on my body for my value and worth. In these times, I became
obsessed in my thoughts with what I ate, how much I exercised, whether or not I
felt or looked fat, etc. It affected every area of my life and my relationships
because I was consumed with the things of this world as it related to my body
and how I looked.
During this time, the Lord showed me through 2 Corinthians 7:1 that when
there is anything I know to be a trigger, I cannot allow it to contaminate my
body and spirit. If straying from habits that keep me close to the Lord,
stress, other sin in my life, certain foods, certain circumstances, or certain
activities cause me to stumble back into this battle, it is my responsibility
to purify myself of those things. As the Holy Spirit reveals and convicts us of
the things that contaminate us, we become holy as God is holy when we purify
ourselves of those things – when we deliberately choose to no longer allow them
in our lives – out of reverence for God. The word reverence in this verse refers to the fear of God. The original
Greek meaning of this use of fear is
terror or dread.
God is a holy God. He cannot tolerate sin. We will be motivated to
perfect holiness in our lives when we are terrified of God’s holy wrath. If we
don’t fear Him, what motive do we have?
Actually, there is another
motive. Read more Thursday.
Lord, renew our fear of You! By
the power of Your Holy Spirit, give us the ability to live our lives fully on
the other side of the line. Teach us what it means in our personal lives to be
holy as You are holy, and give us wisdom to purify ourselves daily as we become
wholly Yours today.
Shauna Wallace
Holy His
[1]. Blue
Letter Bible. "Paul's Epistle - 2 Corinthians 7 - (NIV - New International
Version)." Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. Accessed July 14, 2011, http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=2Cr&c=7&t=NIV.
