Who Do You Fear?

Bob Dylan wrote a song in the late 70's that says, we all gotta serve somebody.

And though many think they're free to serve themselves, be their own lower-case god, life doesn't work that way. Okay, you say, but what does that have to do with fear?  

No matter how brave a person is, we all fear somebody too. We may fear people or the devil but we're all afraid to some degree. Some of us fear others so much, we can barely speak in public. Maybe you know the feeling: heart races, can't breath, thoughts jumble, face turns red, and you long for a side door to escape.

I grew up afraid to speak in front of people. That made for a few embarrassing moments in school. The memory of a particular 8th grade science report still stirs up uneasy feelings. In college, speech class was mandatory to earn a degree. Luckily, I found a class offered by an instructor who gave students a C just for showing up, even without giving a speech. I settled for the C. 

All kinds of fear exist in our world: fear of heights, water, darkness, closed 

in places, wide open spaces, certain eight-legged insects. But a few years ago, 

I discovered a fascinating fear that can help loosen the grip of all the others - the fear of God. I've often quoted Oswald Chambers who said, 

 "The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear 

   nothing else, whereas when you do not fear God, you fear everything else."  

I can't say from experience that the fear of God eliminates a fear of spiders, 

but it will definitely help cure our irrational reactions to other people. Still, this principle can be ambiguous. How exactly do we express our fear toward Him?

Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing short, and more frequent posts to help replace our questions with a better understanding of what it means to fear God. Using an A to Z format, we'll look at some fearful verbs that show how being afraid of the right One can be a good thing.