Fear and Transformation

Isa 11:2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.

Isa 11:3 And He will delight in the fear of the LORD, And He will not judge by what His eyes see, Nor make a decision by what His ears hear;

Isa 11:4 But with righteousness He will judge the poor, And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked.

Jesus was fully God and man. Jesus did not need to be transformed into the image of God, but I do. Christ likeness is the major thing that God is doing in me and to me. I can see some of His agenda in the verses above. These are not all the verses that reveal what God is up to in my transformation, but these should not be overlooked.

In verse 2, I like all the stuff but wonder what it would be like to have a relationship with God that had active fear as a part of that relationship. Most, if not all of the fear I know, is bad. How can I have good fear, fear like Jesus had?

Verse 3 goes even further and says that Jesus delighted in this fear of the Lord.

I love it when God is exciting, full of power, performing miracles to show us who He is. But I must admit that I don't have times of enjoyment when I am intimidated by who God is. I seem to like a more controlled God, a God who enjoys doing what I like, and not a sovereign God who does what He likes. I have come to know myself somewhat and that I love to hate the sins that I choose to hate. But I tend to neglect and even justify the sins that I want to keep. The same kind of thing is true of my relationship with God.

I love to agree with God about all the stuff that He agrees with me. But if God becomes a little too much sovereign, then I don't feel so good. I question that He is leading me into deeper revelations of obedience and truth and I feel bad that the "old me" was not good enough. My service and devotion of god tends to be more about me that about Him. This is true in the aspects of fear too.

I fear myself, others, more than I fear the Lord. When given choices of who to offend or neglect, I most often choose to neglect God. I know He is kind and forgiving and that many other people are not, so I trust God to "get over it" while I fear what others might do to me if I don't do what they want. I fear myself in that I make sure I do what I want to do because I just could not live with an unhappy, unfulfilled, un-rewarded me. Surly I am the center of my life, I think, so I fear myself and do what I alone want to do.

OK, enough of my thoughts about me. There is no hope looking into the darkness. I need some light and that comes through Jesus Christ. Jesus shows us that if we can arrive at "delighting in the fear of the Lord" our lives will be good. Jesus is seeking to open our whole being to obeying, yielding, serving, denying self and numerous other issues are not only good, but great!