The Conclusion part 2
When you get right down to it... it's all about love. Fear God and obey His commands. That's the whole story. The conclusion of the matter. But if you look at it on the surface, you might not see the love. Because love comes from the heart. It is underneath the surface stuff, buried down deep. Which is why we don't look AT people, or THROUGH people, but INTO people. The deep calls out to the deep. The Jesus--the love--in me connects to the Jesus--the love--in you. So today we'll look at that word "fear." In Ecclesiasties 12:13 "fear" is number 3372 in Strong's Hebrew Concordance and it means, "Morally to revere." And according to dictionary.com "revere" means, "to regard with respect tinged with awe." So it's not AT ALL about being afraid of God in the sense that we think He's going to "get us" if we mess up. Which, as I mentioned yestereday, jives with what we know of love. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. So it's not that we do what God wants because we're afraid He'll punish us if we don't. That's not why we obey His commands. We obey His commands--the New Commandment, to love one another as He loves us--because we revere Him. Because we are in awe of His love. His love is so big and so glorious and so amazing that once we receive it we can't help but release it. Jesus' New Commandment--more than a "do this or else"--was really Him telling us HOW to love one another. We love one another by receiving and releasing the love He has given to us. And we do THAT through the Holy Spirit. Our love receptor equips and empowers us to love by leading and guiding us into the truth that we ARE loved. And that's the key. It's not about looking for love in all the wrong places, trying to get something that we think we don't have. It's about filling ourselves with the fulness of Christ. It's about experiencing what we do have. And the way we do that is by working out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Which, again, has nothing to do with being afraid of God, and everything to do of being in awe of God. The "working out" is really an out-working. The Spirit is within us, and it reveals the love that's within us. And when we know (and believe) that it's--that HE'S--in there, then He comes out all on His own. You can't give what you don't have, and you can only give what you do have. What you believe is in there comes out. And when you know what's in there--how good it is--you can't keep it in if you try. It's not too good to be true, it's so good it must be true! It's too good to keep to yourself. We don't obey because we're afraid we'll get in trouble if we don't. We obey because a more excellent way. Because sharing what we've got is the best way to truly experience what we've got. Things are real when you share them. They get bigger and more powerful. Abundant. And that's what Jesus came to give us--life (which is love) and that more abundantly!