{"id":391,"date":"2010-12-08T12:28:15","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T17:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/?p=31"},"modified":"2013-04-19T04:31:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T04:31:15","slug":"the-healthy-version-of-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/2010\/the-healthy-version-of-fear","title":{"rendered":"The Healthy Version of Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cHis mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Luke 1:50<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

About 80 generations after these words of praise left the mouth of Mary, we find that the message she sang about is still true. She was elated. Of course, I imagine she was still bewildered and a bit confused, but she was being chosen to serve God in such an awesome way. And she breaks into song. We don\u2019t know the melody but we know the words and it\u2019s some of those words that I\u2019d like you to think about today.<\/p>\n

Have you ever been afraid? Ok, of course you have. For each of us it may be something different \u2013 spiders, snakes, the dark, country music, lightning, drowning, the list could go on endlessly. And usually that fear causes us to want to avoid those things. Let\u2019s be clear right away that this is not the fear that Mary\u2019s talking about here. When the Bible talks about fearing the Lord it means an incredible reverence.<\/p>\n

Imagine walking into your house after a normal day of school. You throw your bag down on the ground or on the first flat surface you find. You go to the fridge to get something to eat or drink and then walk into your living room and there, sitting on your couch relaxing, is your favorite movie star of all time. They are the one that you so admire and appreciate that you\u2019ve seen nearly all their movies and are determined to see the rest of them they produce \u2013 as long as they don\u2019t guest star on Snakes on a Plane 2. Your jaw drops. You may have already dropped whatever you\u2019d gotten from the fridge. Of course, you don\u2019t much care about the soda or sandwich, you care about the star.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it, it\u2019s impossible to really imagine what it would be like to all of a sudden see God sitting in our living room. We can\u2019t really imagine that too much. But I think we can imagine how we would generally react. We would be awestruck. We would want to make sure we said the right things, did the right things. We would want to make a good \u201cfirst impression.\u201d And we wouldn\u2019t do it for fear that otherwise we would be zapped. We\u2019d do it all because we would have this incredible reverence for Who we were in the presence of.<\/p>\n

And imagine what it would be like if you lived with the healthy realization of God\u2019s never-leaving presence in your life? If you lived like Jesus heard the way you spoke, saw the way you acted, knew the way you thought. I think you and I would live more and more like God wants us to. And His mercy would be on us. He\u2019d know that we\u2019re not perfect, but would jump at the chance to forgive us, because He knows that we really are amazed by Him. He would see the areas of our life that needed work, but would lovingly help us grow instead of just condemning us, because He knows that it\u2019s what we want most of all.<\/p>\n

And so that\u2019s why God is so willing and eager to extend His mercy, His forgiveness, His grace, His love to generations of us messed up people who are aware of our need for Him and are simply amazed by Who He is. Be impressed. He\u2019s more than worthy. And if you don\u2019t see that, then I\u2019d be a bit afraid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHis mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.\u201d Luke 1:50 About 80 generations after these words Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonathanbrooker.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}