JR. Forasteros - February 5, 2017
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Fear God
How often have we heard we are to fear God? Many of us think of God as someone to be feared – we keep our heads down and try to keep from being noticed. But when the Bible talks about fear of God it’s more about awe. What does it mean to say that the creator of the universe loves us? How does this awe transform everything from our religious practices to our daily lives?
More From "The Prophets & Poets Mixtape"
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Where Faith FitsJanuary 8, 2017 |
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Telling the Whole StoryJanuary 15, 2017 |
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Why Should I Fear?January 22, 2017 |
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One of the most surreal moments in my life was my going away party in Ohio. When I lived there, I was part of a preaching team at a large church. When we left to come to Texas, they threw us a goodbye party. As they tend to be, the party was bittersweet, a chance to say goodbye to good friends one last time. But a couple of different people came up to me to say goodbye, and I would have sworn I’d never seen them before in my life. But they came up to me, gave me a hug, and spent a couple of moments telling me how much my preaching had impacted them.
It was surreal, but it happens in jobs like teaching or preaching or writing. Any place where, as part of your craft, you put a lot of yourself out there, share personal stories as illustrations, get raw and vulnerable… but it’s all a 1-way interaction. It’s not bad necessarily – I don’t expect to have a close personal friendship with every person I meet. But it was weird for me, to be on the receiving end of the illusion of a relationship, and as I was working on this new series I kept coming back to that experience.
How do we know God? Not just know about God, but really know God.
It’s a lot easier to know about God than it is to know God, and I wonder if we’re clear about exactly what the difference is.
How do we know God? The answer is complex, but not complicated. As with any relationship, there are a lot of ways to know God. And as with any relationship, it takes time.
The best news is that God wants to have a relationship with us.
God wants to know us, not just know about us. So today, we’re going to explore some access points for knowing God better, and we’ll see how God uses them to invite us into a true relationship, one where we don’t just know about God, but truly know the God who created us and calls us.
