Isaiah 8:13
13 Sanctify [qadash] the LORD [Yahovah] of hosts [tsaba'] himself;
and let him be your fear, [mowra'] and let him
be your dread. [`arats] KJV-Interlinear
13
"It is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be
your fear, And He shall be your dread. NASB
That which you fear most
is that which controls your life.
And so most people fear
the many attributes of this world, more than they fear God.
The fear losing
business. They fear losing a job or a
position. They fear losing out on a
promotion. They fear the loss of income
or the loss of social activities. They
fear the loss of their status among friends or people. They fear failure in
life. They fear not having things or not as much as the next person.
They fear public opinion going
against them. They fear not having
popularity or appearance or beauty or the physical attributes that others might
have.
And so people in general
terms will spend the vast majority of their time, if not all of their time, keeping
themselves in sync with society, keeping up with society, chasing happiness from
this world as they have defined it for themselves.
People in effect worship
their worldly environment. Their
lifestyle is their religion. Their public
standards are the substance of their faith.
That is what they honor, that is what they sanctify or set apart as the
priority of their life.
To be rejected by man, or
to fail in public life becomes the disgrace beyond the unbearable.
However, who can provide
more? Who can guarantee more? Who can make things far worse and take away
far more? Is it the world or is it God?
And the answer is of
course, God. God is the source of all
things. And this includes every aspect
of your worldly life.
While peer pressure or
office politics or social gossip can inflict damage on you, it is God who is
far greater than any of these things and can turn any of them into a blessing
far greater than you could otherwise do for yourself.
All things work together
for good, and that simply means that God can take anything and make it end up
successful.
The world cannot do
that. The world never forgives and never
forgets. God can do both.
People will always remind
you of your failures while they casually forget about their own failures. God can move you beyond your failures, into
successes that are otherwise unreachable.
God gives all things,
including life. God can take away all
things, including life. The world has no
such control or power.
To spend your time keeping
up with the neighbors, pleasing others in order to get ahead, brown nosing as
the saying goes, doing all things for your own promotion in life, is a fools
pursuit.
With absolutely nothing,
God can promote. He can likewise
demote. So unless God is behind your promotion
in anything in life, you don’t really have it.
And in all things, the
best promotion comes from within the spiritual life and within the spiritual attributes
of your soul.
Anything else in this
world amounts to nothing more than details of life, all of which vanish from
your life, when you leave this life.
Therefore, if you say you
fear God, but do not back that up with a genuine pursuit of a daily Bible study,
then you are only fooling yourself.
One day, your fear will
be tested, and then you will know what God already knows about your spiritual
strength or lack of it.
