FAITH CAPSULE: With hearing in place, learning to fear Him shall have its place in man.
1Thessalonians 4
To fear God is to love God. To love God is seek Him. To seek God is to know and understand God.
Without any compromise, the will of God for man is to fear God. Hearing and learning the word builds faith and faith in place is fear in the heart. The word of Deuteronomy 31:12-13 clearly points out hearing and learning as the way to fear God, “Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the LORD your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, “and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.” The word of God remains forever the same. He is the unchanging changer. Also, what He has spoken to them He has also spoken to us. The will of God is for man to fear Him. Man could not fear Him in the past and most especially today because man no longer hear and learn from the word.
It is written, “Now therefore, fear the LORD, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the LORD!” (Joshua 24:14) Where there is failure to hear and learn from the word, no one can fear Him and serve Him reasonably.
The book of 1Thessalonians 4:3-8 documents, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.” Everyone who fears the Lord will take to the word of 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 as stated above. What the Old Testament is saying about the fear of God is nothing different from what the New Testament is saying. However, it is important for every believer to understand and know through hearing and learning that the fear of God is crucial to not missing their heaven. Do you fear God? With hearing in place, learning to fear Him from all of His word and work cannot be displaced in the life of a believer.
Prayer for today: Ask God for the grace to fear Him in every area of living life.