Fear, not Flippancy - by Elizabeth Reynolds

I shared at communion time this last Sunday Psalm 130, and particularly the passage of verse 3-4:

If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
therefore you are feared.

Another version says: … so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

I feel like we sometimes we need reminders of God’s great power and the natural consequence of sin. I have meditated and thought upon this scripture many times in the past, because many people do not like the word ‘fear’ when we talk about God. We know God as a loving God and we want others to know Him that way as well. We don’t want them to be afraid of Him. Many Christians have an understanding of the word ‘fear’ in this context. They understand that by ‘fear’ it means ‘respect’, ‘reverence’. But I hesitate to replace the word in my personal vocabulary. I like the word fear. I feel it hits the spot better.

Like when the people said, about the Titanic, ‘God couldn’t even sink this ship’, and I think: Have they no fear of God? And when people just throw around His name as though they're just talking about chips or something.

It’s more than just respect or even reverence in my opinion. It’s knowing the fullness and ferociousness of God’s wrath in response to sin, and yet His act of withholding it and giving us grace. (Although we know that He did not withhold it, but chose to place His son Jesus in the firing line instead of us.)

It is honouring Him and serving Him and loving Him as precious Father, Friend and Deliverer, when we know what we actually deserved.