"The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth do I hate."
Proverbs 8:13
Last week I wrote that wisdom is an essential ingredient of life. This week's Pastor's Pen will show that wisdom and the fear of the Lord are connected. Proverbs 8 is wisdom personified, and wisdom personified says that the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. All too often, our struggle with iniquity is that we do not see our sin as particularly evil. As one man put it, we are brushing away the spider webs without getting rid of the spiders. Until we hate evil, until we see our sin as despicable, we are unlikely to take the hard steps to cease sinning.
When I fear the Lord and am in awe of His burning holiness, I am willing to make the tough decisions to deal decisively with temptation and sin. The fear of the Lord and its associated hatred of evil leads me to do more than just commit to stop sinning. The fear of the Lord motivates me to avoid temptation. Further, godly fear changes my heart so that I detest sin.
Pastor Scott Dean
God has been very good to us. We have a tendency to focus on the negative and notice all the things that we lack rather than to see all the gifts that God has given us.
When we experience the vanity that is life without God, do we return to the God who loves us?
Rest comes from rejecting responsibilities that God does not intend for us and accepting God's yoke for us.
The answer to America's social ills is God's grace and Christian love.