How To Maintain And Increase the Fear of God

Albert N. Martin

The fear of God is one of the most basic themes of Holy Scripture, yet sadly it is one of the most neglected themes of Scripture in our day. One mature and very able student of the word of God has been bold enough to make the statement that, “The fear of God is the very soul of godliness.” In other words, there is no life of godliness unless it is continually animated by the soul of the fear of God. We have seen that Scripture warrants the conclusion that the fear of God is the soil out of which a godly life grows, and the absence of the fear of God is the soil out of which an ungodly life grows. Because this matter is so vital, we need to consider how we are to maintain and increase the fear of God in our hearts.

A basic text that helps put this subject into perspective is Proverbs 23:17. In this portion of Scripture we have, first of all, this negative command: “Let not thy heart envy sinners” (verse 17a). Don’t allow your heart to begin to be jealous of the dainties of the ungodly. Don’t allow your spirit to begin to be affected with any kind of a longing for what they call life’s pleasures, “But be thou in the fear of Jehovah all the day long” (verse 17b). In other words, the opposite of a heart that goes out with envy towards sinners and their sinful course of life is a heart that maintains a proper sense of the fear of God.

How do we maintain the fear of God in our hearts? That it is God’s will that we maintain the fear of God in our hearts is beyond dispute in the light of this text. We have an explicit command to maintain it. But in answer to the question, how do we do this, we will first consider a general principle that is the foundation of the answer and then we will consider eight rules, or eight specific guidelines, for maintaining the fear of God.

A Foundational Principle

First of all, there is a general principle that we must understand and walk in the light of if we are to increase and maintain the fear of God in our hearts. Simply stated, that principle is this: When it comes to living the Christian life, the concern of your conscious spiritual endeavors is to be whatever God declares to be His own work in you.

Let me illustrate. Galatians 5:22-23 states that, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self control.” Wherever you see a person who manifests genuine, selfless, Christian love, you must attribute the presence of that love to a deep, powerful, inward work of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love. This means that love is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work. Wherever you see genuine joy and peace and these other Christian graces, it is the work of the Spirit. This is beyond dispute. If we have any acquaintance with Scripture, we know that these graces are only brought into the life and only flow out of the life by the work of the Spirit.

However, the same God who tells us that these things are the fruit of His working tells us through the same apostle in Colossians 3:12, “Put on therefore, as God’s elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering.” Then he says in verse 14, “And above all these things put on love.” The Bible asserts that love is the fruit of the Spirit, and it is God’s work to produce it; yet at the same time, it tells us to put it on. And “put on” is a verb of action. You didn’t lie in bed this morning and wait for your clothes to crawl onto you. You had to get up and go to them and get them and put them on yourself. Putting on is activity. Now, which is it? Is the presence of love and meekness in the life of a man the work of God or is it the work of the believer? The answer is that it’s not either/or, but it’s both. The fruit of the Spirit is love—put on love. And the same thing is true with all these other graces. The fruit of the Spirit is joy, and yet Philippians 4:4 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, ‘Rejoice.’”

This principle is most beautifully stated in Philippians 2:12-13, where Paul says, “So then, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.” That is, apply yourself consciously and diligently to the outworking of God’s saving purposes in your life, with particular reference to the development of these graces which constitute a blameless life. Yet the command for us to work is based upon the fact of God’s working in us. God’s working does not negate our working, and our working does not cancel out His working. They are coextensive in the life of the believer.

It is essential to understand this principle if we are to maintain and increase the fear of God in our hearts. Putting the fear of God into the heart of a man is distinctly declared to be a sovereign work of God as a distinct blessing of the New Covenant (Jeremiah 32:40). In light of this, someone could reason that if it is God’s work to put His fear in our hearts, then the way to increase the fear of God is obvious—you’ve just got to pray and trust that the Lord will do it. But that is not how it works. The principle is this: what God declares to be His work in us is to be the concern of our conscious labors and endeavors.

In our efforts to be directed by the Word of God, we must not allow the accusations of legalism and moralism to scare us away from seeking to discover in Scripture the specific guidelines that God has given us by which we may develop and increase the fear of God in our hearts. Someone once asked a Puritan why he lived such a precise life, a life in which he had constant regard to the principles of Scripture. He answered, “Sir, you ask me why I live a precise life? My answer is simple. I serve a precise God.” Why should we be concerned with discovering specific rules and guidelines for maintaining the fear of God? Because the God who has made us and before whom we walk has given us these principles in order that we might know how better to increase His fear in our hearts.

The conscious, deliberate effort of the child of God is not self-effort in the sense that he is negating the grace of God. No; God alone can put His fear into our hearts. He is working in us to will and to do His good pleasure. But we must work out with fear and trembling the cultivation and development of that fear.

Specific Directives for Maintaining the Fear of God

An Interest in the New Covenant

That brings us to the second area of our consideration. Having considered the general principle, now we come to the specific directives for maintaining the fear of God in our hearts. Directive number one is, be certain of an interest in the New Covenant. I use the term “interest” in its sense of having a share or a participation in something. In this sense, if someone says he has interest in a business, he doesn’t mean that he goes by once in a while and looks at the shop window. It means he has invested money. If you have interest in something, you have invested of your substance.

Scripture tells us that this matter of the fear of God in the heart is the result of God’s working in the New Covenant. In Jeremiah 32:40, God says, “I will put my fear in their hearts.” As long as you are a stranger to the New Covenant, Paul’s description of the ungodly in Romans 3:18 will continue to be your experience: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Unless you come to God through Christ in repentance and faith, pleading no grounds of approach to God but the blood of the everlasting covenant shed for sinners, you will be characterized by the absence of the fear of God until you die. By nature no one fears God. You may have a dread of God that drives you from Him, but you don’t have that biblical fear, that regard of God’s character which draws your heart out to Him in love and devotion and desire to please Him. You have a dread of God. You try to push thoughts of God out of your mind. You live your day-to-day life as though God did not exist. You may go into a building called a church once a week and go through the outward motions of worship. But you do not live in the fear of God. What God says in His word about your life has no real, practical effect upon you in your thoughts, regarding what you read, or don’t read, what you watch on TV, or don’t watch, what you say, or don’t say. No, there is no fear of God before your eyes. The reality of who God is and His claims over you are not the dominant, governing principle of your life.

That is true of every one of us by nature. If you are a Christian, probably you can think back with shame to years in which you lived that way. Just like the heathen wrings off the head of his chicken and sprinkles a little blood on his altar, we wrung the head off an hour or two a week and sprinkled it at the foot of some altar in some church. We gave a little time and a little money, but we lived totally devoid of the fear of God until God arrested us by His grace and put His fear within our hearts.

Thus, if you would know the increase of the fear of God, be certain that you have come to Jesus Christ, the mediator of the New Covenant. Hebrews 12:24 says, “[Ye are come] to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant.” It is only as we come to Him, with the spirit of the hymn writer—“Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling”—that He will make good in us all the blessings of that covenant that He sealed with His own precious blood. Child of God, do you long for an increase of the fear of God? Then make your interest in the New Covenant the solid ground upon which you stand when you plead for an increase of His fear. When you say, “Oh, God, increase Your fear in me!”, the argument that you press before God should be that Jesus Christ has died as the mediator of the New Covenant. And one of the blessings of that covenant is that God would put His fear into your heart. “Lord Jesus, on the basis of Your shed blood I plead for an increase of Your fear. Give me as much of Your fear as Your blood of the covenant warrants.”

The Scriptures

Secondly, feed your mind upon the Scriptures in general. Psalm 19 celebrates the excellence of the two great spheres of divine revelation. Verses 1 to 6 celebrate the revelation God has made in creation: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (verse 1). Verses 7 to 11 celebrate the revelation God has made in His word: “The law of the Lord is perfect . . .” (verse 7). So you have the revelation in creation and the revelation in Scripture—general revelation and special revelation.

Notice in particular what David does as he praises God for His special revelation, beginning with verse 7. He says, “The law of Jehovah is perfect, restoring the soul.” Then he uses another term: “The testimony of Jehovah is sure, making wise the simple.” Another term is used in verse 8: “The precepts of Jehovah are right, rejoicing the heart”; and another, “The commandment of Jehovah is pure, enlightening the eyes.” Finally, in the last part of verse 9, he says, “The ordinances of Jehovah are true, and righteous altogether.” Now, notice, in the midst of all these tributes to the word of God, in which David uses these various terms to describe special revelation, what he says in the first part of verse 9: “The fear of Jehovah is clean, enduring forever.” What is the point? David is asserting that there is an inseparable relationship between the special revelation God has made in Scripture and the fear of God. And this relationship is such that, for all intents and purposes, the fear of God can be used as a synonym for the word of God. This is why David can so freely insert “the fear of the Lord” in a parallel relationship to all of these terms referring to God’s word. What does that tell us? It tells us that he who would increase in the fear of God must feed his mind upon the Scriptures in general. The word of the Lord is so productive of the fear of the Lord that the two things may be used synonymously.

This is why, when a present, vital, extensive relationship to the Scriptures begins to wane, the roots of the fear of God are beginning to shrivel up. You will grow no more in the fear of God than you grow in your understanding and assimilation of the word of God written. It is a daily necessity that you expose yourself to the Scriptures as much as possible, both in private and in the family circle. It is also necessary that you faithfully and regularly attend upon the public preaching and teaching of the word of God. For, though there are many portions of Scripture that, as far as we can discern, may have no direct effect in creating and sustaining the fear of God, the overall effect of every truth of Scripture is to feed the fear of God. In one way or another, the man who absorbs the most of Scripture, spiritually assimilating it into his life and being, is the man who will know most of the fear of God.

When you are tempted to cut corners on those disciplines by which you are exposing your mind to Scripture, remember that such a decline is part of the subtlety of the devil to move you out of the fear of God. And a move away from the fear of God always precedes a departure from the realm of godliness, as we saw in the last study. If you and I are to be moved out of the realm of godliness, we must first of all abandon His fear. Often the first step of abandoning His fear is cutting corners on either the private or public exposure to the word of God.

Don’t be surprised, then, if in the pinch, when the pressure is on, and the issue of God’s smile or God’s frown is the all-important issue, that somehow those great eternal realities seem very distant. There is not a Christian who has lived a year as a true child of God who will not confess there are times when God and Christ and heaven and hell and judgment and godliness can all seem so remote and little more than words and theories. Isn’t it true? Sometimes you ask yourself, “What in the world am I? What in the world do I believe? How can these things really be a part of me and seem so distant from me?” The answer is often very simple—it is because there has been an erosion of systematic, consistent exposure to the word of God.

It’s not as though you came to a certain day and said, “All right, from this day forward, the Bible and I will have nothing to do with each other.” It wasn’t like that at all. There was just a little extra pressure that made you cut corners on your set time with God. Just a few extra responsibilities one day and a few added distractions the next day, until, after a week or two, you no longer felt your absence from the Scripture. You were no longer painfully aware of the erosion. Then there was the breakdown in the Christian life and experience, to the extent that one day you said, “When did it all happen?” The answer is that it happened as the result of your gradual alienation from the word of God. I know no shortcut to maintaining the fear of God. Therefore the second guideline to maintain the fear of God is that you must feed your mind upon Scripture in general.

The Forgiveness of God

Thirdly, feed your soul upon the forgiveness of God in particular. Remember how the psalmist asked the question in Psalm 130:3: “If thou, Jehovah, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” It is an admission that, if God were to record every sin ever committed and then summon sinners into His presence one by one to give Him an account, no one could ever stand before Him. The prospect of a holy, omniscient God calling the creature to an account for every sin is enough to make one cry out, as they will cry in the day of judgment, that the rocks and the mountains might fall upon him (Revelation 6:15-17). One can only dread a God who marks sins and will call men into judgment for them. But, remarkably, the psalmist answers his own question by saying, “There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared” (verse 4). When I discover that this great God, holy and just and omniscient as He is, actually forgives sins, and that all of His glorious attributes are combining to grant me pardon, how can I help but fear Him “with deepest, tend’rest fears, and worship Him with trembling hope, and penitential tears.” The psalmist is testifying that, as his mind is filled with the wonder of forgiveness, so his heart is filled with the reality of the fear of God.

Thus, for you also, the measure to which the fact and the wonder of grace sinks into your soul will be the measure of your fear of God. Feed often upon the reality of forgiveness. God, who is holy; God, who is righteous; God, who is called the high and the lofty One, actually forgives me, the sinful creature. Steep your mind often in this great and blessed truth of forgiveness. Why did the second person of the Godhead ever become flesh and dwell among us? Why should deity be enclosed in a virgin’s womb? Why should He be born in a cow barn? Why should He die that death upon the cross? The answer to every one of these questions is in order that the sons of men might receive forgiveness in a way that is consistent with God’s holiness, justice and righteousness, and with the demands of His inflexible law.

As we feed not only upon the fact of forgiveness but also on the way of forgiveness, our fear of God will be deepened and increased. As the Puritan, Thomas Manton, has so beautifully said, “The heart is shy of a condemning God, but it adheres to a pardoning God. And nothing breeds this fear of God so much as a tender sense of God’s goodness in Jesus Christ.” Nothing breeds this fear of God like a tender sense of God’s goodness in Jesus Christ. Psalm 34:8 is a well-known text, often used as a gospel invitation. There, David says, “Oh taste and see that Jehovah is good.” Then he says in verse 9, “Oh fear Jehovah, ye his saints.” We cannot fear God as He ought to be feared, except it be in the context of His abundant goodness and His condescending mercy in Jesus Christ. Therefore, if you would have the fear of God sustained in your heart, feed your soul upon God’s forgiveness. Don’t allow yourself to go back to the terrors of the law that will drive you from Him. Allow yourself to bask in the mystery of His forgiveness, and stand amazed at such a display of grace, that it not only lay hold of you when you were wallowing in your filth, but also bears so patiently with you in all of your wanderings and your stumblings. Stand amazed before such a display of forgiveness.

The Greatness of God

The fourth rule is, learn to feed your soul upon the majestic greatness of God. By that I mean those aspects of His character such as His holiness, His power, and His omnipotence. Notice this perspective in Revelation 15:3. In this particular vision, John sees a sea of glass, and he sees a multitude of those who have come off triumphant from the conflict with the beast. Verse 3 declares,

And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and marvellous are thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty; righteous and true are thy ways, thou King of the ages. Who shall not fear, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy.”

What attributes of God are in focus? His greatness, holiness, power, righteousness, and sovereignty. What are these attributes but those aspects of God that set before us the majesty of His greatness? And the heavenly choir says that, as we contemplate His majestic greatness, it is unthinkable that any rational creature would not fear such a God. “Who shall not fear thee, O God?” If a creature knows Him as He is revealed, he cannot help but fear Him. The principle for us as God’s people is this: if you would grow in the fear of God, then you must feed your soul upon the majestic greatness of God.

More specifically, be familiar with those portions of Scripture most calculated to set these concepts before you. Periodically read through a passage like Isaiah 40 on your knees. That is the passage in which the prophet gives that lofty description of the majestic greatness of God, and he pulls together such imagery as is seldom to be found in any literature. He speaks of the entire expanse of the heavens being but the span of God’s hands. He says all the nations are like a drop of condensation on the side of a bucket. He speaks of all the multitudes of the nations as a little swarming mass of grasshoppers. He thinks of God as a great shepherd and all the galaxies and all the stars as sheep, each of which He calls by name. Such beautiful imagery. What is it all there for? It is there to impress upon us the greatness of our God. The chapter begins with the command to the messengers of Judah to get up into a high mountain and to say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God.” Look upon Him. Fix your gaze upon Him as He is revealed. We should be familiar with such portions of Scripture as Isaiah 40 and Revelation 1.

We should also attach ourselves to a ministry that will assist us to maintain lofty views of God. Negatively stated, flee from a ministry that encourages you to snuggle up and make cheap love to the deity. It is an abomination to God. So much that is truly blasphemous goes on in His name. Attach yourself to a ministry that assists you to think of God in His majestic greatness. The hymn writer captured it well: “Majestic sweetness sits enthroned upon the Savior’s brow.” Pure sweetness is unprincipled sentiment. Pure majesty is too awesome to draw near. But when you have majesty and sweetness together, you have the God of the Bible. Therefore, attach yourself to a ministry that assists you to feed your soul upon His majestic greatness.

Also, read literature that will assist you to think often upon His greatness. Most of the books turned out in our own day are “how to” books. Everything has to do with what we are doing, doing, doing; how to do this, how to do that. You can scour the bookshelves in vain to find a book that will set before you who God is. Generally speaking, you have to go back a few years to find the kind of literature that will help you to think of the greatness of God. When Christians read old books, it is not just because they are antiquarians. It is because they find there the writings of men whose souls were permeated with the sense of the majestic greatness of God. And when we enter into those pages we somehow sense we are breathing the rarified air of the biblical thought of who God is.

Further, acquaint yourselves with the hymnody that reflects the majesty of God. We sing hymns on our way to church every Sunday. One hymn we have been recently singing is tremendous along these lines.

Awareness of God’s Presence

The fifth rule is, seek to cultivate an awareness of God’s presence. “Be thou in the fear of God all the day long.” Since the day is made up of hours spent in the home, the car, the school, the playground, the ball field and the office, it is in those places that we must cultivate the awareness of God’s presence. A passage that that sets out very well just how this is done is Psalm 16:8: “I have set Jehovah always before me.” David is saying that in every situation, he plants God before him so that he realizes in that situation he is in the very presence of God. “I have set Jehovah always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.”

By contrast, consider Psalm 54:3. Here, David is describing the wicked when he says, “They have not set God before them.” A Christian student enters his classroom saying, “God is right here in this classroom with all these kids that don’t give a hoot about my God or about my standards. He is here to be loved, to be honored, to be confessed, to be obeyed at any cost. I have set the Lord before me.” The wicked don’t do this. David says they set not God before them. They set their own lust before them. They set their own ambitions before them. They set their own flexible standards before them, but they don’t set God before them. To walk in God’s fear is to cultivate this awareness of His presence. You cannot fear a distant and forgotten God. If God is feared, it is as a God who is near and who is remembered.

Practically speaking, this means we ought often to meditate on Psalm 139 and on the truths it declares. Do you want to cultivate the awareness of God’s presence? Make it a practice to read Psalm 139 often. “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there” (verses 7-8). You see David’s sense of the pervasiveness of God’s presence. Seek to remind yourself in every situation that God is here. You must learn to do this. You can’t just pray, “Lord, You do this for me.” The psalmist says, “I have set Jehovah always before me.” God is there. David’s setting Him there didn’t put Him there; He was there. But it is the recognition that He is there that becomes the transforming circumstance in the life. May God therefore help us to cultivate this awareness of His presence.

Consciousness of Obligation to God

The sixth rule is, seek to cultivate the consciousness of your obligations to God. As we saw in our description of the fear of God, one indispensable element of it is that in each situation the Christian realizes that his relationship to God in that situation is the most important relationship he has. The Christian college student may be taking an exam and may come to a point at which he realizes that the only way he can get a passing grade would be to cheat. But he says to himself that there is something more important than his relationship to his grades and to his parents who are paying his tuition; and that is his relationship to the God who has told him, “Thou shalt not steal.” That means, he understands, that he must not steal someone else’s answer. If you are walking in the fear of God, before you leave for school in the morning, you say, “Lord, help me today to walk in Your fear.” Then, when you are tempted to cheat, the recognition of your obligation to God will be stronger than the recognition of your obligation to have a nice report card to show your father and mother.

It means that when your lust and passions cry out and would dictate a course of action contrary to the law of God, if necessary you must stick your heel in the face of your lust in order that you may be able to look up unashamed into the face of your God. The Lord says, even if you must sever deep earthly ties, do it. For, He says,

Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law: and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household (Matthew 10:34-36).

He says, “I came to implant the blessings of the New Covenant in the hearts of men so that they will fear Me to the extent that, even if they must sever the deepest of earthly ties, they will be willing to do it for My sake.” He said that is what He came to do. And that is what occurs when the people of God cultivate a consciousness of their supreme obligations to Him.

Association with those who Fear God

The seventh rule is, associate intimately with those who walk in the fear of God. We must of necessity have dealings with those who don’t fear God in this world. Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 5:9 and 10 when he says, “I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators; not at all meaning with the fornicators of this world: . . . for then must ye needs go out of the world.” You must have contact with those who don’t fear God in purely temporal, or earthly, things. You must have surface relationships with them to establish a bridgehead of witness. But Paul means that the people you select as your intimate friends ought to be God-fearing people. Psalm 119:63 is a key text in this regard: “I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that observe thy precepts.” He says that he has deliberately chosen as his intimate associates those whose fear of God is evident to any observer.

Why did he do this? The psalmist understood the psychology of personal relationships. There is a power of imitation, of absorption, of contagion, between individuals, so that, all other things being equal, you will become like your most intimate associates. It is a law of nature, if you will. That is why Scripture says, “Make no friendship with a man that is given to anger; and with a wrathful man thou shalt not go: lest thou learn his ways” (Proverbs 22:24-25). That is why God warns us about intimate associations with evil men—so that we don’t become like them. It’s part of the way God has made us. We are not encased in our own individualism. God ordained that men should live in community, and part of that kind of an arrangement is this built-in power of imitation, absorption and contagion.

It is in this light that the psalmist said, “I am a companion of all them that fear thee.” “Lord,” he is saying, “I would fear You. And I know that one of the best ways to have Your fear increased in my heart is to become the intimate associate of others who obviously fear You.”

There is a wonderful commentary on this principle in Malachi 3. In this passage, God is charging the great majority in Israel who have turned away from Him with not giving Him His just due in terms of their offerings and sacrifices. It is a period of decadence in which God is sounding forth the note of judgment. Yet in the midst of this, in verse 16, He says,

Then they that feared Jehovah spake one with another; and Jehovah hearkened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared Jehovah, and that thought upon his name.

Here is the remnant, that nucleus of true Israel, described as those who fear the Lord and think upon His name. And because they are in the minority, they recognize the necessity of being sustained in their fear of God by seeking out others who fear Him and banding together in the midst of decadence. The judgments of God are being pronounced; decadence is on every side. And those who fear God were getting together and encouraging one another in their fear of God in the midst of the decadence.

So I say that if you desire to grow in the fear of God you must associate yourself intimately with those who walk in His fear. No Christian grows and develops the graces of the Spirit in isolation. There is no such thing as a freelance Christianity and a do-it-yourself holiness. If you don’t know and sense and feel how much you need your Christian brethren, you are living in a fool’s paradise. You are undoubtedly guilty of a delusive pride. As these godly people in the days of Malachi looked out and saw the corruption on every side and knew something of God’s fear in their hearts, each one reasoned, “I’ll go under if I try to make it by myself. Let me find others who fear Him, and we will speak often one to another.”

What a cursed thing to be deluded into thinking you can make it on your own. God may have to humble you with some pretty serious falls to get you to see that the body of Christ is not a luxury for your spiritual development. The church is not a frill; it is not an option if you desire to grow in grace. It is God’s necessary place of growth and development. The whole idea of a chapter like I Corinthians 12 is that to every man is given a manifestation of the Spirit to profit all. The whole idea of Ephesians 4 is that growth comes in the setting of the corporate life of the people of God.

Many professing Christians today relate to the people of God the way people in the world relate to one another. It has become an accepted thing for couples to live together outside of the bonds of marriage. In past generations, such a thing was clearly not acceptable. But now it has become acceptable, to the point that many even think that marriage is an institution that is passé. One of the terrible things about common law relationships is the philosophy that undergirds them. Whether they will admit it or not, the philosophy most people have is that they want all the privileges of marriage with none of its binding responsibilities and obligations. A man wants to share a bed with a woman, but the moment something develops that requires him to share himself with her, and it will cost him something, he wants out, and he doesn’t want any trouble in getting out.

Similarly, many Christians are that way. They want all the privileges of the fellowship of the people of God—a sound ministry of the word, an atmosphere where God is exalted—but they don’t want to be so bound that they can’t conveniently slip out the moment the going gets rough. Are you a “common law Christian”? Or are you married, not only to Christ, but also to His people? For if you are married to the people of God, and you have entered into a covenantal life with them, then when the first problem arises, you don’t go your separate ways. That is one of the great blessings of the institution of marriage that is formalized civilly and publicly. Many of us will confess that we face snags in the working out of a marriage relationship, which, if we hadn’t been bound by some deeper ties than simply an unwritten agreement that we would share the same bed together, would have led us to run away from it. Do you desire to grow in the fear of God? If you do, then associate yourself—intimately, not loosely—with those who walk in His fear.

Fervent Prayer

The eighth and last rule is so obvious I don’t even need to enlarge it: fervently pray for increase of the fear of God. One of the unalterable laws of God’s kingdom is, “Ask, and it shall be given you” (Matthew 7:7). Or to put it negatively, as James did, “Ye have not, because ye ask not” (James 4:2). If this principle is true about anything we request, it is true of the fear of God; for that is certainly one of His good and perfect gifts (James 1:17), and it is a request that is “according to His will” (I John 5:14). May God grant that we shall grow and increase in His fear and in the consolations of the Holy Spirit.
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Biblical Expositions

The Fear of God Part VI

Specific Directives for Maintaining the Fear of God

An Interest in the New Covenant

The Scriptures

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