Reverence Due to the Price Paid

'Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord ! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.' (Psalm 130:1-4, 7 ESV)

I am so thankful that, with the Lord, we have forgiveness, steadfast love, and plentiful redemption! I am so grateful to God for a husband who displays these characteristics to me as well, due to Christ living in Him; but he cannot to the degree that God does as He is the definition of steadfast love when He brought us plentiful redemption and forgiveness through His idea of allowing His Son, Jesus, to take on all of my sin and die for me on the cross at Calvary. I can now stand forgiven and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb that was slain! I'm so thankful that He bought me and brought me back into a right relationship with God through the death of His Son and it has nothing to do with what I have accomplished! 'But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away.' (Isaiah 64:6 NKJV)

When we have experienced His forgiveness in a personal way, knowing and believing with all our heart that Jesus died for ME and MY SIN, then that leads us into a greater fear of God. I read in the book, 'When People Are Big And God Is Small', by Ed Welch, that the fear of God is a continuum. Initially, we recognize the terror, dread, trembling and astonishment and we tend to hide from God as we know of His holy justice and our unclean state before Him. As we come to experience Him within the context of a personal relationship, then the fear of God is manifest in more of an awe, reverence, devotion, trust and worship as we come to know both the holy justice AND holy love of God as well as sincerely seeking, drawing near, and submitting to Him and His Lordship in our lives.

Understanding this spectrum of attitudes toward our holy and righteous God, enables me to understand more clearly the aspect of the fear of God. May we all grow in that continuum as we seek, submit, and draw near to the Savior so that we can worship Him with all that we have for His glory alone. "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23, 24 NIV)