Fear of God

The following piece by Phillips Brooks gives insight into what it means to fear God in a way which I think is as close to the truth as anything I've read.

 “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.’ Ps. 25:14

 Every living thing which is really worth the knowing has a secret in it which can be known only by a few. The forms and methods of things lie open to whoever chooses to study them, but the essential lives of things are hidden away where some special sympathy or concern must find them. We can all tell how true this is with people. A careful study of the outside of a man will tell you many things but all such shrewd and careful watching will not tell you those things which we all hold back, reserved for only a few. We are deeper than our actions reveal. For example, we know the outside of a hundred houses in town, but only our own house and two or three others do we know the inner chambers and private rooms.

The greater the person is the more open and honest he will appear on the outside and the more secret is the secret of his life. Now whether we can discover the secret of life in others or not, we are aware of our own. We all know how little other people know about us. Others do not know the mainspring and the master motives that make us who we are; our purpose, spirit and intentions as well as our past experiences not many know, and we fully open our hearts to only a few.

What is necessary before one will let another read their secrets, their motives, or shall we sum it up and say the genius or our lives? It is not mere curiosity; we know how that shuts up the nature which it tries to read. Not mere awkward good-will, that too crushes the flower which it tries to examine. What is it? I think the first and foremost of them all is respect. We will not share the real secrets of our lives, the spring and power of our living to anyone who does not respect us.

No friendship, no kindliness can make you show it to them unless they truly see us as a serious, almost sacred thing. You must think there is something deep in nature or you will find nothing there. You must have an awe of the mystery and sacredness in your fellow-man or his mystery and sacredness will escape you.

Now this sense of mystery and sacredness is what we gather into that word fear referred to in the text.

It is that feeling with which you step across the threshold of a great deserted temple or into some vast dark mysterious cavern. It is not terror: that would make you turn and run away. Terror is a blinding and deafening emotion. Terror shuts up our ability to know and understand.  You do not get at the secret of anything which frightens you, but fear, as we use it now, is quite a different emotion. It is a large, deep sense of the majesty and importance of anything, a reverence and respect for it. Without that no man can understand another, much less God.

As we approach God with a deep sense of His majesty, His mystery, His awesome power, we will see His secrets. It sees the love, which is behind every commandment, and His one purpose, which He has concerning us: to draw us towards and shape us into His likeness. The making of man like Himself by the power of love, that, in one word, is the purpose of God, which is the secret of the Lord!

  I find myself frequently in a dilemma; I read posts about the actions of our government, our rights that are disintegrating more and more, freedoms we lose, groups for unrighteousness that succeed and grow and at every door evil abounds. In short, the political arena and the important issues to which there is no end. What should be my response? My involvement? How do we overcome evil? Of course I have no definitive answer, but I do know what spirit I am of, and I thought I’d try and write down some of my thoughts.

When I find myself distressed about an issue, and it raises my emotions and distresses me, I think that is God’s way of motivating me to do something.

I read that the nobility and dignity of any work is measured by the powers, which it demands and uses. If, like Jesus, I want to fulfill and not destroy, I will consider the frame of mind I’m in when doing a work or trying to further a cause. If I just want to destroy, that takes nothing more than hatred and vigor. I can curse the darkness at the top of my lungs, but until I light a candle it will be of no avail. “Just to stand up in the community, and abuse its corruptness, or its irreligion, that is so easy, but to take the suppressed generosity, or the half-conscious religion of a community and educated it and encourage it, to take the remnant seeds of good and kindle them, that takes hard work. The one takes only hatred and vehemence; the other needs love and intelligence and patience and hope.” Phillips Brooks.

So again, I know what Spirit Jesus had, I know what frame of mind I need to be in to thrive and grow, so if I allow myself to get drawn into an emotional frenzy for every cause, I will become ineffective, anxiety ridden, anger filled and ultimately distant from God rendering me completely incompetent. So I pick the battles that I think I’m qualified to succeed in and spend my energy there; and on the other fronts, I support those who choose to focus there, and I vote and give financial support; past that, I will have to trust that life will go on without me, and frankly, in most arenas it will probably be better off. No cause needs a cynical, angry, ill-natured proponent, they usually cause more harm than good and we are taught to persuade with patience, gentleness and love, without exception.  So there’s my feeble attempt to share my strategy.

I have been reading Phillips Brooks lately and really enjoy his practical approach and insightful observations of human nature. In the following piece he speaks to a subject which is very relevant to me and I have been in the situation he describes many times and when I read it certain people come directly to mind.  

The Glory of simplicity – Phillips Brooks

  There is no sign of ripening life, which is more gracious and more beautiful, than the capacity and disposition to find richness in the simplest and healthiest associations.

Have you never had a friend whom you have long known, in whom you found much to enjoy and to be grateful for, but whom at last you seemed to have exhausted and outgrown? You went abroad to natures which fascinated you more. You felt the power of someone in whom there was some sort of one-sided and fantastic power, in whom there was more violence of light and shade, in whom his very prominent defects were manifested such that they seemed peculiarly picturesque and attractive. You reveled in his strange unhealthy power. Something, it may be, almost weird came out in yourself to answer his romantic inspiration. But by and by he too failed you and did not satisfy. Some morning that which had been so dramatic looked only theatrical to you. Their high lights and great gulfs of darkness wearied you. And then have you never turned back to the simplicity of your first friendship, and found to your amazement how unexhausted, how inexhaustible it was? There stood the deep, quiet nature on whose surface you had scratched and fumbled, but where profoundness lay yet all untouched. His healthiness refreshed you and his calm “Yea, yea; nay, nay,” truthful and strong, swept all the frantic extravagances and overstrained exaggerations out of your soul, and you rejoiced in a great cleanness and freshness.”
Painting by Ayami Kojima

Three courses

   Let’s examine three men who are leaving any one period of life behind them and go out into a new one; one of them is driven out of his past and leaves it only because he cannot stay there and help himself;

Another goes forth from his past because he has grown weary and disgusted with it or the past has grown tame and the future may offer something new, he is willing to flee from it for the pure love of change;

The third leaves his past full of honor, full of gratitude for the equipment which it has given him for his future life and leaves with the eager hope that the Lord is at hand, and with larger circumstances and with mature powers he will come nearer to Christ and more useful in His service. He has the mind of a discoverer, who has gathered all the knowledge and character which he could gain at home, and is now eager to use them in reading the secret of some hidden country or place to make the world larger and better for mankind.

  Now the first two men will doubtless find the new page like the last, another great flat plain on which they may wander pleasantly, but aimlessly. Always coming back at last to the dead campfires where they had slept before. Their tomorrow will be as their today.

The third man, the noble soul, as with most earnest men and women, has thought of his life as an unfolding of God’s will for them.

The power of any life lies in its expectancy. “What do you hope for? What do you expect? The answer to these questions is the measure of the degree in which a man is living.

Am I truly expecting a higher, deeper, more pervading revelation of Christ and His work for me? If not, what hope is there that tomorrow will be different from today?

Paraphrased from Phillips Brooks, "The Great Expectation."

 Pompey

The whole care of providing grain for Rome was committed to Pompey, he sent abroad his agents into all quarters, and he himself sailing into Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa, where they collected great quantities of grain. As he was just ready to embark in order to return home, there arose a great storm, so that his pilots were unwilling to set sail. But Pompey himself going first aboard, commanded the mariners to weigh anchor, crying out, “It is necessary for me to go, but it is not necessary for me to live.” This zeal and resolution was seconded by fortune, so that he made a prosperous voyage and stored all the markets in Rome with corn and covered the sea with ships Such was the quantity of provisions imported, that there was a sufficient supply not only for the city of Rome, but for foreigners and into all parts of Italy.

2Tim. 2:1 “You therefore, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”