Day 34

“You shall fear the LORD your God, you shall serve Him and to Him you shall hold fast” (Deuteronomy 10:20).



What does it mean to fear the Lord? In this day in age you hear over and over that the Lord is a God of peace, a God of love. In many cases you get the impression that He is your buddy. He wants you to always be happy and He is there when you need Him. There is not a big emphasis on fearing the Lord, in fact it is a term that many do not fully grasp. I am not sure that I even do, though I am seeking to understand it more fully.


The Lord is a God of love. He is the originator of love. He is love in its deepest sense. He loves us unconditionally, yes, but this love is like the love of a Father. He chastens us, He shows us where we are wrong, lovingly correcting us and calling us to a higher way of life. He is a God of Love, but He is also a God of justice, His wrath can be awakened toward those who displease Him. He is not our “buddy” He is God. Creator of the universe, Savoir of the world, He is to be stood in awe of, worshiped, reverenced. These are a few things I have been learning about what it means to fear the Lord.


Not only are we to fear the Lord, we are also to serve Him and to hold fast to Him. Serving Him should be easy, but often times it isn’t. We are selfish and we want to go our own way. We have goals to meet, but how often are these goals our own and for our own gain? Do we serve for the Lord, or to gain the praise of others? Do we truly serve the Lord from hearts filled with unselfish motives? What does it mean to you to serve the Lord? What does it look like in your life.


In my life right now, serving the Lord is first following His commands and doing those things which He asks of us, like prayer and seeking to know His Word and hiding it in our hearts. Then it is serving those whom He has put in my life like family, friends, and even those at the grocery store or wherever that I come in contact with. Serving the Lord means doing things for His glory and not my own. This means heart checks on a daily basis. Why am I doing this? Is it to impress others, or is it to bring honor to the Lord? Often times serving the Lord means laying aside what I would like to do to do that which He would like for me to do, and honestly, I really struggle with that. It is something that I seek His strength in daily.


“And to hold fast to Him.” Why hold fast? Well, I’m sure there are lots of reasons, one being that if we do not hold fast to the Lord and His Word we will surly grow week and fall. We will get lost in the darkness of our sin, loaded down in guilt and shame. We will become distracted by worldly gain, by the promises that we will gain the praise of men. If we do not hold fast we will fall away until we no longer see what it is that He put us on this earth to accomplish and that would surely be heartbreaking.


I do not have it all together. There is so much I do not yet know, but I pray that the Lord will help me to remain faithful to reading and studying His Word and that daily He will help me to understand who it is He is calling me to be. I want to get to the end of this life and be able to say that I strove with all that was within me and by the grace of the Lord I served Him above all else. Above man, above wealth, and mostly, above self.