You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
13
Sanctify [qadash] the LORD [Yahovah] of hosts
[tsaba'] himself; and let him be your fear, [mowra'] and let him be your dread. [`arats] KJV-Interlinear
13 "It
is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your fear,
And He shall be your dread. NASB
That which you fear most is that which controls your life.
And so most people fear the many attributes of this world, more than they fear God.
The fear losing business. They fear losing a job or a position. They fear losing out on a promotion. They fear the loss of income or the loss of social activities. They fear the loss of their status among friends or people. They fear failure in life. They fear not having things or not as much as the next person.
They fear public opinion going against them. They fear not having popularity or appearance or beauty or the physical attributes that others might have.
And so people in general terms will spend the vast majority of their time, if not all of their time, keeping themselves in sync with society, keeping up with society, chasing happiness from this world as they have defined it for themselves.
People in effect worship their worldly environment. Their lifestyle is their religion. Their public standards are the substance of their faith. That is what they honor, that is what they sanctify or set apart as the priority of their life.
To be rejected by man, or to fail in public life becomes the disgrace beyond the unbearable.
However, who can provide more? Who can guarantee more? Who can make things far worse and take away far more? Is it the world or is it God?
And the answer is of course, God. God is the source of all things. And this includes every aspect of your worldly life.
While peer pressure or office politics or social gossip can inflict damage on you, it is God who is far greater than any of these things and can turn any of them into a blessing far greater than you could otherwise do for yourself.
All things work together for good, and that simply means that God can take anything and make it end up successful.
The world cannot do that. The world never forgives and never forgets. God can do both.
People will always remind you of your failures while they casually forget about their own failures. God can move you beyond your failures, into successes that are otherwise unreachable.
God gives all things, including life. God can take away all things, including life. The world has no such control or power.
To spend your time keeping up with the neighbors, pleasing others in order to get ahead, brown nosing as the saying goes, doing all things for your own promotion in life, is a fools pursuit.
With absolutely nothing, God can promote. He can likewise demote. So unless God is behind your promotion in anything in life, you don't really have it.
And in all things, the best promotion comes from within the spiritual life and within the spiritual attributes of your soul.
Anything else in this world amounts to nothing more than details of life, all of which vanish from your life, when you leave this life.
Therefore, if you say you fear God, but do not back that up with a genuine pursuit of a daily Bible study, then you are only fooling yourself.
One day, your fear will be tested, and then you will know what God already knows about your spiritual strength or lack of it.
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