This post originated at my now shutdown blog, Christian Interpretations.
I’m going to share a couple of verses to you explaining why it is important to love others.
But first, some of my thoughts. Love is more of a verb than a feeling to me. You must make the choice to love someone. That “feeling” is often paired with hormones and such. You don’t always feel like loving your friend when he gets on your nerves.
Ha, God definitely chooses to love us. As much as we mess up? If he felt like loving, we’d be dead by now. He chooses to love us despite our mistakes. He loved us so much he decided to send His only Son to save us all. So, now that we know about love, let’s talk about it.
So…the Bible says you should “fear the Lord your God”. And it also says that “God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear.” So, what do we do?
We first have to ask ourselves what “fear” is.
In the context of the first verse, to me, fear means respect. You know how powerful God is, and you respect this. It does not mean we are scared of Him, like the second verse would suggest. Yes, God is not a Spirit of fear. He’s not here to scare anybody. He’s not here to make us tremble. He loves us.
If you are scared of God, know that God doesn’t want you to be. This fear is not good. It doesn’t make sense to be afraid of God. I seriously don’t think it’s okay to be afraid of God, even a little bit. It’s just not what God is about. He’s here to protect us from fear and to comfort us. He’s not going to turn around and have you fearing for your life.
People view God as this all powerful being that could snap at any moment if we do something wrong. God is patient. Yes, we should be following His commands, but, that’s because we love Him. That’s what He wants for us. He doesn’t want us to do things out of fear. He doesn’t want us to do things just to avoid punishment. There are consequences for our sins. That’s the reality. If we do something wrong, we need to learn from it. That’s what a good punishment is.
Yes, 2 Timothy 1:7 says this: For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And Deuteronomy 6:13 says You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him and shall take oaths in His name.
But, in terms of these verses, and for the point of my post, this verse really sends it home:
Hebrews 12:9 says this: Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?
Matthew 10:28 is another good one.
Look, the point here is that, fearing the Lord your God is a wise and fine thing to do. He gave us a sound mind. You can’t have a sound mind and be scared. Fear is for the weak. Love doesn’t fear. God is love.
I know this may seem hard to get, and perhaps this is just my opinion based on how I did interpreted the Bible verses. So please, if there is anything you can show me that says that we should literally be afraid of God, let me know. I never claim to be all knowing. Until then, I’m going to continue to not be afraid of my Lord God.
-DALANEL
As the title suggests, this is a kids/babies post. I hope you love kids because we’re going hard. Oh wait…oh God not hard, just…hard candy…no they’ll choke on it. Never mind. Anyway, I’ve been working with and teaching kids since I was 12 years old. I’m 21 now so it’s been a while. I specialize with 4 and 5 year olds. So cute! So, it’s sort of a tribute to all of my students/campers. Let’s start with a couple of images:
Ha! Some become grown-ups and some become vehicles. And this guy has an encouraging word for us all:
Awesome and so true. Now, how about some cool words with our kid focus:
