The ‘fear of the Lord’ references in the Bible never made much sense to me.  As a New Testament follower of Christ who had experienced salvation by grace, this fear factor didn’t seem relevant.  And then I discovered the kingdom motherboard.  In the same way the motherboard of a computer connects the functional components of the entire machine so the Kingdom concepts of Jesus connect the components of theology.

My personal belief system had seemingly unrelated pieces in it.  There were insights and good ideas from various systems of Bible interpretation.  I had gleaned concepts from dispensationalism, Calvinism, Armenianism, systematic and covenant theologies, as well as a smorgasbord of unconnected good ideas.  Like most evangelical Christians my mental construct of truth did not have a harmonizing or unifying central theme.  Then came the Kingdom.  A marvelous melding process began that integrated and connected my categories of truth.

It was the centrality of the Kingdom reign of God that made sense of the ‘fear of the Lord’.  In light of His awesome majesty and His role of universal leadership, proper respect made sense.  The fact that He sits in judgment over the whole of human history and that every human is accountable to Him set up the logic of a healthy fear motivation.

So, I love the ‘fear of the Lord’!  It has set up a sane perspective out of which most of my choices are governed most of the time.

David’s discovery of the therapeutic effect of godly fear on his speech has become a major life lesson for me.  I sin far less with my tongue than I used to and believe me, that’s a big victory.  I am so deeply grateful for this powerful principle and so are those within the inner circle of my life.