Tag Archives: fear of the lord

June 4, 2022

inSECURITY

By altarofheaven

The fear of missing out (FOMO) has become a “respectable sin.” The root of the FOMO is discontentment. The root of discontentment is a lack of faith to believe that God loves you and He can be trusted. It’s like the Garden of Eden when the serpent successfully tempted Eve to believe God was withholding good from her. That’s the Devil’s tactic—to provoke you to be insecure.

Insecurity can lead to:

  • Impatience: We take matters into our own hands, or we allow our mind to wander.
  • Unkindness: “Hurt people, hurt people.” We begin to tear down others.
  • Jealousy: We covet and desire what others have.
  • Boastful and Arrogant: We overcompensate our feelings of insecurity by bragging to others about what we have or what we know.
  • Act unbecomingly: We have outbursts of anger or anxiety.
  • Seek your own desires: We act selfish and have a ‘me first’ mentality.
  • Provoke: We end up acting like the Devil by PROVOKING others by manipulating them to be insecure like us. We become a slave to the Devil and his unrighteousness. 

Insecure people rejoice in unrighteousness because misery loves company. Insecurity ultimately leads to broken relationships. This is not what God wants for us. Relationships are important to God. Relationships are eternal. It begins with our relationship with God.

God wants to LOVE us. For us to be His BeLoved child, we are to Be. Loved. By Him. God proved His love by sending Jesus Christ to be our Savior. Saved from what? From this SIN SATURATED world that provokes us to insecurity. Just as Noah and his family entered INTO the ark for the salvation of a flooded world, we can enter into the ark of a New Covenant: Jesus Christ. We will be IN Security as we hide and abide in Jesus Christ, not insecure. Only then can we help others that are struggling too.

I know this because I experience it. Even as a 13-year-old Christian I can still struggle with FOMO in a variety of ways however, I’m learning the tactics of my enemy. Instead of participating and believing the provoking lies of the enemy, I am choosing to expose them. The word ‘security’ can also be used as ‘confidence.’ The Devil is always trying to knock our confidence in God and in our identity in Christ. Instead of having a fear of ‘missing out,’ we should fear the LORD. As a sojourner in this world, I am choosing to walk IN the SECURITY of my LORD and Savior Jesus Christ. I’m choosing to walk in the Spirit. Want to join me on this journey?

Today I’m praying you experience the LOVE of God like you never had before, and you experience security in Christ…for His glory and namesake.

Glorify God. Magnify Christ. Edify the Brethren. 

“We love, because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

*This post was inspired by God’s Truth: 1 Corinthians 13; John 15:5; Romans 7:25;8:1-6; Ephesians 5:11; Hebrews 11:7; Luke 22:31-32; John 3:16-17

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Conviction-Confession-Cleansing, Exhortations

January 19, 2012

Begin with the ‘End’ in mind…

By altarofheaven

“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the person who seeks Him." Lamentations 3:24-25

I just finished reading Ecclesiastes! It took me three months to read those 12 chapters because I felt the Lord impress upon me to read it again and this time to put the last two verses of the book in context with every other verse.  What are the last two verses?

 “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person.  For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

What pops out: Fear God. Keep His commandments. God sees me all the time and will bring every act to judgment.

What I hear God say is this:

  • Fear God: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction” Proverbs 1:7
    • The word knowledge reminds me of what Jesus said about what eternal life is: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” John 17:3
  • Keep His commandments: Jesus reminds us of the two greatest commandments: “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40
    • Jesus also said, “If you love me you will keep My commandments.”John 14:15
  • God sees me all the time: “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Hebrews 4:13

I say these truths to myself again:

  • Fear God and He will reveal more of who He is and I will experience a relationship with Him by knowing Him.
  • If I truly do love Him I will keep His commandments.  His commandments can be reduced to two: loving Him with all my heart, soul and mind and love my neighbor.
  • God sees me all the time and will bring every act to judgment.

These are the truths I meditated on all day….

“Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.” Revelation 3:3

Maybe it’s because I was meditating on these Truths that I acted the way I did the other night when our electricity went out. I heard noises outside when all of a sudden the lights in the house went out.  My daughter begins to cry and I say to myself… ‘this is it’ and I go downstairs in the pitch dark grappling around to get my children and gather them upstairs with my husband.

Moments after we get to our room the lights go on and I see my husband’s look of confusion.  He was wondering what I thought the sound was and why I was bringing the children…because it was just a thunderstorm coming….I laugh and smile.

Later I told Him I didn’t know if it was a thief trying to break in or Jesus coming like a ‘thief in the night’ but either way, if at all possible I wanted our family to be together.  If it was a thief, then as a family we will share the gospel with the thief and trust in the Lord Jesus to protect us. And if it was the King of Glory coming down I was hoping we could go together.

I try to begin with the End in mind daily…Jesus Christ is the Beginning and the End.

I am expectedly waiting for my Savior Jesus Christ to return, I have this deep sense of urgency to tell others about Him.

The sweet lambs God entrusted us to impress His commandments

As a mother I have a deep sense of urgency to “impress” His commandments on their hearts not just so they can join my husband and I in heaven but so they too can KNOW Jesus and experience eternal life now and receive the power of the Holy Spirit to be His witnesses with urgency to tell others…my prayer is that He will draw them and they will accomplish what they were created to do: to glorify God.

I am praying He will draw you and you will not deny Him but welcome Him and love Him with all your heart, mind, and soul. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ you begin with the ‘End’ in mind.

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” 2 Peter 3:10

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Meditations of His Word