Category: Theology

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The Fire Series: Making Disciples

 

Matthew 28:18-20

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:19 has become one of the most popular verses of the bible. It has come to be called ‘the great commission’ and it has been used as the basis for the stereotypical ‘missionary’ who travels to remote places of the globe bringing the good news of the gospel.

In recent times, there has been arising a movement that is calling the church back to discipleship. Many have noticed that the missionary foundation of the early church has largely been replaced with evangelism and church attendance. ‘Winning souls for Christ’ has become an exercise in getting your programme on television or radio or social media and then getting people into your church service and then making an altar call so that they give their lives to Christ and eventually get baptized. And voila! There it is the modern interpretation of Mat 28:19! I don’t believe this is what Jesus wanted His church to look like for one main reason; this can all happen without a single genuine relationship between two people. Christianity is personal and relational because Christ is personal and relational. Discipleship cannot be impersonal and non-communal. But before I dig into that, let me talk about what the reaction to this commercial church ethos has been.

I have seen two reactions:

  1. Some church leaders have sought to have a greater missionary focus in their church. Sending people out to reach untouched people groups in some churches has again become a central pillar.
  2. Some people have abandoned the current building/service centric church culture altogether and returned to the early church model of meeting in small groups that are less hierarchical and more intimate.

The fact that there are people who have heard the call of God back to discipleship (and I believe this is a move initiated by God) and who have been convicted enough to do something about it is wonderful! I love it! But what I want to talk about today is less about what we do and more about who we are. I believe too often we do things out of a reaction to something bad and we create an exaggeration in the other direction. Like a pendulum, we swing all the way to the other side bringing criticism, division and cliquishness. Instead, I want to invite us to see what God is calling us to be and let that truth shine right where we are (which probably has some good things that God does not want us to throw out completely). I believe that as the church matures, we will see less moves of God that have been immortalized (or more correctly; mortalized) into denominations (Protestant, Pentecostal, Charismatic to name a few) and more continuous unification and maturing as we build upon the truths that brought us to where we are now, adding to it the current revelations of God.

OK so what are the truths that I believe God is calling us to embody today whether we are part of a mega church or a small study group? We can learn a lot from the added context of verses 18 and 20:

  1. The centrality of Christ: A) The whole mission is based on the fact that Christ has been given all authority in heaven and in earth (vs 18). Christ is on a mission to build his church and nothing can stop Him. B) We are discipling others in obedience to Christ (vs 20a). We are not making disciples of ourselves really; we are exposing others to our own discipleship to Christ and inviting them to emulate us. Only disciples make disciples. Conversely, converts make converts. The emphasis is on obedience to the commands of Christ not on the profession of faith. C) Christ Himself is part of the process. (vs 20b). Discipleship takes place in the presence of Christ. This is not some remote activity that we perpetuate until Christ returns. Jesus wants to be in this thing with us. Intimacy and partnership with Christ must be deep within our identity and the heart of what we bring to the world.
  2. Discipleship is personal: A disciple in the most practical sense is a life-student. A disciple emulates the totality of the teacher’s life. The disciples practically lived with Jesus. He opened up His life to them like he did with no one else. We cannot make disciples at arms-length. We must demonstrate to others how we are wrestling with the practice of observing all that Jesus has commanded us personally. We must show what discipleship looks like in practice. We must have the humility to allow others to interrogate our lives to understand our motives and struggles and even our failures.

So here are three things that I am excited about! Three things that I am eager to see arising in the church:

  1. Leaders that disclose more of their personal lives from the pulpit. Don’t just tell me what God says and what I should be doing. Tell me what God has been pulling on you about. Tell me where the rubber is hitting the road for you. What are you struggling with? What are you contending for? Why is this message that you are preaching burning for you right now? I want to know where Christ is at work in you and what that looks like in practice.
  2. Believers that build authentic friendships. Don’t just come to church and go home. Find one or two believers and build a friendship. Have people in your life with whom you can share your heart and your failures without condemnation or judgment. Talk about real issues like your struggle with porn or your struggle to be submissive to your unsaved husband. Get real and let that speaking the truth in love build us up into mature Christians. Build safe spaces with people in our lives where we can be vulnerable and allow Christ to touch us in the midst of authentic community.
  3. Missionaries re-invented. True missionaries do not really go to convert people. (Yes there were/are lots of false missionaries in my opinion) True missionaries go to demonstrate the love of Christ, sow the seeds of the Word, water it and leave the conversion business to Christ. As I have said before, making disciples is about demonstrating up-close our own discipleship to Christ. In the current context where almost any corner of the globe can be reached instantly, I believe that the urgency to reach people with the gospel is far less of a commission to travel somewhere geographically and much more of a mandate to take Christ with us into our sphere of influence. Every facet of our lives must be missionary; our profession, our marriage, our parenting, our recreation. We must be demonstrating Christ to the world in every thing we do! Are we discipling our children? Are we being open with our lives at work? Are we sharing the reason for our hope in our professional circles? And please do not picture the corrupt image of the portrayal of a perfect Christian life and a holier-than-thou attitude. I mean authentic Christianity. I mean being open about why you are different, imperfect but different.

You can do all of these things without starting a ministry or leaving your church (and I have nothing against either). Just choose to live a missionary life. It’s that simple yet that profound. You can start today!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Have You Heard His Voice?

I woke up one morning this week with the epiphany that there are a vast number of Christians who have never heard the voice of God. Not only did I wake up with this thought in my head, but I also felt God’s emotions in my heart. He has such a deep grief over this fact, because His longing is for all of His children to hear His voice.  He is always speaking but we often do not recognize it.

But today, if you are reading this, He wants you to hear Him!

The first thing He wants you to know is that hearing His voice is normal. Do not believe the lies and fallacies in your mind that say that only special people hear from God or that that was only in biblical times. NO, God is speaking to you every day!

The second lie that many of us have accepted as truth is that God is impersonal. God speaks through creation and through the scriptures. That is true. But that is often interpreted in an impersonal way. As in, He speaks to everyone in general. His grandeur and majesty and wisdom are there for all to see in the splendour, beauty and intelligence of creation. That is a wonderful truth! His statutes and commands and truth has been laid out in the scriptures for all who would search it out! Also true! But…. have you heard His personal whispers to you in the dawn? Has your heart burned as you read a verse that you knew was put there specifically for you in that moment? If not, God has more for you.

God is personal. He wants to relate to you personally; one on one.

Here are three truths that have helped me to hear God’s voice more clearly:

  1. God speaks your language. God does not speak English or Spanish or Greek or Hebrew for that matter. God speaks to your heart and soul in a way that is easiest for you to understand and it is precisely for this reason that we often miss His voice. Because hearing His voice is amazingly natural to us, it is easy to think that it’s just our own thoughts. For example, I heard a woman once talking about the way in which her husband heard God that was quite amusing but also very powerful. Her husband loved G.I. Joe and God would often bring to his mind scenes from the tv show to guide him in situations. He would know what God wanted him to do in a situation based on a scene in the  tv show that God would bring to his mind. Let that sink in. What are you into? How do you process things? What’s your personality? Expect to hear God in your own language. Don’t look for a deep voice from heaven or the appearance of an angel. Don’t relegate God to speaking only through a bible verse, He has so much more resources at His command to get to you. God is in you. The Holy Spirit dwells in you. He is speaking in the very mundane dialogue of your life.
  2. There are absolutely no coincidences. Your co-worker did not just happen to mention that issue that you are thinking about. That verse that popped up in your email was not randomly applicable to something that is troubling you. God is using all the resources at His disposal (which is the entire universe) to reach you personally. He loves you that much. He wants a relationship with you that much.
  3. God can handle your mistakes. This is critical because the number one fear where hearing God’s voice is concerned is the fear that we mistake our own voice or the enemy’s voice for God’s. This fear has crippled us into disconnected orphans who only believe what we read in the bible or the preacher says on a Sunday. This is NOT how God intended us to live! Living by faith also means taking a chance that that feeling you have or thought that you cannot shake is God. What you need to know is that even if it is not, God will honour your pure intention and take care of you. The first ways in which I learned to hear from God was the distress in my spirit that I felt when I went the wrong way. You heard that? Going down the wrong path is just another opportunity to hear God! Listen, God is BIG; HUGE. He really can handle his children fumbling as they try to discern His leading in their lives. It is really not a big deal.

John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

I’m praying that you start a new journey with God today, confident that He is speaking to you and that you absolutely are able to hear His voice!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Hand, I Need You!

One of the most profound analogies for the church of Jesus Christ is the human body. 1 Corinthians 12:21 states:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”

This is commonly interpreted as the fact that we need each other as individuals, which is completely true. However, I believe that we can also apply this verse at a local congregation or denomination level. Every single assembly, movement and denomination that follows Christ is needed; has something valuable to offer, something without which the rest of us will never experience the fullness of Christ Himself.

It seems that the standard membership package for many churches includes a deep drink of ‘We Alone Have The Truth’ flavoured Kool-Aid. I once belonged to a church like that. We were told that we were on the ‘cutting edge’ of what God was doing in the earth and I believed it too… until. Until, I left and began to read and listen to ‘other’ stuff. Until I began to hear the whispers of the Holy Spirit confirming deep truths through the mouths and pages of women and men outside of what was familiar territory up to that point.

I believe that this kind of arrogant thinking is fast becoming extinct. I see the signs in every denomination. There is arising a people who are not afraid to cross the divide and tap into the variety that is needed for the Body to grow. I am convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Body of Christ will not mature into the fullness of Christ unless we come to the revelation that every Christian group has something to offer that we need. It’s not a nice to have but a necessity; like a balanced diet is necessary to keep the physical body healthy.

I experience this daily with my girlfriend. She is Roman Catholic and I attend an Evangelical church (although I do not identify with any one denomination). As our relationship has grown our faith has widened and deepened. As we have shared perspectives, which are sometimes oppositional, we have come to appreciate God from different perspectives and it has enriched our walk with God immensely.

We have to be aware of the possibility that our religious leaders could be manipulating us with lies for fear of losing their flock. We have to be aware that people are afraid of anything they don’t understand. Don’t take what is said from the pulpit as the gospel (pun intended). Go visit another church one Sunday and see for yourself. Listen to the messages for yourself even if ‘they’ say that person is a heretic. More and more I have found that when people (especially very religious people) say that so-and-so church or person is teaching heresy that there is a good chance that God is in the midst. Study the bible and test every doctrine for yourself.

Like the beautiful stained glass windows often seen in churches, every person and every group may shine a different colour but together when the Son-light shines through we become a beautiful work of art crafted by the Master.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Power Of A Story – How Authentic Joy Was Made

 

First of all, more good news! The kindle version of my new book – Authentic Joy – is now available on Amazon in addition to the paperback version! Click here to find out more about the book and to get yourself a copy!

I love a good story. When I first started toying with the idea of writing a book I immediately knew that I wanted to tell a story. I wanted to take my readers along on a journey that made them laugh and cry and sit at the edge of their seats; the kind of story where you can’t put the book down. Because these were the kind of books that deeply impacted me, especially in my younger years. My favourite genre of book is fantasy. Books like The Lord of The Rings trilogy were my standard fare. I would be consumed in the unfolding plot for hours. The characters came alive and I saw myself in the midst of the pages. I will never forget those books.

These days my reading is much less exciting. Seems with adulthood comes the age of ‘self-help’. (Insert boring sigh here). The books that seem to be popular in the inspirational/religious category are mostly designed to overtly teach you something. There is nothing wrong with that of course but it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. It was not authentic to my heart. I wanted to share my knowledge in allegory.

Allegory: a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. Jesus taught in allegory or in parables. He would tell a story about a man who found a treasure or a farmer who sowed seeds but that was not the point of the story. The meaning had to be discovered or inferred. Often the listener was left to draw their own conclusions.

Much of my book, Authentic Joy, leaves the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. I could have written a book about Effective Church Leadership or 10 Sure Ways To Fail In Marriage or Where You Won’t Find God or…. but instead you will find that all of these themes are wrapped inside the story of an ordinary guy called Govinda.

What I believe makes this kind of book powerful is the story. I’m not telling you what to do or how to think, I’m simply sharing as I would with a close friend. The lessons have not been sterilised by stripping them of the context of the technicolour emotions or convoluted scenarios or imperfect relationships; the humanity and unpredictability of real life.

As the back cover of my book says… In my deepest destitution and despair, I found the joy that I was looking for in the presence of God Himself, or I should say, He brought me to the end of myself so that I could experience Him as He really is; my greatest treasure and highest joy! I wrote this novel simply to share with you the obstacles that kept me from this deeply satisfying intimacy with Christ and the nature of the Life that I found on the other side of those obstacles. My hope is that you too will see Him more clearly, treasure Him more deeply and experience authentic joy in Christ more fully than ever before!

So, I invite you to immerse yourself in the epic saga that is Authentic Joy!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Obey Your Thirst

 

I remember a soft drink ad from many years ago that stuck in my head. The tagline was, “Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Obey your thirst.” The underlying message was that our drink choices should not be based on what made us look cool or what the famous athletes/movie stars were drinking, but simply on what quenched our thirst.

It is a message that I feel is relevant to Christians today. So many of us stop short of a fully satisfied life in Christ because we are just too image conscious. We are so busy maintaining the veneer of a perfect Christian life that we are completely missing the opportunity to have a real vibrant relationship with the Almighty.

Sometimes when I look around during worship I’m saddened because it seems like there is more self-consciousness than God-consciousness. I’m excited to reach to worship most Sundays because I never know when God is going to show up! I rather reach to church in jeans and a T-shirt than miss worship because I’m dressing up in my Sunday best. I mean…. the presence of God! What could beat that?! When He does show up and we’re in tears or shouting or singing at the top of our lungs or dancing with all our might and I open my eyes to see some people just there, looking cool, it’s always a shock.

I wanna plead with them and say, “It’s OK.” It’s OK to lose yourself in God. It’s Ok to sing a wrong note, to shed a tear, to jump like a fool or dance out of time. It’s OK to look a fool for God. It’s more than OK, it’s the appropriate thing to do!

It’s not only about our image during worship but also our image in the community. Many couples hide the issues in their marriage or family because they are ‘somebody’ in the community. If they would only admit that things are less than perfect and seek help… I weep for them. For the missed opportunity at really joy-filled relationships where real issues are being worked out within compassionate communities infused by the transformational power of the Holy Ghost!

The church has been such a place of shame and stigma that many have become professional Christian actors. We prefer a good reputation to an authentic life. Unfortunately, a fake image does not quench the very real thirst in our souls for real righteousness, real holiness, real intimacy, real love, real peace and real joy. Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Pursue God with reckless abandon! Worship Him like there’s nobody else in the room! Live like only His opinion of us matters! Obey your thirst!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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Book Launch!

My new book is out!

This novel sprung forth from the dark earth of my failure and despair. I gave my life to Christ at age twenty but only found a truly joy-filled life in Christ twenty years later. The difficulties that I faced in those two decades in between – the tireless grappling with my hedonistic tendencies, the vanity of religion, my failures in one marriage after another, the sin that beset me, the deep desire for fulfilment that remained unmet, the people that God used to shape my character and reveal my mission – all provided the resource material that inspired Authentic Joy.

However, that is not the subject of this book. The subject is God. It is a fictional tale that reveals the non-fictional character of an incomprehensibly wise, astoundingly merciful and absolutely sovereign God who transforms darkness and rancour into light and joy!

In my deepest destitution and despair, I found the joy that I was looking for in the presence of God Himself, or I should say, He brought me to the end of myself so that I could experience Him as He really is; my greatest treasure and highest joy! I wrote this novel simply to share with you the obstacles that kept me from this deeply satisfying intimacy with Christ and the nature of the Life that I found on the other side of those obstacles. My hope is that you too will see Him more clearly, treasure Him more deeply and experience authentic joy in Christ more fully than ever before!

Get your paperback copy now:

https://xulonpress.com/bookstore/bookdetail.php?PB_ISBN=9781545638477&HC_ISBN=

https://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Joy-Matik-Nicholls/dp/1545638470/

Kindle version coming next month!

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Christianity – The ‘Both And’ Religion

So many squabbles and schisms in the church occur because we think that Christianity is an ‘either or’ religion when, in fact, it’s more of an ‘both and’ religion. If you have read the bible to any significant degree, there are inescapable tensions between seemingly contradictory concepts. I have seen people deal with these paradoxical concepts in two ways:

  1. You ignore the concepts that you don’t like or that doesn’t mesh with your existing inclinations and mentalities and hold on to the ones that do. This is the ‘either or’ way.
  2. You embrace the paradox and strive to practice both realities in your Christian walk. This is the ‘both and’ way.

Richard Rohr talks a lot about this. He calls it duality thinking versus contemplative thinking. Our Western minds, according to Rohr, are wired in binary. Something is either A or B; it can’t be both. This thinking limits our ability to express the fullness of kingdom realities. An example of this is law versus grace.

In some quarters of the church, legalism (an emphasis on keeping the commandments of God) is what is preached. Antagonists of the law camp may point out that that is Old Testament thinking while we are now in the New Covenant of grace. To which they would rightly respond that Jesus said that not one iota will pass from the law until all is fulfilled and whoever relaxes one of the least of the commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom and whoever does and teaches them will be called great (Mat 5:17-19). Not to mention Jesus also said those who love Him, obey His commands (John 14:15).

The grace camp emphasizes the sovereign grace of God that wiped out the requirement of the law through the sacrifice of Christ. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So no longer are we focused on obeying a set of rules but receiving the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness through Jesus Christ (Ro 5:15-21).

So, which is it? Do we focus on obeying the law or receiving the gift? The answer is both! In Ro 6 Paul addresses the issue… He says, “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” The ‘both and’ Christian knows that his righteousness is not through obedience but through Christ alone, but the fruit of the free gift of abundant grace is a delight in obedience to Christ!

Another example is free will versus determinism, but I’m not even going to try to get into that one within the limited confines of this blog. I will leave you to ponder that one on your own (check Romans 9).

Suffice to say that God is not as clear cut and logical as we might like. He is after all the Lion and the Lamb who saved us, yet we are still working out our salvation, both by faith and by works. (You catch my drift?) Let’s not try to put His ways into neat little boxes but instead transform our mind and by the Spirit search out the mysteries of His glorious kingdom!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Ineffable God

“God is ineffable!” ~ A. W. Tozer.

Ineffable: too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.

Lately, I have been obsessed with a fresh revelation that God is beyond my human comprehension. I know a little of Him. I see glimpses and shadows, but the entirety of God is utterly beyond me. This revelation has not, in any way, had the effect of dampening my zeal to seek the Living God. No, quite the opposite. It has filled my heart with such a largeness of God; such a beyond-ness, that I hope to spend an eternity in endless discovery of His heavenly riches! I am filled with excitement akin to going on vacation to some new place where every day I wonder what new vistas of Eternity lie around the corner!

God is more breath-taking every day! He is more awe-inspiring the more you know Him!

So, when I hear preachers talk like they have God pinned down, my spidy-senses start to tingle. Phrases like, ‘God is the same yesterday, today and forever’ and ‘God doesn’t change’ or ‘God doesn’t do anything that is not in the bible’ make me very wary depending on the context in which they are used.

The bible chronicles a supremely multi-faceted God. If you picked out one particular era, you would be hard pressed to predict that that God was the same God of another era. In fact, I often say that unless you have read the entire bible, you probably have a very very limited understanding of God’s character. To think that we know all there is to know about God is just a tad arrogant. The same kind of arrogance that caused the religious leaders to dismiss Jesus Christ. This unassuming carpenter could not be the God of the bible (up to that time only the Old Testament). I mean, he didn’t speak like thunder and no angels blew trumpets when he entered the synagogue. Worse yet, he ate with sinners and drank wine!!

I do not know where the notion came that God limited Himself to our puny understanding of a few written texts, but I rather suspect that it did not come from God. That’s why the bible never gets boring (if you are reading it with God); because the Holy Spirit continues to pour out fresh revelations of the unsearchable depths of God as we seek Him in scripture. The fact is that our human language just does not have the bandwidth to describe God! The most we can get to is ‘God is like’. He is something like majestic, something like strong, something like merciful, something like a father, something like a king…. words all fall short. They fall short in English, Greek and Hebrew. They best they can do is act as a conduit for the Holy Spirit to pour understanding straight into our spirit.

Blake Healy says that God is so multi-faceted that His nature can only begin to be expressed through the thousands of years of history of billions of diverse human lives. That is a blow-mind thought! The unfolding of history is really a progressive revelation of who God is! How else could an eternal God be expressed in time? That’s why no one person could be the Body of Christ; His nature could only be represented by the myriad variety of millions of unique disciples!

God will always be part mystery on this side of heaven. It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out (Proverbs 25:2). Never let your study of scripture lead you to a puffed-up overconfidence in your knowledge of God. Instead, let it lead you to humble awe of the unknowable God, a healthy scepticism of what you think you already know, a child-like willingness to see God in things you do not yet understand and an insatiable appetite for more of God!

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series – Celebrate Life!

So, these days I have been enjoying a season where God has been inviting me to celebrate life; to live each day with thanksgiving and celebrating Him in every thing and every moment. So often we feel it is only holy or godly to refrain from enjoying things. Yes, sometimes there are seasons when we must discipline the flesh but that does not mean that earthly pleasures are bad. It always struck me that Jesus’ disciples did not fast because while Jesus was with them it was a time for celebration (eating and drinking) not fasting. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus is with us always and yet some of us still feel guilty if we enjoy what this earthly life has to offer.

I think sometimes we forget that God created everything. He created pleasure. All earthly pleasures point to the ultimate pleasure we experience in God. They are a little taste of the divine. All creation reveals the Creator! The secret I have discovered in this season is to enjoy everything with thanksgiving and celebration to The One who gave all life and the fullness of the earth for our enjoyment.

In fact, it is this deep inner worship that should make us Christians enjoy this life more than anybody else! We should savour every meal with awe at a God who made such a myriad of tastes and sensations. Every bite and sip should be with praise! Our shared fellowship should be all the sweeter knowing the sacred temples with whom we dine – carriers of the divine spark! We should be having the best sex. Yes, I said sex. We of all people should be shouting, “Hallelujah!” and “Thank You Jesus!” for a God who created such an orgasmic union of husband and wife!

OK switching gears before I get stoned for heresy… Currently, I’m on a school trip with my daughter and her classmates. To save money, they put boys with male parents and girls with female parents, four to a room. I dreaded having to share a room with strangers, but I sucked it up to give my little girl an experience to remember.

What it meant though was that I had to find somewhere to spend my morning alone time with God. But He had already put things in place. I woke up early this morning and headed down to the beach. Not a soul was there as the first glimmers of sunrise peeked over the ocean horizon. The morning pelicans dived into the surf while the waves seemed to be running races to see who would reach the shore first creating a salty mist that filled the air . The entire setting spoke to me powerfully. “Celebrate life!” it said. This poem bubbled up in my soul:

All creation celebrates You Lord!

We were all created to sing Your praise!

Help me to exult You O God!

I do not want to be left out of this symphony of worship!

Help me to frolic with the waves.

Help me to shine with the sun.

Help me to sing and soar with the birds.

Help me to be still with You in the mist.

Help me to caress You with the breeze.

Help me to celebrate the Giver of Life!

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series – Do Not Be Afraid!

The concept of the fear of God in the bible has been greatly misunderstood and miscommunicated. The result has been a reckless amount of fear-mongering, damnation and hellfire preaching that completely misses the heart of God for His people. To get an accurate understanding of the fear of God I wish to start by examining two scriptures:

Proverbs 9:10 (ESV)

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

1 John 4:18 (ESV)

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

There is a contradiction here that we need to figure out. If God is love, and God loves us unconditionally, and we are commanded to love Him with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, then how does the ‘fear of the Lord’ fit into this?

The key to this conundrum, I propose, is that those two verses are talking about two different types of fear. 1 John 4:18 is talking about the fear of punishment. This type of fear is not what God wants us to have, especially for Him! However, this has been a significant part of our Christian teachings. In one form or another I am sure most of us have suffered under the weight of a notion that God is waiting to punish us for every sin we commit. This is absolutely not true my friends! This is a lie that the enemy has planted in the church to keep us from running into the arms of our merciful Saviour.

There are thousands, if not millions, of people who would be in church or coming to God right now but for the fact that they are afraid of Him! They are afraid of the wrath of God; a belief that they have been sold by well-meaning but ignorant pastors, priests and believers. This fear has no place in the perfected Body of Christ. Perfect love casts out fear!

What is the fear of God then? The Proverbs 9:10 type of fear is much better translated ‘reverence’ or ‘awe’. To illustrate:

Hebrews 5:7

(NKJV)

7 who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear

(ESV)

7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.

The New King James Version uses the phrase ‘godly fear’ to try to distinguish this type of fear but the word ‘godly’ is not in the original Greek. The same word used in Hebrews 12:28:

(NKJV)

28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.

(ESV):

28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,

While the translators in the NKJV try to achieve a better understanding in the minds of the reader by using the qualifier ‘godly’, the ESV translators do away with the potentially misunderstood word ‘fear’ entirely and use instead the word ‘awe’.

You see godly fear or fear of God is not a fear of punishment but an absolute reverence and awe of God. This reverence is an acknowledgement with every fiber of our being that He is BIG and we are small. It is an awe at the complete sovereignty and omniscience of God. The beginning of wisdom is knowing that compared to an all-knowing God we know nothing!

Paradoxically, the most jaw-dropping quality of this God we serve is that He wants to have a relationship with us; us mere created things; us sinners. And so, true fear of God actually draws us closer to Him in adoration and gratitude. It is our Adamic nature that causes us to run from God just as Adam tried to hide in the garden as man felt shame for the first time in human history. Whenever this Adamic fear threatens us, know that God is saying, “Do not be afraid.” It is a command that is repeated over and over in the bible. “Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid!”

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.