This God in Whom John tells us is light, no darkness at all (1 John 1) said, \u201cI am the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity\u201d (Isa. 45). This God of love and grace \u201chas mercy on whom He desires and hardens whom He desires (ex: Pharaoh and Judas)\u201d (Rom. 9). And this God who \u201ctempts no one\u201d (Jas. 1) summoned and sent a deceiving spirit into Ahab\u2019s prophets (1 Kings 22). To put our God in any comfortably figured-out theology is unwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
God gives us life. We do not co-create it. He is the Giver of revelation, knowledge, and wisdom. We are the receptacles of it. He gives grace. We need it and He doesn\u2019t. He came up with, and then implemented, the solution to sin. We didn\u2019t. He knows the future. We do not. He says in Isaiah 44, \u201cYou are My witnesses. Is there any god besides Me or is there any other Rock? I know of none.\u201d He is the creator of, undisputed King over, and ultimate judge of all creation. We are none of these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A proper fear of God is a foundational, abiding, motivating, living, transforming reverence for One other<\/em> than us, yet through grace One to which we can nonetheless intimately relate. This reverence leads us to repentance, humility, wisdom, and ultimately faith and trust. Holy fear causes us to exalt our God above every other desire or person in this life. At once it leads us to abundant peace, yet not without some trepidation over the unknown that brings about faith. Fear of God leads us to abundant answers, yet never without nagging questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This God in Whom John tells us is light, no darkness at all (1 John 1) said, \u201cI am the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity\u201d (Isa. 45). This God of love and grace \u201chas mercy on whom He desires and hardens whom He desires (ex: Pharaoh and Judas)\u201d (Rom. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kingdom-and-you"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenedchristianman.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}