Part of the attitude we need to have is a reverence and an awe of God. We should daily remind ourselves of who He really is: the Creator of the hundreds of billions of galaxies; the sovereign God who inhabits the future as well as the present and the past; the Almighty One who dwells in all places, and from whom no thought is hidden; clothed in power, glory, and dominion, He reigns over the cosmos in the beauty of holiness. This dimension of holy awe expands to holy terror when God’s servants like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter, and John encounter His manifest presence. Their visions of the living God filled them with overwhelming dread and made them simultaneously aware of the heights of divine holiness and the depths of human sin.
Another part of this attitude is humility before our King. “The fear of the Lord is the instruction for wisdom, and before honor comes humility” (Proverbs 15:33). The walk of wisdom is the conscious recognition that all we have and are come from God, and that every aspect of our lives needs to be under His dominion. The fool arrogantly vaunts an attitude of independence and autonomy, but the person who is wise lives in dependence and radical trust in the Author and Giver of life. “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We will grow in wisdom as we daily cultivate the attitude of awe and humility in our walk with God.
He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
To summarize, here is an amplified paraphrase of Proverbs 9:10a, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”: “The cultivation of a reverential attitude of awe for the eternal, holy, and almighty Ruler of all creation and a humble attitude of radical trust and dependence upon Him in every facet of life is the foundation upon which true skill in the art of living is built.”
Taken from Ken Boa’s Handbook to Spiritual Growth
