The Difference Between Terror and Awe
Can I be real with you? We live in a culture that is absolutely suffocating under the weight of fear. We fear the economy crashing, we fear what our kids are being exposed to, we fear the medical test results, and we fear that we are somehow falling irreparably behind in life. So, when you walk into a church or open your Bible and hear that you need to have the 'fear of the Lord,' it can feel like just one more exhausting thing to be afraid of. I know how many times I've sat with people who are completely paralyzed by anxiety, secretly believing that God is a cosmic bully just waiting for them to step out of line so He can strike them down. If that is the image of God you are carrying, no wonder you feel exhausted.
But we have to completely reframe this. Proverbs 1:7 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but we so often get completely stuck on our modern, human definition of the word 'fear.' True biblical fear of the Lord is not the cowering terror of a slave before a tyrant; it is a profound, breathtaking reverence for God. It is the sudden, earth-shattering realization of exactly who is standing in the room with you. It’s knowing that the God who spoke the galaxies into existence is the same God who holds your fragile, breaking heart in His hands.
Think about the blind men who followed Jesus. They were living in total darkness, marginalized and desperate. When they approached Jesus, they weren't running from Him in terror; they were crying out to Him in desperate, holy awe. They recognized His authority over their brokenness. Jesus didn't just wave a hand and dismiss them; He stopped and demanded that they acknowledge His sovereignty. He required a reverence that anchored their faith directly to His divine capability.
And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord. Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you.— Matthew 9:28-29, KJV
Bowing Down at the Impossible
Sometimes we lose our reverence because the brutal realities of life simply beat it out of us. We face dead ends. We watch our prayers seemingly go unanswered. Like the women walking to the sepulchre early on the first day of the week, we carry our spices to the tomb of our dreams, fully expecting to just anoint a corpse. We prepare for the absolute worst because hoping for the best has hurt us too deeply in the past. You know the feeling, don't you? Walking through the motions of your faith, expecting to find nothing but the cold, hard rock of disappointment.
But true fear of the Lord is what happens when God disrupts our grief with His glory. When those women arrived, they found the stone already rolled away. They walked into a situation that defied every law of nature and every human expectation. They encountered something so far beyond human capability, so radiant and overwhelming, that their only possible response was to bow their faces to the earth. That is what reverence looks like.
That bowing down—that breath-catching, knee-bending awe—is the fear of the Lord in action. It’s the realization that God is not bound by our human limitations, our medical reports, our financial ruins, or our past mistakes. He speaks life into the very places we have confidently pronounced dead. When we hold a true reverence for God, we stop looking for natural explanations and start looking for supernatural resurrection.
And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,— Luke 24:5-6, KJV
Staying When the Saying is Hard
It is incredibly easy to treat Jesus like a cosmic vending machine. We want the instant miracles, the comfort, the bread, and the fish. But reverence for God requires us to accept Him on His terms, not ours. You see, Jesus didn't come to earth just to be a helpful life coach or to give us a few good tips on how to manage our stress. He came to be our very sustenance, demanding a level of surrender that makes our flesh deeply uncomfortable.
In John 6, Jesus shifts the conversation from physical bread to spiritual reality. He tells the crowd that He is the living bread, and that they must consume Him entirely—His life must become their life, His blood their blood. This wasn't a gentle, seeker-friendly sermon. It was a radical call to total consumption and absolute surrender. And the moment He laid out the true cost of following Him, the crowd began to thin out. People looked at each other and said, 'This is an hard saying; who can hear it?'
Real reverence is staying when others walk away. The fear of the Lord is the holy awe that keeps you anchored to Christ even when His word challenges your comfort, even when His instructions don't make logical sense to your current situation. It is trusting that His hardest truths are the only source of eternal life. If your view of God never challenges you, never makes you drop to your knees, and never asks you to lay down your own understanding, you haven't encountered the living God—you've created a manageable idol.
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.— John 6:53-54, KJV
The Touch of Reverent Desperation
Let's look at one more picture of what this looks like in the dirt and grit of real life. There is a massive difference between casually bumping into the Savior and reaching out to Him with intentional, desperate awe. The crowds were pressing in on Jesus from every side, but only one woman's touch actually stopped Him in His tracks. She had suffered for twelve years. She had no money left, no status, and no reason to believe things would get better. She didn't have a trumpet to blow to announce her arrival, and she didn't have a grand theological argument prepared.
What she had was a reverent desperation. She knew that if she could just touch the hem of His garment, everything would change. She approached Him with the kind of holy fear that says, 'You are the only One who possesses the power to fix this.' She didn't presume upon His grace, but she fiercely believed in His authority.
Jesus did not rebuke her for her audacity. He didn't turn around and punish her for daring to approach His holiness. He rewarded her reverence. When you truly understand what the fear of the Lord actually means, you stop hiding your mess from Him. You bring Him your bleeding, broken, and blind places, knowing that His infinite power is matched only by His infinite compassion.
For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.— Matthew 9:21-22, KJV
The fear of the Lord isn't the dread of a condemned prisoner; it's the breathless awe of a deeply loved child standing before an infinitely powerful Father. It is the recognition that the God who commands the wind and waves, who speaks life into dead places, and who holds the keys to eternity, has intimately called you by name. When you finally grasp the magnitude of His majesty, your anxiety begins to lose its grip. You don't have to carry the weight of the world anymore, because you stand in awe of the One who already does.