Fear of God

After our first 2919 of the semester (which is part of the college ministry of the Journey Campus), it really got me thinking about the fear of God.  For the first few weeks we are going to be going through Francis Chan's basic series and tonight was talking about the fear of God and how a lot of us tend to take that to be old testament or simply reverence. This lead me to think a lot about what my last post was talking about but on a different level.

One of the discussion questions tonight was think about a time where we were simply terrified, well I actually had one of those times today at lunch.  I am on the encourager team at The Journey Campus and one of the things we do is follow up with people who fill out a visitor card.  I had the awesome luxury of having lunch with a person today who had indicated on the card that they wanted to discuss a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  Talk about fear!  This discussion could be one of the most important discussion in this person's life and I was supposed to be able to talk with them about it?  Through the awesome power of the holy spirit and God's ultimate provision I was able to pray with this person to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior.  Hallelujah!  All the praise to the Lord.  That being said, it was still one of the most frightening experiences I have ever faced.

When it comes to the fear of God one way I am going to try to look at it is, just as my last post, that every person I come in contact with I may be the only Jesus they ever see.  The reason this strikes fear into me is that this is not some nonchalant ritual that people go through, this is eternity either with or separated from God.  But to take it a step further, as my buddy Charles said, it goes so much further than our words.  Not only do the words of our mouth have to proclaim the gospel, the actions of our day to day lives must also project that holiness. When people are aware that a person goes to church that person becomes the person to watch, because a lot of people are looking to catch a "Christian" breaking one of the rules. 

I don't know about anyone else, but it strikes a major fear in me to think of standing in front of the Lord and having to give account for every careless word, and action that could possibly lead someone to doubt or even turn from their faith.  We should attempt to live a life that is so out of the ordinary in a good way that the only explanation is something greater than this world.  That is my personal goal and challenge to everyone out there.  Lets live a life that screams Jesus with every action and word because it could play a part in the decision that someone makes in regards to eternity.