"The fear of the Lord" is the beginning of wisdom. Christians have learned a healthy respect and awe for God (Hebrews 10:31 says, "For is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God"). If we fear God we need not fear man. "The LORD is my strength and my salvation, of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1). Jesus did mention that we need not fear man, but Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Jesus mentioned hell twice as much as he did heaven and believed it to be literally a place of eternal torment ("where worm does not die and fire is not quenched" and "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth")--sounds frightening, doesn't it?
There is a place for caution and respect for danger, and not to tempt God or others. Perfect love does cast out fear and we do not have a spirit of fear like the unbeliever, but we can overcome it by the power of the Spirit and we truly have nothing to fear, but fear itself as FDR famously said. Don't let the enemy dominate your thinking into being fearful, instead of courageous. We don't flirt with danger or tempt fate as they say, or purposely go into harm's way apart from God's will.
Satan uses scare tactics to get his agenda and plays on our fears to manipulate us, (he holds the sinner captive by the fear of death [Heb. 2:15] and this is a sin), but there is only one legitimate fear: The fear of God! It is much like parental fear in that we don't want to disobey because we know there may be severe consequences ("For whom the Lord loves, he chastens", per Heb 12:6). The Christian isn't just worried about God punishing him and hurting him--though this is a reality--but he doesn't want to hurt God! Our sin hurts God more than it does us! This fear is the true beginning of wisdom.
I know that they say you shouldn't become a Christian for "fire insurance" as they say, but I was greatly convicted of the reality of hell when I was 19 and it sobered me up to repent of my sins--there does come a time when we will meet our Maker at judgment and that should be a scary thought for some. Jonathan Edwards preached a fiery sermon in 1743 entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and it woke up the Colonies from their dogmatic slumber and began the Great Awakening that shook America. People were in fear of hell because Edwards made it so real to them. There is a DVD out about a man who was granted "thirty minutes in hell" to tell the world of its horrors and that no one should want to go there--avoid it at all extremes, at any cost. The cost of being a Christian is high, but the cost of not being one is even higher.
There is quite a bit of preaching out there these days that there is no literal hell, but only annihilation awaits the dead without Christ. This makes the urgency of the gospel message seem less important and the motivation is lessened. The true motivation for evangelizing is "[knowing] the terror of the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:11). We need to "sober" up the masses and make them realize that the majority is usually wrong and that "narrow is the way" that leads to life. Soli Deo Gloria!
There is a place for caution and respect for danger, and not to tempt God or others. Perfect love does cast out fear and we do not have a spirit of fear like the unbeliever, but we can overcome it by the power of the Spirit and we truly have nothing to fear, but fear itself as FDR famously said. Don't let the enemy dominate your thinking into being fearful, instead of courageous. We don't flirt with danger or tempt fate as they say, or purposely go into harm's way apart from God's will.
Satan uses scare tactics to get his agenda and plays on our fears to manipulate us, (he holds the sinner captive by the fear of death [Heb. 2:15] and this is a sin), but there is only one legitimate fear: The fear of God! It is much like parental fear in that we don't want to disobey because we know there may be severe consequences ("For whom the Lord loves, he chastens", per Heb 12:6). The Christian isn't just worried about God punishing him and hurting him--though this is a reality--but he doesn't want to hurt God! Our sin hurts God more than it does us! This fear is the true beginning of wisdom.
I know that they say you shouldn't become a Christian for "fire insurance" as they say, but I was greatly convicted of the reality of hell when I was 19 and it sobered me up to repent of my sins--there does come a time when we will meet our Maker at judgment and that should be a scary thought for some. Jonathan Edwards preached a fiery sermon in 1743 entitled "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and it woke up the Colonies from their dogmatic slumber and began the Great Awakening that shook America. People were in fear of hell because Edwards made it so real to them. There is a DVD out about a man who was granted "thirty minutes in hell" to tell the world of its horrors and that no one should want to go there--avoid it at all extremes, at any cost. The cost of being a Christian is high, but the cost of not being one is even higher.
There is quite a bit of preaching out there these days that there is no literal hell, but only annihilation awaits the dead without Christ. This makes the urgency of the gospel message seem less important and the motivation is lessened. The true motivation for evangelizing is "[knowing] the terror of the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:11). We need to "sober" up the masses and make them realize that the majority is usually wrong and that "narrow is the way" that leads to life. Soli Deo Gloria!