First Church of God

I'm not sure where you have found yourself in this whole subject of "The Fear of the Lord".  The story of Ananias and Sapphira has always brought a bit of a shudder to my heart.  This story does cause a certain amount of fear to well up.  This makes me wonder, what does it really look like to "Fear" God? Recently, I looked at the subject of fearing God at length while leading a study on the book of Proverbs.  During my study on this subject I ran across a quote from Charles Bridges:  [the fear of the Lord is] "that affectionate reverence by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father's law.  His wrath is so bitter, and his love so sweet; that hence springs and earnest desire to please Him."  The fool says "I'm so smart I don't need advice.  I don't need correction.  I can run my own life, thank you."  The wise person says, "God is great.  I am small.  Whatever I have learned of Him, I have so much more to learn!"  Where are you?

(Just a note:  There are references to speaking in tongues in this particular chapter.  The Church of God may have a different view of this subject than our author, but try not to get bogged down by semantics and just "chew up the meat and spit out the bones".  Just because we may disagree on a few things does not mean that we cannot learn from one another.)