From my most recent post at The Blazing Center:
What is your greatest fear? Whether you’ve been asked this question directly or not you have certainly asked it of yourself. Or maybe you refuse to ask it because, well, you fear the answer. Is it heights? Is it spiders? Is it the flu? Is it death?
I am not a big fan of any of those, but none of those is my biggest fear. They’re not even close, really. My biggest fear is people, more specifically people’s opinions. I fear what people think, how they perceive me.
I am at all uncommon in this. Most of us fear people more than anything. The only reason they don’t admit it is because . . . they fear people. As in all other fears we avoid expressing or discussing it because doing so brings us face to face with it. We act as if fear has no power over us if we can pretend it doesn’t exist, but by doing so we are actually being guided by fear.
. . .
In this reality I see some of what it means to fear the Lord. “Fear the Lord” is a challenging phrase to wrap our minds around because fear, as we know it, isn’t a good or happy thing.
But if we feared God like we fear people we would wear what we wear, write what we write, say what we say, even think what we think out of God-fear.
. . .