The Reverential Fear of the Lord

Fresh Manna© by Pastor Tim Burt

Isaiah 11:1-3 “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him–the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord– and he will delight in the fear of the Lord…”

I remember once sitting in a small group of about eight people. I wanted to think of an ice-breaker to get the group introduced to each other and to jump-start some conversation. I asked the group to think about things they really love or enjoy doing and talk about them for a couple of minutes. It didn’t take long for someone to start out sharing. People quickly joined in. It was a free-flowing and excited conversation that seemed to cover a large gamut from sports, to hobbies, to food, to traveling, and more.

In our society we use the word “love” when speaking of things we really enjoy. Another word that could be used and would be more appropriate by definition would be “delight.” “Delight” is defined as a high degree of or great pleasure or enjoyment; joy; rapture (meaning ‘getting caught up in.’) That would surely describe how the group’s conversation about those things they were excited about.

In the book of Isaiah, we read about the prophet Isaiah prophesying about the coming of Jesus and just how God’s Spirit would rest upon Him as He lived in the earth as a man. It reads, Isaiah 11:1-3 “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him–the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord– and he will delight in the fear of the Lord…”

These verses reveal some powerful truths about Jesus but one in particular I’d like to focus on today. Jesus was one that “delighted in the fear of the Lord.” That means He took great pleasure and enjoyment in “the fear of the Lord.” It means He exceedingly reverenced His Father God. Having great delight in reverencing God was not one of the “delights” that people talked about in the small group.

Have you ever had the thought that our society has been turned upside down and inside out? Does it seem that morals and values and disciplines and restraint for what is good has or is being stripped from life? What would be the cure for that? It’s simple – at least to say. The cure would be for mankind to “delight or take great pleasure and enjoyment in the reverential fear of the Lord.”

Of course we know that’s not possible because all mankind will not receive Jesus into their hearts and experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. What all mankind will one day learn is that God is not mocked. There are consequences in life for every avoidance and abandonment of God’s will and ways. Galatians 6:7-8 puts it like this: “Don’t be misled. Remember that you can’t ignore God and get away with it. You will always reap what you sow! Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful desires will harvest the consequences of decay and death.” These words represent the “fear of the Lord” on the negative side. These words are for those that mock God’s ways and act like or teach that they aren’t true or don’t exist. These words strike fear in the hearts of many people. They don’t like them so they say they choose not to believe them or they avoid hearing them and suppress them from their thinking.

Those verses continue with a positive encouragement to those that do love God. Galatians 6:8-9 “But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So don’t get tired of doing what is good. Don’t get discouraged and give up, for we will reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time.”

Isaiah revealed to us that the Messiah that would come – Jesus, would have the Spirit of God resting upon Him. He also revealed that Jesus would “delight” or take great pleasure in reverencing His Father.

You may think – “Well, that was Jesus. The Spirit of God rested upon Him, not me!” That is not true. The Spirit of God rested upon Jesus so that He could reverence God and fulfill God’s will. By fulfilling God’s will and taking our sins and punishment upon Himself, He created the way for God’s Spirit to rest upon us. God’s Word confirms this powerful truth saying:

1 Cor. 2:12 “And God has actually given us His Spirit (not the world’s spirit) so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us”. And,

2 Cor. 1:21-22 “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

The cure for society’s woes is for Christians to “delight” or take great pleasure and enjoyment in the reverential fear of the Lord. Delight or pleasure and excitement are strong physical and mental stimulants that motivate you repeated toward something. Learning to reverence God actually carries that pleasure after you’ve walked with God closely for a season. When you sincerely take the time to reverence God with and by what you see in His Word, and then in prayer, and then in your thought processes, you will change. The Holy Spirit will sift your thoughts and actions like sifting pebbles from sand. Reverencing God helps you see the pebbles in your life and purify your heart and mind. If just Christians would do this as Jesus modeled, life as we know it would greatly change. Our lives would be transformed and so would society. I pray that you “delight yourself in the fear of the Lord” today!

His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://www.freshmanna.org

Published by Pastor Tim Burt
Copyright© 2007 Tim Burt
All rights reserved.

What is Fresh Manna? God’s Word – the Bible, should be exciting and alive to us. God wants to speak to us through His Holy Spirit and give us a fresh word from heaven every day. Fresh Manna is a daily devotional – that nourishment of daily bread from His heart to ours!

Your Spirit Follows the Holy Spirit

Fresh Manna© by Pastor Tim Burt
http://www.freshmanna.org

Luke 5:4 “When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

Today, I woke up early and wished I could have gone back to sleep. I was feeling really tired. I didn’t have one of my better sleeps last night. But, I laid there for a minute and thought about where my day needed to go. I thought about my first meeting of the day. I could easily postpone that one hour and get an extra hour of sleep. I quickly rebuked that thought. I knew there was much I needed to accomplish. I instead focused my thoughts to the Lord and got out of bed.

Think about what our lives would be like if we did only what we felt like doing. Many people do. Before I had accepted the Lord, I leaned that direction. My life was focused on pleasing me. That doesn’t mean I was mean or didn’t do nice things for people. I often did, but my life was mostly focused on me. If I woke up tired, I plotted to call in sick or make up some lie or excuse as to why I couldn’t come in. Lying and manipulating to get my desired outcome didn’t seem evil. It was the way of the world. It seemed to me like everyone did that. That was my excuse. Everyone else did it why couldn’t I? That was a season of life where I let my feelings or selfish desires guide most of my steps.

In coming to the Lord my heart and perspective changed. I learned that people can follow one of three leading desires within them. Two are want-to-be leaders and one is a real leader. People can follow the leading of what their flesh wants. Many do and the results are obvious – lives that are out of control from the extreme of obesity or chemical or sexual abuse, to the negative habits people have that they deep down despise.

People can follow their intellect and emotions. The problem with that is our knowledge and understanding is limited to what we know. Honest people will admit that in the big picture of life, our intellect is grossly limited and overated. I don’t mean many aren’t intellectually intelligent, but talk to someone who has lost a child to a drunk driver or has been stricken by cancer and they will tell you their intelligence didn’t resolve their issues. Our understanding is limited and also had great ability to lead us astray.

The problem with our emotions and feelings leading us is that they are far too unstable to depend on. They can be filled with anger or hate or rage, thereby ripe to mislead us. Our emotions can lead us astray when we are tired or fatigued, or when we are confused or afraid from rejection or fear. Letting our emotions lead us through life will always eventually lead us astray.

Lastly, we can follow after our spirit led by the Holy Spirit. Our spirit led by the Holy Spirit is whom God wants us to follow. If we have given our life to Jesus, then the Holy Spirit lives within us. John 14:26 says, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” The Holy Spirit will lead you in the Father’s will just as He led Jesus on the earth.

In today’s Fresh Manna verse, Peter had just finished fishing all night and without success. He was tired and exhausted and had just finished cleaning his nets. Suddenly Jesus tells him to go out into the deep and launch his nets. Peter’s head and emotions were screaming but he kept them under control before Jesus. He just said in as nice a way as he could muster, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” (Luke 5:5) If Peter had gone by his intellect or his emotions, well you could figure out what his response would have been. Instead he yielded to the Lord. Upon obeying Jesus, there were so many fish that Peter and his men could hardly pull them in – their nets were breaking, and they needed more help.

2 Cor 5:7 says, “We live by faith, not by sight.” This means that we don’t let our intellect lead our steps. Our intellect thrives on what it sees. We don’t let our emotions lead our daily path. They have great potential to lead us astray. We’ll use both of them daily but we position ourselves in heart to listen to our spirit as it is led by God’s Holy Spirit. He’ll speak to us through the Word of God or other Christians to help lead us. If you will remember that what you need to know is something that He already knows, you would be motivated to ask God to lead you. He desires to lead us in all we do. He desires our success and will tell us where and how to cast our nets!

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://www.freshmanna.org

Published by Pastor Tim Burt
Copyright© 2007 Tim Burt
All rights reserved.

What is Fresh Manna? God’s Word – the Bible, should be exciting and alive to us. God wants to speak to us through His Holy Spirit and give us a fresh word from heaven every day. Fresh Manna is a daily devotional – that nourishment of daily bread from His heart to ours!

Are you Faithful or a Fizzler?

Fresh Manna© by Pastor Tim Burt
http://www.freshmanna.org

Prov 20:6 “Most men will proclaim each his own goodness, But who can find a faithful man?”

Fizzle Out! Have you ever heard that expression? What might you picture if you heard that expression? One of the definitions for fizzle is “A failure or aborted effort.” When I think of this term, I think of people that claimed to be excited about something or make great commitment to something only to later “fizzle out.” I’ve seen many a person claim their faithfulness and commitment to many things only to soon “fizzle out.” I’ve seen people fizzle out of their marriages, fizzle out of the good intentions of their parenting efforts, fizzle out of their plans to trim down or get in shape, fizzle out of their commitments to things that they said, “God had told them to do.” That’s why today’s Fresh Manna verse says that many people will proclaim all the great and wonderful things they can or are going to do, but I always wonder who will still be there doing what they started out to do in the end?

I have always had great admiration for people who are faithful and stick to and finish what they start out to do. This country was founded by faithful pioneers who had a vision of great things that could be and were faithful to that vision. Pioneers and people faithful to a cause usually make innumerable unseen sacrifices of their own time and resources for the future good of others. We are blessed to be living in a land that was pioneered by the faithful with tremendous sacrifice so that we may experience the prosperity and freedom that we have today.

I find myself surrounded by faithful people. I’ll give you one example although I could give a hundred. Years ago I saw a tremendous lack of parenting skills in parents with young children. This was pre-SuperNanny and Nanny 911 – two television shows that have come to be a gift from God for parents. I felt that most parents did not realize that if they would put forth the hard but wonderful work of consistent hands-on teaching, instructing, reproving, and discipline with their children in these powerfully formative years, the rest of their growing years with their children will be a cake walk compared to those children that get minimum parenting. Parents that don’t set boundaries that they enforce with discipline, end up with children that run wild. God had put it on my heart to help many of these young parents so that they could avoid all the pitfalls and heartaches that so many parents face later on when their children turn to teenagers.

I started a class called “Parenting Young Children” that Renee and I taught for a few years. Parents loved it and the fruit of what we taught was immediate in the lives of these families. My responsibilities at our church of 10,000 people are enormous and never ending. I started our Small Group Ministry over 20 years ago and we have a great diversity of groups. It has always been important to continue to add groups to meet the needs of our church. Years ago while I was teaching ”Parenting Young Children,” a couple came along that told me they had it on their heart to help. I was grateful and glad to have their help. They were and are wonderful people. Seldom do I just turn something over to someone. I spent time working with this couple, letting them learn what we were teaching and eventually giving them the opportunity to teach what we had taught. They did a delightful job and in many ways brought new dimension of creativity and fun to the group that helped it to continue and greatly prosper. Because of these people, the vision and importance of the group continued to expand. They eventually took the helm freeing me to start something new.

People like this are the faithful. There are often working quietly and diligently behind the scenes without much glory or fanfare. These kinds of people aren’t driven by that. They are driven by inward vision and passion to a cause. They are the salt of the earth. They build things now for the good of others later. Few people understand the sacrifices they make of their personal and family time to help others. They have the same demands on their life that everyone else has and yet, they selflessly let go of some of their personal time and resources for the well being of others. People like this are the gold and precious stones of the earth. They are the salt that brings mankind its flavor. They are God’s living and breathing blessings manifest in this earth to make our lives better.

I am surrounded by people like this at our church. The “faithful ones.” People that have been faithfully serving others out of their heart and unto the Lord for 10, 15, and even 20 years. They consider it a part of their destiny and God-given purpose. What they do is a hugely significant part in God’s wonderful scheme of things.

The faithful are a huge part of what makes my life rich. They don’t know what “fizzle out” means. They live a life of faithfulness. I hope you notice the faithful that touch you and your family’s lives and let them know that you’ve noticed. As I said, they don’t live for fanfare but a simply sincere thank you fills their tank to go on and on!

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://www.freshmanna.org

Published by Pastor Tim Burt
Copyright© 2007
All rights reserved.

What is Fresh Manna? God’s Word – the Bible, should be exciting and alive to us. God wants to speak to us through His Holy Spirit and give us a fresh word from heaven every day. Fresh Manna is a daily devotional – that nourishment of daily bread from His heart to ours!