If we do not fear God,

We do not know God.

If we do not trust that the God that we fear loves us,

We do not know God.

If we do not love this God that we fear for loving us,

We have not known God.

For without this fear - respect, we cannot perceive love;

And unless we perceive love, we cannot return it;

And unless we return it, we cannot experience it;

And unless we experience it, we cannot truly know it.

For to me, worship is the humble drawing near to God in sober fear-touched reverence of His awe-full Holiness as our Creator, Judge, and King, with the thankful anticipation of His goodness, mercy, and blessing as our Father, Redeemer, and Friend. Only from this attitude of heart, comes any real joy, peace, and security for me. For without first seeking to offer Him the proper respect due His Holy Person, we cannot truly perceive or understand this experiential dimension of love that He desires to give us. Our reward as His children, it seems, is tied to the honor and respect of our hearts that we offer to Him. We cannot truly mature as children of our Father unless we first learn to humbly honor our Father for who He truly is. This truth is expressed by Jesus in a parable that He told:

Luke 18:13-14 …the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Unless we first perceive the cool superficiality of our hearts in the light of His Holiness, it is doubtful that we will earnestly seek to experience the confirming warmth of His Heart.

Teach your children to respect and love God. Without respect and honor for His Holy Person we create a impotent and permissive image of God in our children's minds. Without the knowledge of His love to us and our love returned to Him we create a distant and unmerciful image of Him. Both are needed to have to help our children begin to know God aright and the depth and ongoing discovery of neither is ever exhaustible.

Hello Fideles Ministries friends. Today we would like to share with you a concern that just keeps resurfacing in our thoughts about raising children in our culture and age. That question is, how do we faithfully present to our children the true Person of the God of Scripture? What is our concern? Two things: first, any and all of us have the unfortunate tendency to begin to mold our perception of God into the image that we are most comfortable with. At some point, our "comfort" may begin to lead us to worship some of the "characteristics" of God that we prefer more than the "Person" of God as He has revealed Himself to be in the Scriptures. As bad as that is for us, the Second Commandment clearly points out that we will pass that error on to our children and even to their children with disastrous results.

Our second concern is about today's culture that our children are growing up in.

"As Michael Horton says, 'Nobody today seems to think that God is dangerous. And that is itself a dangerous oversight'.”

"It’s dangerous because before we yawn at God, we must first replace the majestic, holy, awesome Tiger of Scripture with a domesticated kitten, conformed to the standards of the world, measured by the yardstick of political correctness. Who wants a God who roars, who threatens, who judges? Why not rather fashion a god in our taste — a friendly god we can pet, leash, and export for popular appeal?" says Tony Reinke.

This seems to be not only true of our culture in general, but also of our churches, who in their efforts to "reach out" to unchurched people in a winsome way, are in danger of the same imbalance that we described above. This deprives not only the people they reach out to of a true understanding of who this Holy Person is, but in the meantime deprives their members and their children of the same. Make a little study of church history, this error has been repeated throughout the ages again and again. So, it is important that we individually recognize and moderate for ourselves and family these pendulum swings of imbalance.

To that end we would like to recommend a book and a blog page about that book.

The book:

"Yawning at Tigers: You Can't Tame God, So Stop Trying"

By Drew Dyck

“A strong antidote against a domesticated God.” Matthew Lee Anderson

"When was the last time you were overawed by God’s majesty? Have you ever stood in stunned silence at his holiness and power?

In our shallow, self-centered age, things like truth and reverence might seem outdated, lost. Yet we’re restless. And our failed attempts to ease our unrest point to an ancient ache for an experience of the holy.

Drew Dyck makes a compelling case that what we seek awaits us in the untamed God of Scripture—a God who is dangerous yet accessible, mysterious yet powerfully present. He is a God who beckons us to see Him with a fresh, unfiltered gaze.

Yawning at Tigers takes us past domesticated Christianity, into the wilds where God’s raw majesty, love, and power become more real and transformative than we could ever imagine."

Learn more:

The blog page from DesiringGod. org :

October 25, 2014

Stop Apologizing for God

    Article by Tony Reinke

    Topic: The Holiness of God

To be sure, to swing in the other direction and over-emphasize the Fear of God versus His Love does not result in the respect He is due. But, it is not so much "balance" that we need either. We need faith to always, actively be seeking the Living Person of God as the waves of cultural change press against us, and as our own personal Providence changes. We worship a real Personal Being with an unlimited depth to His Holy character, never a static set of attributes.

And we need to teach this to our children.