Audio Inputs

If you will fear the LORD and serve Him, and listen to His voice and not rebel against the command of he LORD, then both you and also the king who reigns over you will follow the LORD your God.  1 Samuel 12:14

Fear and Serve –  Biblical themes are consistent. The prophets proclaimed them.  Jesus acknowledged them.  Paul based his teaching on them.  One of these uniform exhortations is the theme of “fear and serve.”  The words are important because they help us understand just how comprehensive these two ideas really are.  Fear (yare) and serve (avad) cover the mental, emotional and volitional aspects of life.  No part of living stands outside these actions.

Yare is the verb used in the familiar phrase, “fear of the Lord.”  It is more than reverence.  I can revere a great hero, but that does not mean he has a direct influence on my daily activities.  Reverence must be combined with awe and alarm if I am to appreciate the full range of yare.  God is not someone to trifle with.  Our contemporary imagery of the kindly grandfather is heresy.  Let’s put it this way:  If you were truly afraid of God, would your behaviors change?

Avad is the Hebrew verb for work.  This word covers all your labor in living, but when it is used to describe serving God, it does not include the connotation of toil.  Serving God is a joyous fulfillment of life as it was intended to be.  Because each one of us was designed to find true satisfaction when we are productive within God’s perfect design, avad captures that activity of life that liberates us to be who we were meant to be.  Yes, avad is about obedience, but it is not about compulsory oppression.  It is about exuberant, voluntary submission to my God-given destiny under His direction.  Let’s put it this way:  If you are truly serving the Lord, you discover that what you do is the most natural, exhilarating, liberating thing that you could ever imagine doing.

Fear and serve are the prerequisites to listen.  You cannot hear the voice of the One Who made you to fulfill His purposes until you reverence Who He is, recognize your insignificance before His majesty and offer yourself to His perfect design.  The shout in the thunderstorm, the whisper in the bubbling brook, the cry of the crashing waves, the murmur in the leaves – all these, and His words and deeds, become the audio inputs of God’s direction.  The world is filled with the voice of the Lord if you have ears to hear it.