People fearing

Then Saul said to Samuel, "I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. – 1 Samuel 15v24

‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ The sage words form the basis of the book of Proverbs. ‘Fear the Lord’ is usually found in any list of instructions to the people in the Old Testament. When we fear the Lord we reverence Him, we honour Him, and we stand in awe of Him. Fearing God precedes wisdom and it is vital in serving Him.

Saul’s problem here is that he forgot who to fear. To his credit he did acknowledge his sin in disobeying God and Samuel. Then we get to the reason – ‘I feared the people.’

People fearing is a huge problem. We talk about good God fearing people while in reality most of our people fearing people. When we fear the people we too are going to obey their voice. We fear what people are going to think about us. We fear what they can do to us. We fear the loss of friendships. We fear losing recognition.

Only God is worthy of our fear. When we fear people we proves our lack of reverence and trust in Him.

Who are we going to fear today?