It’s good to go back and review the basics sometimes. No matter how long we have been doing something or how much of an expert we might be it is to our benefit to occasionally go back to the beginning of our training and the core of our knowledge.
We need to be reminded of where our foundation lies and what is most important because the world we live in seems to be trying to move faster and further away from all that is good and right. There are many ideas and many opinions but only one real foundation for truth.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
But fools despise wisdom and instruction Proverbs 1:7 (NKJV)
Why is the fear of the Lord the beginning of knowledge? And even before that, what does it really mean to fear God?
The fear of the Lord that the Bible talks about is made up of two things and can be thought of like this: acknowledgement and agreement. In other words, we acknowledge God as creator and as sovereign and we agree with his words and ways. It’s not enough to simply know of God or to stop at an intellectual level where we agree that God exists (even Lucifer and the fallen angels know of God and testify to his existence by their acts against him) but there must also be a wholehearted agreement between us and him that we want to follow him and know him better and better.
Once we’ve made that personal commitment then we are at the place where we are ready to begin to receive all that God has for us. We have arrived at the beginning and we have laid the foundation for being perfect and complete in Jesus Christ, God’s only son. We can move on from this point –
being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; Philippians 1:6 (NKJV)
We make the commitment, God does the work in us (and through us) as long as we remain in agreement and acknowledgement with him. Because our human nature is rebellious this is a continual process and we often find ourselves in need of renewal and in need of going back to the basics of what we believe and why we believe.
There has only ever been one perfect person and that was Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. For everyone else, no matter how long we have been a Christian or how far we have walked with the Lord we can never get away from the foundation of the fear of the Lord and the hope of his good work in us. Let us all take seriously our commitment to his words and his ways and to knowing him better all the days of our lives.