😨 The Fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ

What is the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ?

It is all over the Bible. We are taught that it is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. That it is more than a mere reverence before God. That it involves a physical trembling and shaking. We are told it is our response to standing in the Presence of a holy God.

No amount of head knowledge, however, gets it through to you. At least that is how it had been with me.

Until yesterday.

The Train Home

Thirteenth of May 2026. I was on the train home from work, watching a YouTube video — an interview between Ryan Miller and John Bevere.

I had been aware of John and Lisa Bevere before. In fact, I clicked on the video for a different reason entirely: the title was The Signs of Jesus’ Return Most Christians Are Missing. Like me, John has been obsessed with eschatology. I wanted to hear what fresh insight he had to offer.

The conversation quickly went elsewhere.

John described what changed his life during his twenties: the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ. He went to Hebrews chapter one, where Jesus is described as having received God’s anointing above anyone else because He “loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.” That, John said, is a perfect picture of the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ.

Then John told a story.

In his twenties, he visited a prison at the request of an inmate — a disgraced pastor serving time for adultery and financial fraud and every other kind of presumptuous sin. Toward the end of their conversation, John asked him a question:

“So when did you fall out of love with Jesus? That you indulged in these presumptuous sins for decades, even before being caught?”

The ex-pastor stared at him in the eye and answered:

“John, I never fell out of love with Jesus. I always loved Him, truthfully. I just did not have the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ.”

And then John clarified — and I love this phrasing — the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ is best described in the context of enjoying a level of intimacy with God. He quoted Psalm 139, how many thoughts God has for us, how they are all written in His book. The fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ is being absolutely petrified at the prospect of losing that daily, ever-present intimacy with God. Every decision you make, every word you say, every meditation of your heart — done with the utmost care, because you know that the absolute worst thing you could have, and you physically shake with terror even at the mere thought of it, is to lose the intimacy with God.

At that moment, the penny dropped for me.

I was immediately taken back twenty years. To Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the United States.

Cambridgesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

The truth is, there was a time when I did enjoy this unbroken spell of intimacy with God during my university years.

I was talking to God constantly. Cambridge days were amazing — filled with gratitude and joy. And I dreamed big. I wanted to devote myself to science for the glory of God. To win not one but two Nobel Prizes. To glorify God at the podium in front of the whole world.

I was driven.

God was leading my every step. He gave me wisdom and insight and the grace to work harder than all my peers. I was consistently in the top one per cent of physicists at Cambridge University. People looked up to me. God even gave me the boldness to cold-email a Harvard professor and strike up a correspondence that ended with an all-expenses-paid invitation — they created a Summer Research Experience for Overseas Undergraduate programme just for me — to spend my summer after second year working closely with the professor at a prestigious physics lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

I still remember landing at Logan Airport in Boston. My first experience of the United States.

I worked harder than I had ever done before. I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before.

But I just wasn’t ready for the American cut-throat academia and lab culture. There were real enemies — sheer jealousy and envy and saboteurs. The battle was real. The struggle was too much. My faith in God — my root in the Scriptures — was not deep enough to get me through it. I was barely nineteen.

And I still remember that day.

I came to a breaking point. God seemed so distant, not helping me or coming through to rescue me from that real struggle. The fruitlessness. The frustration.

So I snapped.

I committed a premeditated sin. There was a cartoon book I knew contained inappropriate images from a shop I had visited the other week. Even though I knew this would spoil the unbroken intimacy I had with God, I deliberately went back to that shop in search of that book. All the while shaking my fist at God out of bitter rebellion.

I remember that moment vividly now. I repented right away and cried out to God. But it was not the same after that. Something so precious had been shattered that day.

Ever since then, I lost that fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ.

I always loved God. Truly. I never truly turned my back on Him. I truly devoted my life to Him. I would even stand up to my bosses in defence of His Name. But did I truly fear the loss of a real, twenty-four-seven intimacy with God?

No.

My attitude toward secret sins ever since then was always: “What can I get away with without damning myself to hell?” “Surely God will forgive me if I say sorry afterwards?”

This is not the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ. This is being afraid of God’s punishment — wanting to avoid the consequences of sin, while being drawn to the allure of it.

Now I understand.

The fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ does not ask “what can I get away with?” It shudders even at the thought of committing anything that would harm the precious, sweet, ongoing intimate relationship I have with the Heavenly Father who created the heavens and the earth and who loves me more than I can imagine. The all-powerful Abba who did not spare His only Son.

What do you mean, “what can I get away with?”

The allure of sin? It would all seem disgusting — which is what it truly is.

A Prayer

And right there on the train, I began weeping.

I was so sorry that I had lost this fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ over the last twenty years. The countless times when I thought so little of sin. How lightly I thought of my relationship with God, all the while being so religious and even disciplined in my daily prayers and Scripture reading and presenting myself before others in the Church. How I did not model the fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ before my children at all — and instead had been modelling a perfect Pharisee.

I just broke down on that train.

And I only had one prayer:

Father, restore in me this fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ. Help me to regain this intimacy with You for the rest of my life, however long I may have. Help me to shudder at even the mere thought of doing anything to that relationship. I know I had it once. It has been so long I almost forgot what it felt like, but I pray that You would restore it in me. Create in me a pure heart.

One thing I have desired of Yahweh, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of Yahweh, and to enquire in His temple.

(Psalm 27:4, NKJV)

Maranatha. Even so, come Lᴏʀᴅ Jesus.