What Are You Afraid Of?

Wisdom is an elusive thing. Knowledge can be assessed. Intelligence can be measured. But how do you know if you are wise? What is it measured against? Can it be evaluated? 

It's often thought that wisdom is simply gained through experience. Which means you have to live a lot of life to attain it. Maybe the image of an older man or woman comes to mind. Someone who's seen and experienced much of life. Someone who has lived both on the mountain top of success and in the valley of sorrow. And as a result, knows what's truly important in this life.  

While there's certainly truth to this, the Scriptures speak of wisdom not in terms of age but of fear. 

Proverbs 9:10 says, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom." 

But what does this mean? How does fear lead to wisdom? Are we supposed to walk around in constant terror, wondering if God will strike us down? 

Some say that when the Scriptures talk about the fear of the Lord, they are talking about literally being afraid. In Isaiah 6, the prophet has a vision of the Lord in his throne room and falls to the ground saying, "Woe to me... I am ruined” (v5).

When the Apostle John saw a vision of the resurrected Christ in Revelation 1, he fell to the ground as though he was dead (v17). 

It appears that there was some measure of legitimate fear in those encounters. 

But others talk about fear in terms of reverence and awe. Psalm 65:8 says, "The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders." The Hebrew word translated as awe here is the same word for "fear." So, maybe a mixture of being afraid and awe are behind "the fear of the Lord." 

However, one scholar articulates it as a "worshipping submission."

I like this phrase because typically when we think of fear, we think of getting away as fast as we can from the thing that scares us. But worship is a word of high engagement. When we worship something or someone, we're actually drawn to it and we submit ourselves to it. We willingly allow it to have power and authority in our life. 

But the question remains, how does this lead to wisdom? 

Wisdom isn't actually an elusive force in the world. It's an attribute of God. It's part of who He is. Therefore, if we want to grow in wisdom, we have to grow in a relationship with God. 

That's why the writer of Proverbs also says that the fear of the Lord also leads to knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). But he's not talking about knowledge as information. He's talking about it in terms of relationship. Knowing God, who He is, and His ways.

So if you want to have wisdom, the best place to get it is from its source - the One who is wisdom, the Lord Himself.