Fear

What is fear?

I was thinking about this today as I was walking to Uni.

The way I see fear is realising the consequences to particular actions and therefore avoiding facing those consequences by avoiding the actions.

For example, If one fears heights they are aware of the consequences of falling (injury or death) and so avoids heights.

Simple?

You can apply the same to God. If one fears God, they are aware of the consequences of disobeying Him and thus avoid disobeying Him.

Which is good, because that is part of the way we are to perceive God. He has the power to destroy everything in our life in a second. That's certainly something to be feared.

So lack of fear is defined as "not realising the consequences of a particular action and therefore inviting it"?

So a man with a lack of fear of heights can stand on the edge of a building without worrying about the consequence if he should fall and die because he has put that thought out of his mind.

But what about a man who knows well the consequence of falling but welcomes it. Does he fear heights?

Perhaps a better definition of lack of fear is "not realising the negative consequences of a particular action outweigh the positive consequences of the action and therefore inviting it"

So to put in a wider perspective; A man that has no fear of God is one who either ignores the truth that God is omnipotent and omniscient, or has decided that the "benefits" of rejecting God are greater than the benefits of fearing Him.

So that includes not only those who do not know God, do no understand that He is real, but also those who know Him but do not trust, rely and depend on Him.

The Bible tells us to fear only God. So should we not fear heights, animals, materials, blood, death, etc?

How do we practically apply that to our lives?

Life of Rayd: June-July

There's been a lot I haven't said in the past few weeks of my life.

So much time has gone by since my last post infact that I can't remember most of what has happened in my life in all that time.

But I'll try and broadly put things in perspective.

Life is going good.

After exams, I headed back up to Christchurch for a while. Had a bit of a break. Caught up with some people whose presence I have greatly missed. What really touched me the most was I felt as though the relationships I have with those people haven't declined or fallen away.

My last week in Christchurch I spent in Living Springs at a conference called "Tune In"
My time was well spent! Two speakers, Justin O'Malley and John Lamb, two really down to earth and real guys talked to us (attendees of the conference were Student Lifers) about what it means to be a Christian. We were well encouraged in our seminars to effectively evangelise to the pre-Christians in the world and to discliple those Spiritually younger than us. John Lamb had a "guys-only" talk where he addressed the issues that face young Christian guys in everyday life.
There was a Rockstar evening where we all danced like nobody was watching (I'm really hoping they didn't get any footage of my dancing, could be quite embarrasing)
A day was spent preparing and going on an outreach in Riccarton. We did a survey for Christchurch Family Baptist Church (Or similar name...) and then chatted to people in their homes about Jesus.
The last evening was the Starlight Symphony Banquet where we all dressed up nice and had a fancy dinner. The discourse was simply delightful.

Starting the semester again has been, in the words of Marshall Mathers, a snap back to reality*. It has caused me to re-tune my focus on my workload and my overall goal. I've picked up another study partner which I know will be of great help this semester. The more the merrier!

So that's me.


*I am well aware Mathers was using a well-known cliche in his lyrics, but thought I would add it in for a little bit of substance in the paragraph. Did it work? It did didn't it?