I have grown up my whole life absolutely LOVING the Chronicles of Narnia, but it was not until this past year that I started to understand why C.S. Lewis depicts the character of Aslan (who is a representation of a God character throughout the series) as a lion.
I’m sure there is a variety of first responses that people have when seeing a lion, but if fear is not one of your first emotions, then obviously you’ve never come face to face with a lion.
There are references in the Bible that portray God as a “lion” like when he is referred to as “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah” and the imagery stands as a reminder to God’s title as King but also serves the purpose of establishing a healthy measure of the Fear of the Lord in us.
If the Fear of the Lord is an entirely new concept to you and you don’t really know what it means, I hope I can provide a clear explanation of how it applies to everyone here but also give insight into how you can go even deeper in it.
I pray that my story will also show how transformational it can be in your life.
An important thing to clarify is that the Fear of the Lord comes from a holy respect and reverence for God that grows over time. It is not the same kind of fear you may be familiar with... a fear of man or fear of the unknown or fear of _______ (fill in the blank)... these things are not from God.
Because God is love.
And “perfect love casts out all fear”
1 John 4:18.
The “Fear” part of the Fear of the Lord could be better described as an “awe” that is simultaneously present with a Love for God. It is a result of submitting to Christ as your Lord and Savior and coming under his Lordship with respect for his majesty, glory, power and love in a way that is unfathomable so the best way to describe it is as “fear” because it is beyond our comprehension.
I love how C.S. Lewis puts it when we are first introduced to the character of Aslan in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
“Aslan is a lion- the Lion,
the great Lion."
"Ooh" said Susan.
"I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"...
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver ...
"Who said anything about safe?
'Course he isn't safe.
But he's good.
He's the King, I tell you.”
Understanding the goodness of God is so important in how we view him, because if we don’t believe he is good, it will be very hard to put our trust in him.
But the fact of the matter is that
He is.
He is who he says he is.
And that’s enough for me.
The weight of the matter of all of this is that submitting to God is never going to be easy because we cannot fully understand him.
And when he does something that is outside of the little box that you believe he is confined to, then it becomes even harder to make the decision whether or not to trust him in the unknown.
This is where humility comes into play.
And this is where I started to understand the fear of the Lord.
The dangerous thing about praying for God to humble you is that—
He will.
Submitting to God’s Sovereign Will is risky business because it might mean you take a few detours from the life plan you have in mind.
This is the story of my life.
I think I’ve finally figured out what God wants me to do and where he wants me to go...
When then he surprises me with a hundred different loopholes to what I thought was going to be my life.
The dream most of my life once I graduated high school was to go to Auburn and follow in my mom’s footsteps... turns out college was not the immediate path for me out of high school so I ended up taking a GAP year after I didn’t get into the scholarship program I wanted to at a different school.
So I found my path redirected to
New Zealand where I completed my Discipleship Training School (DTS) with YWAM (Youth With A Mission).
Then to the Solomon Islands where I did my Outreach following my DTS.
But before I even went to NZ I worked the first half of the year at a summer camp with special needs campers where God spoke more into that passion. Then I worked at Chick-fil-A in the fall to hopefully boost my resume for potentially getting into the scholarship program that I had already been turned away from but which I felt so strongly I needed to be a part of.
That scholarship program was the WinShape College Program that was started by Truett Cathy which I found out that I got accepted to at Berry College while I was in New Zealand.
Through this same scholarship program is where I found out about Camp BlueSky in Kenya. BlueSky is similar to WinShape in the way that they have multiple different branches of ministries like Adventure Camp, BlueSky Communities, and Camp BlueSky.
I have been so privileged to be apart of this wonderful ministry that incorporates 2 of my passions: children’s/youth ministry and missions through all the international and local students in Kenya). I think one of the most impactful things about coming into another culture is how it immediately humbles me to the point of receiving whatever it is that God has planned to give me without any expectations for how I think it ought to be. This I think is the key to how we get the most out of anywhere we go: going into it with arms open wide. When you bring anything with you like your Pride or your Entitlement you immediately realize how much harder things become. Clinging to sin leaves no room in your hands to receive whatever God wants to give you. So in order to grow we must give up control and extend our hands in an offering being willing to give up whatever God wants to take and receive what he wants to give. “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.” Job 1:21 And when I ask God questions sometimes it feels like they are only going void, but then I realize that maybe I was asking the wrong questions, or not big enough ones.
I like how Aslan says in The Horse and His Boy “No one is told any story but their own.”
I think sometimes he gives us sneak peaks to what he is going to do. He gives us dreams and maybe doesn’t bring them about in the way we expected... or even in our timing.
But he makes them even better than we imagined they could be.
For me the fact that I’m typing this from the continent of Africa literally blows my mind because it has always been a dream to come back. And even though I’m not in the country of Niger where I spent the first year and a half of my life as my parents were missionaries,
but in Kenya, I’m still doing the things I only imagined I might be able to do some day. Here are some pages from the journal that my mom kept ever since I was a baby that I happened to snag and write my own entries in sometimes.
Yes I know it’s cheesy.
If you are wondering who Della is, she was my nanny when I was a baby and it is still a dream of mine to be able to go back and visit her.
But what a God that I serve who would provide a way for me love on kids from all over the world for even just a summer.
Desires that he put in my heart (who knows when) are being fulfilled day after day and I can’t get enough.
Because I submitted to his will I’m reaping the fruits of things I’ve worked for so long.
God is good. All the time.
