Make vows to Yahweh your God, and fulfill them! Let all who are around him bring tribute to him who is to be feared. He will humble the spirit of princes. He is feared by the kings of the earth.
There are certain attributes of nature that inspire unparalleled awe.
I remember how truly breathtaking I found the Rocky Mountains the first time I saw them in 2017; the same goes for waterfalls I hiked up as a child. I love to sit on my porch and watch storms roll in across the cornfields, feeling the shift in the air and witnessing the bursts of lightning, the crashes of thunder. And I have a similar awe and respect for things I haven’t witnessed yet. I think about manmade apparatuses like the Hoover Dam that keep tons of water from barreling down on the land below, and I can’t help but admire both the restraint and the crushing force it withholds.
Man is easily driven to silent-stricken awe by the forces of nature and the work of their own hands; but, how often do we attribute the same awe to the One who made both nature and man? We fear—i.e. have a healthy admiration and respect for—what nature brings about; everything from tornadoes to hurricanes to volcanic eruptions, etc. We may look on in wonder, but most of us know there are healthy boundaries to be respected and feared with these things.
Do we show God the same respect, the same reverence and fear? This is not to say we should live in perpetual terror of Him—trust me, as someone who lived with an abject panic about tornadoes for most of her childhood, this begets nothing but misery! But do we have a healthy fear of who He is and what He does?
Verses like these in Psalm 76 paint a pretty clear picture: God is mighty and powerful. He is superior and foremost. He is so awesome and amazing, and we should make it a top priority to keep the vows we make to Him. And we should live in healthy fear of Him! Again, not in terror as if He is waiting for an excuse to strike us dead; but just as you respect the beauty AND the might of a majestic river, knowing better than to try and test its white rapids in your bare feet, so too we should fear Yahweh; we should know His limits and have a healthy fear of crossing them.
Like we admire fire but know not to stick our hands in, we should fear Yahweh’s wrath and not invite its burn. Like we marvel at a lion’s power but don’t provoke it, we should marvel at Yahweh’s mercy but not provoke His judgement by wanton misdeeds or flaunting His rules. There is a healthy balance to knowing and fearing a loving God; we must always give Him the reverential adoration, admiration, and yes, the fear that He deserves.
The more we walk this line, the better we serve Him, knowing not to stray to the right or the left. We will learn day by day to admire His awesome power without behaving in ways that push our boundaries with Him. And like the forces of nature we are so awed by and conscious of, we will become increasingly aware of His majesty all around us—and we will fear and praise His glory!
