When I Fear God, I Abstain from Evil
Ever pray for God to fit His will into your whim–to bless your ideas, the decisions you’ve made, the plans you’ve carried out? I have. Invariably and eventually, God in His mercy, shows me how wrong I am in proceeding to do things I want to please myself or others.
“There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who [reverently] feared God and abstained from and shunned evil [because it was wrong].” Job 1:1
Job “abstained from and shunned evil” because evilwas wrong. Plain and simple. Job “reverently feared God” because God was good and he trusted God. The point of abstaining is not to punish us from having something worth using; it’s to bless us with things worth owning. All too often we borrow from today’s evil and count it as good. We do what we want, rather than what God wants. We seek what pleases us, rather than what pleases God. We reach for the forbidden without one thought to the consequence our actions might cause in another’s life. We follow our own paths of what we think is right to prove we are right, or to gain importance in the eyes of others.
In Joshua Chapter 6, God told Joshua to destroy all the spoils of Jericho upon its capture and place the silver and gold into God’s treasury. Joshua did as God required; however, Achan, one of the Israelites, took some of the spoils and hid them in his tent. So when Joshua tried to capture the city of Ai, God withdrew His protection and allowed Joshua to fail. We find in Joshua 7 that Achan meets with dire consequences for himself and his family as a result of his disobedience. Sometimes we too face the consequences of our own choices. Whatever we choose to cling to in this life becomes our god unless God intervenes and crushes it. Is there anything worth grabbing hold of, or holding onto, that is worth more than the very best for use in the kingdom of God? Is there any hand more trustworthy than the Father’s to show the way?
PRAYER: May our motives be blameless, sincere, and above reproach. May our actions supercede that which the world finds right or just. May we be ever mindful that the spoils of this world are worthless in comparison to reverently fearing God and following Him in every way.
© Hariette Petersen, SelahV Today, 2009
