Psalm 111:10

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever! 

Psalm 111:10 (ESV)

When we think of fear, we usually think of things like spiders, scary movies, speaking in front of crowds, or other frightening things. This is why it's sometimes confusing to hear that we should, "fear The Lord." This is especially the case for new Christians who haven't been exposed to a lot of the Word. Thankfully, the Word is all we need in order to understand this phrase!
My favorite book to go to when I want to learn more about fearing The Lord is Proverbs." Within its first chapter is a verse very similar to Psalm 111:10, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction." In the later chapters, fear of The Lord is brought up multiple times, each with a description to follow. Verse 8:13, "the fear of the LORD is hatred of evil." Verse 9:10, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" Verse 10:27, "the fear of the LORD prolongs life," Verse 14:26, "in the fear of the LORD one has strong confidence." Verse 15:33, "The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom." Just like we have discovered about wisdom this week, Proverbs teaches us that fear of the LORD is not one action, but many combined. And interestingly enough, Psalm 111:10 tells us that fear of The Lord is a component of wisdom! David fits it all together into an easy to understand package.
Unfortunately, even if it is fit into an easy to understand package, that doesn't mean it is easy to carry out. Practicing divine wisdom can be very overwhelming, especially when the world is coming at us at all directions. I'm thankful for my time here at IGNITE where I have so much quiet time to rest in The Lord and hear what His still small voice is saying. It's nice to have the opportunity to continually dive into what God tells us His wisdom is. I feel like I am getting a good grasp of what it is intellectually but the knowledge is still traveling to my heart. I was having a conversation with a fellow intern today about how I feel like all of my IBS journals are revolving around the same topic this week. She turned to me and said, "That's not a bad thing, Cassie. God is trying to show you something."