What Does it Mean to “Fear the LORD”?

What do you think about when you hear the phrase: “the fear of the LORD”?

If the first images that come to mind are of God’s anger or blazing fire—we’d love to deepen your understanding of the concept today! The fear of the LORD makes a frequent appearance in the Old Testament (over 70x).

The Hebrew word for “fear” is yārēʾ (pronounced: Yah-rah). The whole phrase “fear of the LORD” is transliterated: yārēʾ ʾt-yhwh (pronounced: yah-rah eth Yah-wah). Do you hear the wordplay? We are to “yah-rah … Yah-wah”; we are to “fear Yahweh.” (Reminder: “Yahweh” is the personal, covenant name of the LORD. Anytime your Bible has “LORD” in all capital letters, in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word is yhwh or “Yahweh”).

Looking at every instance of when the idea of fearing God is used, it comes down to three main responses to God.

1) The “fear of the LORD” means giving God your Undivided Attention.

Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. Psalm 86:11 (NIV) 

According to the Psalmist, an undivided heart leads to the fear of the Lord.

Think about it this way. What you fear is what grabs your attention; for better or worse. Let’s say you are deathly afraid of sharks. If you saw a shark in the water that creature would have your utmost respect. While trying to evade it I would not take my eyes off it. It would have my undivided attention. Now, that is a negative example to make my point. God should have our unwavering attention in that He does not become a small compartment of our lives; perhaps on Sundays. No way. We give Him the attention that He is the quintessential meaning and purpose of our lives. And we put Him at the center.

We don’t try to balance God amongst all our other priorities, no He is the center and everything else can find its orbit or place around Him! He takes priority. And our families are all the healthier when we do our part to lead them into a God-centered vision of life.

2) The “fear of the LORD” means giving God your Unrivaled Awe.

For the LORD, the Most High, is awe-inspiring, a great King over the whole earth. Psalm 47:2 (CSB) 

“Awe-inspiring” is the same Hebrew word used for “fear.”

According to Jewish scholars, awe is the highest form of worship from the perspective of the Hebrew Bible. Clearly, God wants to captivate us in a way that is far more emotive than our mere intellect. Many usages of the fear of the Lord are tapping into the emotions of the human psyche. That which captures our awe tends to capture our hearts. So, when we see God for who He really is, we will be in awe of Him and more likely to adore Him.

Awe comes from seeing how God has worked from Genesis to Revelation; but also what He is doing in our own lives. It is a state and experience of wonder that comes from being overwhelmed by how good, powerful, and faithful our Lord is. One of the most helpful things we can do for our spiritual lives is to cultivate habits and rhythms that allow for our eyes to be spiritually open to the awe God wants to give to us! We talked about one way of doing this in this previous blog post (click HERE to check it out!). 

3) The “fear of the LORD” means giving God your Unparalleled Allegiance.

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? He requires only that you fear the LORD your God, and live in a way that pleases him, and love him and serve him with all your heart and soul. Deuteronomy 10:12 (NLT) 

Deuteronomy exhorts its listeners to have a total commitment to God, involving “all your heart and soul.” Fearing God leads to loyalty and obedience. It gives us a resolve to stay the course because what we know about God to be true. God gets our allegiance, more than our allegiance to any person, country, job, or whatever. In all, obedience to Him takes precedence over everything else. Who can be more important to obey than the God of the universe?

Often times the problem we have is that we give our earthly fears so much more weight than they deserve. We give more weight to the bigness of our circumstances than we do to the bigness of our God. Whether motivated by panic, or something else, we end up making decisions that go against the greater wisdom of loyalty to God, despite how things look on the surface. As the well-known Christian artist, Lecrae, says: 

“We fear circumstances so much because we fear God so little.” – Lecrae

Perhaps if we developed a more holistic, healthy fear of God, maybe the anxieties we have today would not carry so much weight.

In summary: fearing God comes down to having the right posture before Him. He wants to live in fellowship with us and guide us, but we have to have the right perspective about it all.

23 Comments

  1. Presh on April 14, 2022 at 5:01 am

    This is great teaching, thanks so much for making yourselves available for the gospel of our LORD JESUS CHRIST. REMAIN IN CHRIST

  2. Somi on August 28, 2022 at 7:50 pm

    Love this teaching. Very refreshing. Thank you

  3. Jimmy on October 22, 2022 at 2:25 pm

    Thank you

  4. Nana Kofi on October 26, 2022 at 10:16 am

    Thanks for this teaching. God bless you.

  5. Nae on March 29, 2023 at 10:08 am

    Thank you for a much more way to help me understand this…blessings

    • linda glasser on February 15, 2024 at 5:26 am

      Amen. I needed a better understanding of the fear of God, I do understand better now. Thank you.

  6. Christina Oche on April 11, 2023 at 12:25 am

    May the grace of our LORD abide in us; that we may fear HIM. AMEN!

  7. Lori Miller on October 14, 2023 at 8:44 am

    Sooooo helpful and I thank you for explaining it in more depth. This helps gain perspective and proper positioning for sure! May you and a all who read your post be blessed! Thank you.

    • Ricardo Brown on November 11, 2023 at 9:45 pm

      Great insight 👍 👏 👌

  8. Gertrude Karabas on December 7, 2023 at 6:25 am

    Good morning! I am so grateful that my morning meditations on God’s Word led me to Google, “fear of the LORD.” I heard that fear of the LORD was what true worship about, not just singing and clapping. Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon those who fear him, on those who wait upon his love. Ps. 33

  9. Tamara on December 8, 2023 at 2:54 am

    This Blessed me! I also came here after from a Google search on the Fear of the LORD. These 3 points, the reference scriptures and clear Holy Ghost led explanations are so helpful to us who want to be in right position with GOD. Blessings!🕊️🙏🏾

  10. Andrew Rogers on December 16, 2023 at 7:14 am

    The most common and fundamental ‘fear’ seems to have been left off this list. Jesus and the Hebrews author tell us what that is – a fear of judgment. Jesus is speaking to His “friends” and Hebrews is addressing those “sanctified by the blood”…

    ““I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!” (Luk 12:4-5, NASB)

    “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb 10:29-31, NASB)

    • Simon Murray on March 2, 2024 at 1:08 pm

      I’m in a place where after having grown up living for the Lord, having even worked fulltime in the church for some years and having fallen from Grace, ending my marriage, going down every rabbit hole known to man for a number of years, of late, feeling the genuine pull of the Lord, that small still voice upon my heart. Buying a beautiful sound system and then finding myself compelled to buy every contemporary Christian artists vinyl I could find but in the process, being challenged by the lyrics to begin praying again and reading scripture again. Following more and more Christian content on Instagram and recently hearing in a short post that the world is filled with people who love Jesus but don’t fear God. This one post unlocked so much of my previous life and failings that I’m feeling drawn to study what it means to truly fear God again. It’s one day at a time for me but all of this input so valuable

  11. Mimidoo on January 31, 2024 at 1:18 am

    I am Glad i started this Novena to the holy spirit, the first fruit of the holy spirit being the fear of the Lord led me to want to know more about the fear of the lord which brought ne here. I tell you it has been so helpful.

    Thank u

  12. Suzette Katopodes on February 2, 2024 at 8:21 am

    “…we give our earthly fears so much more weight than they deserve. ” This is tough to hear, but true more often than we realize. During a long season of family caregiving, I learned that God is so much bigger than our circumstances. It wasn’t like that in the beginning because I looked to myself to come up with caregiving solutions and saw limits to what I could accomplish. But God is not limitedOnce I started learning to rely on Him to direct my steps, instead of myself, caregiving didn’t become easier but it did become more manageable, thank goodness. .

    • Vicky Russell on February 24, 2024 at 3:21 pm

      Excellent point and reminder that we think too much about fearing what people think of us, who we may or may not be impressing with our lives or material possessions! This was a great simple refresher of what is really important in this temporary moment and that we keep our eyes on God the Father! The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Be blessed!

  13. Betty Todd on February 5, 2024 at 10:50 am

    This was so helpful to me. I really appreciate the help.

    • Newbreak Teaching Team on February 5, 2024 at 11:12 am

      Oh, you are so very welcome. What stood out the most to you?

      • Manuel Sulmaca on March 2, 2024 at 10:41 am

        Amen! This helps me a lot to understand what fear of the Lord is. Thanks for sharing and God bless everyone!

  14. Frederick hightower on February 15, 2024 at 7:59 am

    Good word!

  15. Stephen Mkwanazi on March 2, 2024 at 12:54 pm

    Amen 🙏

  16. Rev. Al Smith on March 19, 2024 at 7:46 am

    “Fear of the LORD” for me has a different meaning that emerges from a very young childhood experience. In or around 1954, when I was 4 years old and not yet school age, my mother took me to a downtown department store. It was an old fashion department store in downtown Richmond, Virginia. It was the first time I had experienced a busy, downtown department store. I recall my mother and I entered the store on the main floor of the five story building. The main floor was very crowded with “big people” adults. My mother had need to shop on an upper floor in the building and this would necessitate her using the escalator. I had never seen or experienced the workings of an escalator. For some unknown reason, my mother and I had become separated on the bustling crowd main floor. Suddenly, I was panic stricken because I did not know where my mother was. I was lost and separated from my mother and scared to death. And then, I noticed my mother ascending into the sky, riding upward on the escalator. She was looking back on to the main floor crowd for me, knowing we had been separated. It is this memory of fear; of being separated from the most important person in my life that has informed my understanding of the phrase “fear of the LORD”. Theologically for me, losing contact and being separated from the LORD, is the most fearful thing I can imagine.

    • Newbreak Teaching Team on March 19, 2024 at 9:49 am

      Astute observation and personal application. Makes so much sense and that recollection; powerful.

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