It Matters What You Fear
When God is the most important thing to you, something changes in your heart.
It Matters What You Fear
Proverbs 9:10
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…”
We all fear something. Fear is universal and much deeper and broader than we think.
Sometimes it’s obvious—bad news, uncertainty, things we can’t control. Other times it’s quieter than that. It shows up in stress, in overthinking, in the need to hold everything together.
We don’t always call it fear but it’s there. And the Bible says something surprising—It tells us to fear rightly.
That means there is a kind of fear that is not harmful at all. In fact, it’s the starting point for everything good. Not a fear that drives you away—but one that draws you close. Not panic—but reverence. Not dread—but a deep awareness of who God is.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” is not just a poetic statement—it’s deeply practical. As a Christian, whatever feels biggest to you will hold your heart and what holds your heart will shape you. If the situation in front of you feels biggest, fear will dominate your thinking. If God is what fills your view, everything else will start to settle into place.
AW Tozer once wrote this: “What you think about God is the most important thing about you.”
When you learn to fear God, you learn to not fear the other stuff anymore. That doesn’t mean life becomes easy. It means you’re no longer ruled by what once controlled you. It’s about trying to push fear out and letting God take His rightful place again. That place is in your heart. If He possesses your heart, you will fear Him and nothing else. That’s a fear built on respect and honor, not dread and horror.
When God is the most important thing to you, something changes in your heart. The circumstances around you don’t change, but everything in you is changed.
Oswald Chambers:
“The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else.”
Every fear in your life is a competition between two voices:
• “What if this goes wrong?”
• “God is sovereign and trustworthy.”
You will fear something. The only question is what do you fear most?
How do you handle fears when they come? Just ask: “What am I believing about God in this situation?”
When God is big in your eyes, everything else gets smaller.
