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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, explores the fear of the Lord and why it matters for leaders. He highlights how fearing God leads to love, wisdom, peace, prosperity, and right living.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Last week on the podcast, I introduced what is now going to be a two week podcast on this general theme of the fear of the Lord. Last week on the podcast, I talked about, how God created us with the capacity to fear him. But when the fall of, happened and sin entered the world, we had the capacity to fear God, which was a healthy and holy and beautiful thing, marred or forever harmed or forever changed into a negative where now we fear everything else but God.
Jeff Iorg:And I helped you last week to think about what it means to rediscover the fear of God and particularly as that relates to leadership and what it means, in our lives in that capacity. Today, I wanna move secondarily into talking about some benefits of the fear of God. And I wanna do that to help you to understand a different perspective perhaps on this subject than you had in the past. But before we do that, I wanna talk more broadly about where a study like this comes from and how you should be following the same pattern, in your life perhaps as a leader. Studies like this come to me as I become fascinated by or interested in a particular concept and really decide to do some in-depth bible study on that topic.
Jeff Iorg:Typically, this starts with me in my, daily bible reading or in my devotional bible reading. I'll come across a theme or an idea, and perhaps I'll see it two or three times over a period of two or three days or maybe a week or so in the scripture. And typically, God is, impressing me with these themes from scripture because it's something pressing me that I'm also dealing with in my daily life or in my leadership life. So these streams all flow together. Something I'm thinking about in my daily life, something I'm dealing with in my leadership life, something I'm experiencing in my devotional life.
Jeff Iorg:These things come together around an idea or a concept or sometimes
Jeff Iorg:a verse. That motivates me into a more in-depth study.
Jeff Iorg:This idea of the fear of the Lord is a study that I've been working on based on that kind of process taking place in my life. Now, another one that was recent for me was the study of the concept of endurance. And I've made a pretty in-depth study of that, and I've been writing about it and thinking about it. And I'll be sharing about that on
Jeff Iorg:the podcast sometime in the future. My point though is this. As a leader, you never stop learning. You never stop studying. You never stop growing.
Jeff Iorg:And if you're a pastoral leader, of course, or or a teacher
Jeff Iorg:of some kind, you likely have a weekly responsibility to develop something from the word of God for others, and that's very legitimate and perfectly appropriate and a big part of
Jeff Iorg:our work. And I'm talking here,
Jeff Iorg:not so much about that, although they can merge together, but I'm talking about studying for yourself, an idea, a concept, a thought, a verse, a passage, where you spend a few weeks digging down into that that subject and asking God to help you to think about it, process it, and personally apply it. So as I'm thinking about this idea of the fear of God, I've been working hard on focusing my fear on him and not fearing people so much, not fearing circumstances so much, not fearing the unknown so much, but really trying to focus my fear on the healthy fear described in the Bible, which is the fear of the Lord. We talked about what it was and how to do it last week. Today, I wanna motivate you even more to think about the benefits that come to us when we really learn to fear the Lord. Now, in my study, I discovered 30 specific benefits.
Jeff Iorg:Yes. 30 specific benefits that come to us from the fear of the Lord. Now, I don't have time for all of that on the podcast today, so I wanna give you about three or four of those that have become perhaps the most meaningful to me and I think will resonate with you in your leadership role. The first one is this. The first benefit of fearing the Lord is experiencing God's love in deeper ways.
Jeff Iorg:Now, is often associated with holiness and judgment and fearing God, I think, is often connected to portraying God as a wrathful ruler,
Jeff Iorg:not as a loving father. When we
Jeff Iorg:think of fearing God, we tend to think of God as someone who's fearsome or even fearful. But no, God is someone who loves us, and the fear of God facilitates experiencing his love in greater ways. Now, the following phrases coming from Psalm 103 help us to understand this. So listen to what the Bible says. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great
Jeff Iorg:is his faithful love toward those who fear him. And then the next phrase, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. And then
Jeff Iorg:a third phrase, but from eternity to eternity, the Lord's faithful love
Jeff Iorg:is toward those who fear him. Now think about these three verses. They all speak of God's faithful love, or in one translation, his compassion. And they all connect that to fearing God.
Jeff Iorg:These verses connect three features
Jeff Iorg:of God's love to fearing him. This has been one of the real insights that's helped me to develop more of the fear of God. Because when I do, I'm not portraying God as a wrathful ruler. I'm portraying God as a loving father. And as I fear him, I'm not cowering in his presence.
Jeff Iorg:I am instead drawn ever closer to him because of his love. Let's go back into these three phrases and these three aspects of God's love being connected to fearing him. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him. How high is the sky? That that seems like a question dreamed up by a preschooler to torment his parents.
Jeff Iorg:You know, space travel is commonplace. We we just recently sent someone, sent some astronauts out to the moon and back, and the distance to various points in the sky can now be calculated with all kinds of mathematic capacities. But think about these earthbound Hebrews who were writing the Psalms. To them, the sky must have seemed an impossible height to reach and higher than could ever be measured. And with that in mind, the psalmist said, the love of God is so great, it is as high
Jeff Iorg:as the heavens are above the earth. Man, that's how extravagant
Jeff Iorg:God's love is for us. And we discover that extravagance as we learn
Jeff Iorg:to fear him. And then the second phrase, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has love or compassion on those who fear him. You know, parental love pulsates with a passionate intensity.
Jeff Iorg:When my daughter was in high school, she had a pretty serious illness for about a year. Fortunately, she's come through most of that and I'm grateful, but in the depth of that, I cried out to God with a passion that I'd never voiced in prayer, asking God for his healing on my daughter. There's something about parental love that evokes a passion from us that's hard to even describe. That same daughter went on to start bearing children as a young mother, and when she had the first child, it was pretty pretty rough. And then she later told us that she was planning on a second child, and I questioned that.
Jeff Iorg:And I said, with all that you went through the first time, and she said, oh, dad, they're worth it. Whatever it takes to birth my children, they're worth it.
Jeff Iorg:That's the kind of passionate love that parents have for their children. Back to the Psalms. As a father loves his children, so the Lord loves those who fear him. God's love for us is like that parental love on steroids, if
Jeff Iorg:you will. He he is our heavenly father, and like an earthly father or mother loves their children, so God loves us. And when we fear him, again, we don't cower in his presence, we find ourselves drawn to him, drawn to him with the same kind of love that is expressed in these parental expressions. Now that third phrase from
Jeff Iorg:the Psalms, but from eternity to eternity, the Lord's faithful love is toward those who fear him. That phrase from eternity to eternity is a way of expressing foreverness. You know, God's love is forever. It lasts. His love endures.
Jeff Iorg:Now,
Jeff Iorg:people today struggle with this. We talk about falling in and out of love. If a person tells you they have fallen out of love, they really didn't understand the concept in the first place.
Jeff Iorg:Love endures. It lasts. It's a forever experience. It doesn't go away.
Jeff Iorg:So when God says that his love is from eternity to eternity, he's saying that it's constant forever and enduring. You know, God loves you in spite of your performance, not because of it. God loves you because of who he sees you to be, not because of who you were before you met him. God loves you not for the progress you're making on his behalf, but for the person you're becoming as he changes you. God loves you.
Jeff Iorg:Now when I found these verses in the Psalms and discovered what they taught me about God's love being connected to fearing him, It changed so much of my perspective on what it means as a leader to cultivate the fear of God in my life. I fear God not because I find him a vengeful or wrathful ruler, not because I believe he's out to get
Jeff Iorg:me, but I fear God because in doing so, I find myself drawn more to him and his love. Because in fear
Jeff Iorg:of God, there is this amazing opportunity to really experience his love. And that leads me then to go on to talk about some other benefits that come from the fear of God. Another really good benefit from fearing God, and this one is particularly good for leaders, is that fearing God leads to wisdom. You know, for many Christians and for a lot of leaders, the most common prayer is, Lord, give me wisdom. And that's a biblical prayer, James one five, you know that.
Jeff Iorg:But the primary means to finding wisdom has already been revealed. Finding wisdom isn't about depending on some mysterious thoughts to enter your mind, it's it's about fearing God and allowing his word to shape how you think. Here's what the Bible says in Proverbs nine ten. The fear of the Lord, there's our phrase
Jeff Iorg:again, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of
Jeff Iorg:the holy one is understanding. If you want wisdom,
Jeff Iorg:it's fine to pray for it. But the first step, the first step toward biblical wisdom
Jeff Iorg:is fearing God. And when you do this, it changes how we think in at least two key ways that produce wisdom in our lives. The first is, of course, that fearing God requires humility. It requires us to submit ourselves to him, put ourselves under his direction and dominion, and recognize that what he says about life and leadership, about ministry, and about methodology, what he says is what matters and is what is wise. You know, as leaders, we're strong minded, and we become too enamored with our own reasoning and insights and opinions.
Jeff Iorg:And because of some of us who have strong communication skills, we like to state our opinions forcefully,
Jeff Iorg:and we like to do that naturally. In fact, my wife has told me on more than one occasion, Jeff, even when you're wrong, you can come off sounding right. So no matter how persuasive or confident your words may sound, Your opinions aren't what make you wise. What makes you wise is learning with humility to hold on
Jeff Iorg:to a position that is God directed, God ordained, God produced by aligning it with his word, which leads me on to say that the second result of fearing God in relationship to this is humility, of course, but also submitting yourself to truth revealed in scripture as your ultimate source of humility. Fearing God means you value his word over your word. Fearing the Lord means you submit your thoughts to the scrutiny of God's word, and you allow God's word to shape your thoughts, not the other way around. You submit yourself to God's word no matter how good your ideas may be. You submit yourself to what God has to say about life, and you come to value them over everything else.
Jeff Iorg:So by submitting your opinions to God and allowing his word to overrule them, you demonstrate fearing the Lord and this puts you on the path to wisdom. So I wanna underscore, it's a good prayer to ask God for wisdom. No problem with that. The Bible says to do it and I'm happy to do it and I do it all the time. But why don't you do the one thing that the Bible clearly says will be the answer to your prayer?
Jeff Iorg:And that is fear the Lord because that is the beginning of wisdom. And when you fear the Lord, it produces a humility within you and a receptivity to his word that's essential, And it demonstrates a commitment to allowing his word to shape your words, his word to shape your thoughts, his word to become more than that even the way you think so that the wisdom that flows out of you is flowing from God through his word
Jeff Iorg:and into your life and leadership. So a good benefit of fearing the Lord is that you find wisdom. And in finding wisdom, you find some answers to your own prayers so often voiced for wisdom. Alright. Another result of fearing the Lord, and I
Jeff Iorg:told you there's 30 of these, I'm only gonna give you about three or four today, so I think this is the third one.
Jeff Iorg:Fearing God leads to feeling satisfied in life.
Jeff Iorg:Now, this is so important because leaders are perpetually unsettled, it seems, and dissatisfied with so much of life. Now there's a good healthy part of that in the sense that we're always striving to do more, striving to do better, I get that, but I'm talking about something a lot deeper than that today. Fearing God brings with it a sense of satisfaction and a peace
Jeff Iorg:of mind. You know, a
Jeff Iorg:friend of mine calls worry practical atheism. I would like that if it weren't so painful. Another friend told me that anxiety is modern idolatry. It's making ourselves a god by taking responsibility for things God says are his department. Yes.
Jeff Iorg:My friends have said these things to me, and man, wish my friends weren't quite so direct sometimes. Worry and anxiety are frequent companions of leaders. In fact, I've jokingly said that I'm a world class worrier. If it was an Olympic sport, I'd be winning a gold medal every year. Satisfaction on the other hand is often a casualty
Jeff Iorg:of this process of worry. We
Jeff Iorg:we think that if we can just solve the issues that are creating the concerns, the worries, the anxieties, more money in the bank, more sales at work, more friends on Facebook, more praise from others.
Jeff Iorg:If we can just get over what
Jeff Iorg:we're worrying about that we might lose, the relationships that we might miss out on, the opportunities that might pass us by, the stress of not getting as much as we think we deserve, the fear of missing out. When we're stressing about all of these things, there's a deep sense of dissatisfaction that settles down in our soul, a lack of peace. But people who fear God, even in the context of trying to do more and trying to do better and trying to lead aggressively with intention ality and all of that, they have a deep satisfaction, a sense of peace about them. Proverbs fifteen sixteen says it this way,
Jeff Iorg:better a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure with turmoil. A little with the fear of the Lord is enough. It produces a sense of satisfaction, a sense of peace, where you're able to say, I fear God. I know he's in control of my life. I'm in submission to him.
Jeff Iorg:I'm content with what he's allowing. And because of that, while
Jeff Iorg:on the one hand, I may be as a leader striving to do more, to break new ground, to take us in new directions, to get us to a place we've never been, While there's that healthy sense of ambition and work that I'm always doing in my soul, deep down inside of me, there's a settled satisfaction that comes from
Jeff Iorg:knowing and fearing God.
Jeff Iorg:You know, the Bible uses a lot of images to describe this kind of satisfaction. One of them is a picture of nursing babies. You know, a nursing baby is content in his or her mother's arms. They're sated and relaxed. They're satisfied and restful.
Jeff Iorg:They're secure. They know they're loved and cared for, and they have all they need physically and emotionally. They have everything they need for life and health and happiness. And the Bible uses this image to describe this idea of being at peace with God. In Psalm a
Jeff Iorg:131, it says, Lord, my heart
Jeff Iorg:is not proud. My eyes are not haughty. I do not get involved with things too great or too wondrous for me. Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with his mother. My soul is like a weaned child.
Jeff Iorg:You know, this has come to be one of my watch phrases in leadership. I I try not to get involved with things that are too great
Jeff Iorg:or too wonders for me.
Jeff Iorg:And sometimes, I'll admit, I'm a little sarcastic about this because someone will bring me a problem and, oh, they'll be worked up about it. And I'll just say, you know, that's beyond me. I I don't really know how to fix that or solve that or even what to say about it. We're just gonna have to move on from there. I I can't help you.
Jeff Iorg:But what I really wanna have is something not that kind of sarcastic, kind of snarky, but something deep down that's real
Jeff Iorg:where I can honestly say to God, Lord, the things I'm facing, they're above my pay grade, but they're not above yours. And I wanna be like a child nursing at a mother's breast, satisfied, peaceful, relaxed, cared for, knowing that you that you can take care of my situation. That comes from fearing the Lord. It's better to have a little with the fear of the Lord than much in the turmoil that goes with it.
Jeff Iorg:Well, here's another benefit of fearing the Lord,
Jeff Iorg:and that is fearing the Lord will help you to enjoy prosperity. Here's what
Jeff Iorg:the Bible says in Deuteronomy six twenty four. The Lord commanded us to follow all these statutes and to fear the Lord our God for our prosperity always and for our preservation. When you fear the Lord, you have deep satisfaction, but you also will experience some prosperity. And while those things may sound contradictory, they're not. They're really comp complimentary because as you experience satisfaction and then God gives you prosperity, whether it's financial prosperity or prosperity in your work or prosperity in your relationships, you're not made proudful or even more anxious about having to keep up with that because you recognize it's come from God.
Jeff Iorg:In the fear of God, even your prosperity becomes a blessing. Now, God promises prosperity and protection to people who fear him. Now, some leaders have perverted this, creating the prosperity gospel movement, which which is really only a spiritualized get rich quick scheme. Alright? So fearing God leads to prosperity, but it doesn't necessarily lead to being rich by whatever cultural definition has been attached to that where you live.
Jeff Iorg:Believing that is a deceptive lie that contradicts the Bible's balanced instructions. God calls us to peace with what we have and then promises us prosperity, meaning he'll take care of us and give us blessing, but he does so, not to enrich us, but instead to demonstrate his goodness to us and in in a sense, seal the significance of our fearing him in relationships. You know, when you fear God and he gives you some prosperity,
Jeff Iorg:it will be a blessing to you because that prosperity will come without the lust for more.
Jeff Iorg:It'll come with a sense of peace and rest and satisfaction that God has given me something good in relationship or finances or in my ministry to enjoy, but not to be distracted by. Prosperity also comes to us when we fear the Lord, in ways that continue to motivate us to fear him and honor him even more. So the error of the modern prosperity movement is if you fear the Lord and obey him, he will make you prosperous so that you can get rich and enjoy it. But the Bible says when you fear the Lord and he makes you prosperous, it's in the context of humility and truth and dependence on him. So what do you do with that prosperity?
Jeff Iorg:You turn it around and reinvest it in his work, his ministry, his kingdom, his people. You find it a source of blessing for others, not a source of something that only comes to you. And of course, this is another way that spills out of that is that when we fear the Lord and he prospers us and we use it appropriately and we maintain that fear of him in the context of it, it motivates our giving so that we're able to do more, share with people what they need, and to to, extend even generational prosperity to others because of the fear that God has put in our lives. Well, a final blessing from fearing the Lord, and as I said at the beginning, I found 30 of these, but I'm just giving you four, three or four,
Jeff Iorg:five here on the podcast. Another motivation for leaders in the fear
Jeff Iorg:of God is it motivates us to right living. The Bible says this in second Corinthians seven one, so then, dear friends, since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from every impurity of the flesh and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. There are other passages that speak in similar ways, but
Jeff Iorg:this one's pretty pointed. It says, we cleanse ourselves from every impurity of the flesh and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. You know, this morning in my devotional reading, I was reading a section of Leviticus, and it was pretty pointed about some specific behaviors that are sinful before God. And as I read through them, it would be tempting to look
Jeff Iorg:at them from one perspective and say, man, these are awful, and I would never do anything like that.
Jeff Iorg:But because I've been thinking about this study of the fear of God, when I read those awful behaviors and the prohibitions about them, I found myself bowing my head and saying, God, I fear you and
Jeff Iorg:I also know how frail I am. And even at these latter years of my life, I don't want to make the mistake of sinning against you in these horrific abhorrent ways.
Jeff Iorg:And so, God, cleanse me from every impurity of the flesh and spirit
Jeff Iorg:and bring holiness to completion in me as you said in this verse, second Corinthians seven one.
Jeff Iorg:Speak to me from these words and change me at this point so that I fear you and maintain a humility before you, a commitment to your truth, a receptivity to what you're doing in my life, and that you motivate me to make the right moral choices that reflect my relationship with you. That kind of fear of God
Jeff Iorg:changes my prayer perspective from, Lord, look at me. I've never done any of these things in your word and I will never do any of those things. To saying, oh Lord, look upon me. I see these things in your word and I don't ever wanna find myself in any of those situations. So I ask you today to give me the strength to obey what you're saying because I wanna live the right way based on what you say in your word.
Jeff Iorg:I want the fear that I have of you to motivate me, to produce accountability within me, and to help me to understand the importance of right living as a reflection of the fear that I have of you. Well, as I said, this two week study here on the fear of God has come out of my personal study on this issue. It's been something that has been rewarding and enriching and something that has shaped some of my perspective on what I'm doing day by day here at the executive
Jeff Iorg:committee. I want to fear God. God created me with a capacity for fear. He created me with a capacity to fear him. Sin entered life, including mine, and now I fear everything else but God.
Jeff Iorg:I fear people. I fear circumstances. I wanna fear God.
Jeff Iorg:I wanna recapture what was given to me in creation, the capacity to fear God and experience the benefits of that. Now, as I said, I found about 30 of them listed in scripture, 30 benefits of fearing God. But some of the ones I've talked about today have been the most meaningful. When I fear the Lord, I experience his love in more profound ways. When I fear the Lord, I'm taking the first step toward answering my own prayer for more wisdom.
Jeff Iorg:When I fear the Lord, I experience the benefit of peace and satisfaction in my life. When I fear the Lord, I find the best use of his prosperity as it comes to me and I maintain a humility before him and even using the blessings he sends my way. When I fear the Lord, I live right and I'm on warning about certain behaviors that are outside the bounds of what's permissible for me as a Christian and certainly as a leader. And it's the fear of the Lord that motivates me not to puff myself up on years of right holy living and how I've got it made, but even at this juncture of life to keep myself before the Lord saying, God, I fear you. Give me the grace to live that out day by day.
Jeff Iorg:Leaders fear God. We fear God more than we fear people, more than we fear failure, more than we fear public opinion, we fear God. Putting that into practice has specific and helpful application as you lead on.