Skip to main content
Rebecca Carrell photo

Rebecca Carrell

In BOW’s latest episode, Rebecca Carrell talks with Kay Daigle about the biblical term “the fear of the Lord” and the need for reclaiming it. What does it even mean? And why is it so crucial to our discipleship?

Is the fear of the Lord simply revering or honoring God? Do we find that there is there more to it when we actually study it biblically?

Other Resources

This podcast is part of a series on Re-imagining Discipleship. Don’t miss our other episodes: A Theological Perspective, A Spiritual Formation Perspective, A Church Leader Perspective, A Missions Perspective and A Kingdom Perspective.

You can connect to the video version of Reclaiming the Fear of the Lord if you prefer. When you click on the podcast episodes of the other conversations in this series, you will find the video links as well.

Time Stamps

00:23 Introducing Rebecca Carrell
04:36 Rebecca, why your interest in the fear of the Lord?
06:49 Why is the fear of the Lord difficult to understand?
08:56 What is the fear of the Lord?
15:26 What are the ramifications to the church over the loss of the fear of the Lord?
17:24 A healthy fear of the Lord
20:53 The way forward
23:44 Is the megachurch part of the problem?
25:09 How can a megachurch be done well?
30:11 Final encouragement
32:02 Other resources on discipleship

Transcript

Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle of beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to this episode with Rebecca Carrell, our special guest. Welcome, Rebecca.

Rebecca >> Thank you so much for having me, Kay.

Kay >> Oh, we’re so happy to have you again. And I’m really looking forward to this topic today. We’re going to be talking about reclaiming the fear of the Lord, and it’s going to be part of our series on Reimagining Discipleship. In that series, we’ve talked about various things that seem to be missing in the church today, and it all affects our discipleship.

It’s all part of our discipleship. And so this particular topic, when I saw that Rebecca had done some work on it and spoken on it, I felt like it was just perfect for what we do. Thank you, Rebecca, for doing that.

Rebecca >> Oh, you know, this has just kind of been a burden on my heart for the last few years. And so it actually feels good to give it some expression.

Kay >> Yes. Well, and that’s the way I’ve felt about the whole discipleship thing, it was really a burden for me to see what I saw as a real lack of discipleship in the church. And so I’m really excited about this conversation.

Rebecca holds a master’s degree in Christian education from Dallas Seminary, and she is now working on her doctor of education degree. That is wonderful. I’m so excited to hear that you’re doing that.

Rebecca >> I am not sure how any of this happened.

I’ve been in school since 2015. It’s like when, oh Lord, will we be done? Hopefully in a couple of years.

Kay >> My husband always says that if I could, I’d go to school all the time and that really is true.

Rebecca >> And when you work there, it makes it easy because you know they’re like, Sure, you can take some classes. So it’s like, Well, we’ll just keep going then.

Kay >> That’s great. Well, I’m really thrilled that you’re doing that. Rebecca also produces and hosts a podcast, Honestly Though, and the subtitle is Real Talk, Real Life and Real Faith. And I highly recommend that our audience connect with that podcast. After spending 20 years on the radio in Dallas Fort Worth, she now mentors and teaches students at Dallas Seminary.

Tell us what you teach.

Rebecca >> So I have been working with the Great Dr. Sue Edwards and Dr. Joye Baker. They are nearing retirement. And so the plan is to have me work with them. They mentor me. And so when they finally decide to hang it up, I will be taking the classes that pertain to women ministering to women. So right now we co-teach a class called Women Teaching Women, which teaches women how to write and teach their own Bible studies.

And we teach a class called Effective Ministry to Women, which is really all about how to build a thriving women’s ministry. And then there’ll be some other classes down the road as well.

Kay >> That’s wonderful. And we have had Sue several times on our Beyond Ordinary Women Ministry podcast and our videos, and Joy has also joined us. And I love both of them. And what a gift to be able to have you work with them and take over for them. That’s wonderful.

Rebecca >> Huge, huge shoes to fill. And I know that full well. I should also add that I also teach a class in the media arts and worship department on podcasting and social media marketing for ministry, which was born out of my vocation.

Kay >> So I am thrilled that you are doing that. And the media arts, that subject is obviously right, exactly what you should be doing, but so is the Women’s Ministry. I’m thrilled with that. So let’s go back to the fear of the Lord. Let’s get into our topic. What really caused you to be interested in this?

Rebecca >> That’s such a good question. It comes primarily from watching the state of the church over the last decade or so. There is not a denomination that has not been rocked by scandal. And living in Flower Mound, Texas, just over this past summer, the summer of 2024, you know, we live in the middle of three giant mega-churches, each of which had an issue that made headlines.

And also seeing a lot of the rhetoric that comes out on Twitter and various social media platforms of these giant media personalities who are also pastoring churches. And just some of the tone and some of the things that they’ve said on social media really is just not very reminiscent of the way we’re instructed in Scripture to be dealing with one another.

And as I started to research this, I saw that all the way back in the sixties, A.W. Tozer had written on this in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, which he wrote to call the church back to a healthy fear of the Lord. He talked about the loss of majesty in our view of the Lord.

And then just in studying the Scriptures, we are called to holiness, and we can’t achieve holiness unless we have a healthy fear of the Lord.

And so I think that if we could, the church at large, if we could recapture and what it really means to fear the Lord and to walk in that healthy fear, then we would hopefully prayerfully be once again a voice that can speak prophetically into the culture, especially in this day and age when everyone has their own truth. And truth is relative and there is no, you know, what once we called evil is now celebrated. And so that’s my hope and prayer that we can just open up some discussions about what it means to walk in a healthy fear of the Lord.

Kay >> And so that brings us to the question, what is the fear of the Lord and why does it seem hard to understand?

Rebecca >> Why is it so hard to understand? It should be so easy. But the problem with the fear of the Lord is that it’s what’s called a syntagmatic phrase, and in a syntagmatic phrase, you cannot define it by breaking down each little part of the phrase. So we can’t really define fear of the Lord by defining fear and then defining Lord.

We have to understand that the meaning of the concept of the fear of the Lord comes in the relationship of the words to each other. And so that’s super confusing.

I’ll say it this way, the Bible doesn’t really offer us one clear, crisp definition of what the fear of the Lord is. Instead, it’s mentioned hundreds of times in both the Old Testament and the new descriptively.

So the author of the Book of Proverbs references it 18 times. I have some notes I want to say 13 times as a noun, five times as an imperative in that it’s something that we should do. And so as the author of Proverbs talks about it, he’s telling us it’s the beginning of wisdom. It’s the beginning of knowledge.

It is evident on the one who walks in obedience. It’s a blessing. It’s a treasure. So it’s all these descriptions, but no precise definition. And so what I tell people the fear of the Lord, oh, and it’s also difficult to define because no two people really define it the same way. So if you drag out a bunch of commentaries or if you line up a bunch of scholars you’re going to hear definitions like it’s respect, it’s awe, it’s reverence, it’s fear, it’s terror, it’s horror.

You hear all of these things and it’s just hard to boil it down to one specific definition. So when I’m trying to explain the fear of the Lord one of the things I tell people is that yes, it’s awe, yes, it’s reverence, yes it’s respect. But the authors of Scripture, if you read from Genesis to Revelation, the authors of Scripture will not let us stop at awe or reverence or respect it goes deeper than that.

Kay >> And, you know, I always sort of felt that way. I would hear people preach on it and say it’s just awe and reverence. But then I would read passages that didn’t quite seem to fit that definition. And I would think it just seems like there’s more to this, that there’s actually something in actually a fear, something that we’re supposed to be afraid of.

Even though God totally loves us. I mean, I’m not trying to minimize that at all, but there always seem to be something more. Recently I’ve finished writing a Bible study on the Exodus, and one of the passages in there just really confirmed the way that I felt about this. It’s in Exodus 20. It’s when they’re ratifying the old covenant, the law. The people are preparing for God to come down on the mountain of Mount Sinai and speak to them. And they’ve prepared, and then they all gather. And there is lightning; there is smoke; there are clouds; there is a trumpet sound; there is an earthquake. I mean, it is scary and they are afraid. And then God speaks the Ten Commandments.

And so, you know, it’s paired with the law that God expects them to follow. You know, here’s all these scary things and it’s paired with “This is what you’re supposed to do. This is the way you’re supposed to live.” And then in Exodus 20:18-20, I thought I might just read it.

It says, “All the people were seeing the thundering and the lightning, and heard the sound of the horn and saw the mountains smoking. And when the people saw it they trembled with fear and kept their distance. They said to Moses, ‘You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die.’ Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you so that you do not sin.’”

And it’s really that last part. God has come to test you that the fear of him may be before you so that you do not sin. That’s always seemed to me a little more than just awe and reverence.

Rebecca >> Yes. You know, if I can share an illustration.

Kay >> Absolutely.

Rebecca >> In October of this year, October 2024, that will mark 21 years since Siegfried and Roy discontinued their show, and Siegfried and Roy were known worldwide for producing the most magnificent magic show ever made. And the magicians’ favorite part of the show was called “The Rapport Act.” And during The Rapport Act, Roy would lead one of the great white magnificent tigers around the stage, and he would get close to the audience there was no barrier between the stage and the people.

And so he would lead the tiger around. And then the tiger would stand and put his paws on Roy’s shoulder and lick his face. And the whole point of The Rapport Act was to endear the tiger to the audience and show them that this mighty ferocious beast could actually be tamed. Well, on October 3rd, the show is going on as normal, but something happens.

No one knows what. And the tiger kind of goes off script. He breaks his routine, and it appeared as though he saw something in the audience and he’s making his way toward the audience. So Ray leaps in front of him, tries to control him, tries to get him to get back into the routine. And the tiger pushes him down, drags him by the neck, grabs him by the neck, drags him off stage.

Well, Roy flatlined three times on the operating table. The next day he had a massive stroke, had to be rushed back into surgery. And the USDA and a counterterrorism unit and the local police, Kay, spent two years—two years trying to understand why Mantacore, this great seven foot tall, 400 pound tiger, attacked Roy. I mean, I like to say, you know, they could have saved themselves a lot of time if they would have just asked me or you, because we all know that you can’t tame a mighty beast like that.

You can’t tame a tiger. And the proper response when you are in the presence of something that can destroy you like that is fear and humility. And the God of the universe. When you look through the prophets, particularly, let’s talk about Ezekiel or John, who received the revelation on the island of Patmos.

Ezekiel saw this vision of God high and exalted and surrounded by the cherubim. He saw that vision six times. Okay, every single time he fell on his face and an angel essentially had to revive him and get him up. You would think by the fourth or fifth time this would become routine to Ezekiel, but it never did.

And then we have John who walked with Jesus. I mean, Jesus, like mentored him. They, I imagine, stayed up late around the campfire. John watched Jesus heal people, multiply food, raise people from the dead. And still, after three, three and a half years of an intimate relationship, even seeing Jesus transfigured on the mountain, even seeing him in his risen state, when Jesus in his full glory appeared to John on the island of Patmos, he fell on his face as though dead. And so I think that’s what the church has lost.

We are still kind of recovering from the seeker sensitive movement when in what I think were good intentions, we tried to tame, we tried to domesticate the lion of the tribe of Judah and make Jesus a little more palatable for people who are anti-religion. And what’s happened is that now we’re seeing the ramifications of that, and the ramifications of that are blatant disregard for God’s commands, blatant disregard for the way we are supposed to behave with each other, the way we are supposed to do church.

And so no wonder we are seeing these scandals and no wonder our culture is the way it is.

Kay >> Right. Absolutely. It is exactly what we’re seeing. And it’s really giving the church a bad name.

Rebecca >> And that’s what’s so heartbreaking about it, is that really if you trace it back to God’s people, Israel, and then to the church, if you connect those dots, the original intention was always to fill the earth with the Lord’s glory. To fill the earth with the glory of the Lord. And we cannot behold the glory of the Lord if we cannot stand in fear of him.

Those two are so intricately related, and Israel failed. And the church is—there are so many good churches I don’t ever want to paint with too broad of a brush—but if you look at the Western church, and specifically you look at the American church, what we are seeing is not, I think, what Paul envisioned for the church being a light to the nations.

Instead what’s happening is people are looking at us and thinking, I want nothing to do with that. And that’s the tragedy of it.

Kay >> That’s what breaks my heart the most.

Rebecca >> Me, too.

Kay >> That’s what breaks my heart the most. So is there anything else you want to add to the fear of the Lord?

Rebecca >> Yeah. Let me share another illustration, if you don’t mind.

When I was eight years old, my parents were having people over. And I always like to say there was nothing more terrifying than my mother on the day of company. You know, like she will run you over with the vacuum. She will spray you in the face with Windex if you’re in her way.

And so my mom is getting the house ready, and my dad and I go to the grocery store. You know, my mom had given us this big list, and so we’re getting all the items. And as we’re coming out, I remember seeing (eight years old, so the memories are a little fuzzy), but I do remember there were two guys standing outside of a liquor store that was adjacent to the grocery store.

And I remember in my eight-year-old mind, they looked big and scary. And as we started to walk toward the car, they started to walk toward us. And one of them yelled out something and my dad, just without saying a word or looking behind us, just kind of put his hand reassuringly on my back and opened the door of the car, put me in it, you know, instructed me to keep the door locked.

And then he turned around, and he just did some business with those two guys. And I remember him raising his voice and smacking his hand on the car. And those two guys, they turned and left. And the whole time I am sitting in the car very much afraid. I am an eight-year-old girl, but I am not afraid of those two guys.

I am absolutely afraid for them because my dad was Superman. He was the biggest, strongest man in the world. He lifted weights. He could pick me and my sisters up with one arm. He ran marathons. And in addition to that, he showed us or told us every day of our lives how much he loved us and how we were always safe when we were with him. I was afraid my dad was going to beat them up and get all messy.

And then we’d get home and my mom would yell at both of us.

And so that’s what a healthy fear of the Lord should stir in us. If you look at the Psalms, in Psalm 34, particularly, I think in 11 verses, David mentions the fear of the Lord four times. But you’ll notice as you read through that Psalm, that the fear of the Lord doesn’t drive him away from the Lord screaming in terror.

It drives him to the Lord in praise and thanksgiving. I had a healthy fear of both my father and my mother growing up, but it didn’t cause me to run from them. It caused me to cling to them. And so a healthy fear of the Lord is something that absolutely knows that we stand in the face of a Holy God, and the only reason we can stand before this God is because his Son came to take our sin upon himself.

And that fear of the Lord, knowing who he is and what he can do, should cause us to have a great fear for the people who would come against us and drive us both to the Lord and to the world in an effort to introduce them to this magnificent Holy God, who, quite frankly, in Jesus’ words can destroy both the soul and the body in hell.

Kay >> Right. That’s a great illustration. Another great illustration. So what do you see as the way forward here? How do we reclaim the fear of the Lord?

Rebecca >> Yeah, yeah—by what you’re doing right now. When I spoke on this to our students at Dallas Theological Seminary, you know, I said the church is in a terrible, we are facing a terrible crisis. And so what is the solution? And the fact of the matter is that you are, you are the solution.

Psalm 34:11 says, “Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”

And that tells us two things: we can make an observation and an implication. It tells us that the fear of the Lord has to be taught, that we don’t know it instinctively. We’re not going to stand at the foot of Mount Sinai and see the thunder and the lightning. (You can’t see thunder.)

But hear the thunder and see the lightning in the thick darkness coming down on the mountain. We’re not going to see that. But we can see the words on a page. We can read Scripture, and we can we can find a church that walks in a healthy fear of the Lord. And we can place ourselves under the teaching of people who model a healthy fear of the Lord.

And then the implication for that, for the mature Christian, is that we are to teach the fear of the Lord. We’re to learn it, and we’re to teach it. And so I think that one of the interesting things about the fear of the Lord is that it’s a lot like faith that the more you step out in faith, the deeper your faith grows.

The fear of the Lord requires a Christian to walk in obedience, staying close to the side of the Lord, practicing the spiritual disciplines of prayer and worship and periods of silence and studying the scriptures. And what happens when we walk in obedience is that it actually increases our fear of the Lord.

It’s so counterintuitive, but the closer we stay to the Lord, the more secure we feel in his presence and the deeper that intimate relationship grows, and the less we want to grieve the Holy Spirit.

I mean, you can’t make God mad at you because he sits outside of time and space. He knew the worst thing you would ever do. He knew it before you did it. He still saved you. He has no buyer’s remorse with you. But the intimacy that we get when we walk in close, close fellowship, in step with the spirit we walk in, that close fellowship with the Lord is something that once you taste it, you just can’t ever get enough, and you will keep going back to that well.

That’s why David said, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” The more we walk with him, the more we fear him. And the more we fear him, the more we cling to him.

Kay >> Would you say that the mega-church model is working. Is that part of the problem?

Rebecca >> Oh, what a good, yet loaded question. Okay, so there are some mega-churches who are doing it so well. And the mega-church has something to offer the body of believers and the community at large that the small rural church just can’t—and that’s resources. When you have a church of 12,000 people, you have an army of volunteers, you have a vast treasury of financial resources.

You can do so much good in the community. We see churches that are putting out curriculum and worship albums that draw us into the presence of the Lord. So when the mega-church is done well, it can be a beautiful thing. When it’s not…

Kay >> And let me say I’m in one of those.

Rebecca >> Right. And by definition so am I. I think a mega-church is defined as maybe greater than a thousand, or maybe it’s 2000.

Kay >> 2000. I mean, maybe it’s less than that.

Rebecca >> I’m not sure. OK, well, it’s probably in Texas. There’s the mega-church and there’s the Texas mega-church. Right that is really true. And we go to Rock Point Church in Flower Mound, which is creeping up to 3000 people. So I mean, by definition, I go to a mega-church, too. We’ve also gone to mega-churches of 12,000 people. When it’s done well, it’s a beautiful thing.

And I hold up my own church as an example. Our pastor is so humble, he just rejects celebrity culture. But when it’s not done well, when there is no accountability set up, when you do not have to answer to a denomination or a bishop, it is imperative that you have a system set up where there are layers of accountability, where no one person calls all the shots because no one person is ever meant to be entrusted with that kind of power.

And so one of the things that we’ve seen happen in the mega-church movement is a movement away from participative, a participative model of church where you have liturgy readings and people up reading scripture and a call and response prayer and prayers of confession where you are praying words that are centuries old, that saints have prayed since the beginning of the church. You move to a more performative model where instead of someone who is standing and kneeling and responding and then going up to receive the communion elements from a person, you are sitting in a chair. You have a praise and worship band that could be releasing albums.

And then you have the pastor speaking for 45 to 55 minutes. And so instead of Christ being the main focal point of the service, a pastor is the main focal point of the service. Now that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it’s something we need to remember if we are trying to get our congregants to participate in actually being the body of Christ and not consumers who are sitting there receiving a message. Then we’ve got to do some work.

We’ve got to find ways to become more participative and less performative. The performative model can only produce celebrities, and you get someone up there who is, you know, slick and good looking and a tremendously charismatic speaker and funny and wears all the cool clothes and knows all the cultural slang. I mean, people are going to worship that person.

And so these are just things we need to consider. These are things we need to consider and ask what is church meant to be? When Paul was describing church and orderly worship to the Corinthian believers, he said everyone should come with a psalm, a hymn, a word of knowledge. The church was built on a participative model and I do think that the celebrity culture is one of the things causing all of the problems in the church today.

Kay >> Well, I think you have to see that that’s part of it.

Rebecca >> Yeah. And a mega-church can hold that off. You know, you can have a preaching team instead of one person that’s up there. You can have a worship team, but then you can have a choir back them up every now and then. You can involve people. You can have people up on the stage reading a chunk of Scripture, you can do a call and response prayer. So there are elements that could be introduced into the mega model that I think could steer us away from the solely performative model and back into somewhat of a participative model.

Of course, a mega-church is also going to have to be very intentional with small groups and finding a way to build that intimacy and make sure all of your people are shepherded because one pastor cannot shepherd 12,000 people or 3000 people or 1000 people.

Kay >> Right.

Rebecca >> So there needs to be a much larger support team if you’re going to do a mega-church model. And I’m in one that does it well. So it can happen.

Kay >> Right. But the truth is that kind of model can even be in a small church. And it still has the same dangers to the congregation, to its people, as a large church. In a large church, I think they have to fight against it more.

Rebecca >> I think so too. And as long as humans are involved in church, we’re going to have problems of scandal and sin. This is not something we’re going to solve. This is something we can bring awareness to. It’s something we can start having conversations about. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to say, hey, is the way we’re doing church working, are we walking in a fear of the Lord or have we taken on this attitude that Jesus is my homeboy and really the job of the pastors to fill seats and produce baptisms?

If we’re not walking with people and if we’re not encouraging them to holiness, then we’re not doing it right or well or really at all right.

Kay >> Yeah. Well, do you have any final encouragement for those who are listening and watching?

Rebecca >> You know, I want to say this. If you go to a church that’s doing this well, particularly if you’re in a smaller church, you would give your pastor such a gift to tell him. I interact with a lot of pastors of smaller churches, and I can tell you they are doing it. They are walking with their people.

They are loving them well, and they’re doing it for very little pay and no recognition. And so if we can really make sure that we are affirming the people who are doing it well, I think that goes so far because, you know, I think the best thing that can happen to any of us is that we would minister for the rest of our lives in obscurity and not have to face the temptations of celebrity or recognition or admiration or affirmation that brings just a terrible, soul destroying temptations.

And so just affirm the people you know who are doing it well and thank them because we are losing pastors right and left. That is another terrible problem in the church we’re facing that the ones who are doing their best and doing it well are sometimes being maligned for it. The ones who are standing for truth and teaching the hard words are taking a lot of heat for it.

And so write a note, visit their social media page, thank them in person, give him a hug, but let them know that they’re making a difference in your life.

Kay >> Those are good words. Thank you so much, Rebecca. This has been a really insightful conversation and I think that those who listen to it will really have something to think about and something to do: to teach the fear of the Lord; talk about the fear of the Lord; and to live out the fear of the Lord.

For our audience out there let me say that we have other episodes that are already posted on Reimagining Discipleship. We encourage you to connect with those and watch those. We have a variety of topics, a variety of people, and I know that we’ll probably do some others after this one. We just have to have the right topic. So thank you again, Rebecca.

Rebecca >> I’m so honored to be on the great Kay Daigle show.

Kay >> You’re so sweet!

Rebecca >> For real. This is such an honor for me. Kay, thank you so much.

Kay >> Oh, well, we’re honored to have you and so happy that you had the time to be with us.

Rebecca >> Any time, any time.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.