“Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 10:12, NASB 1995).
Beloved, we should fear the Lord. The fear of the Lord keeps us on the right path. God says, “What am I requiring of you?” The first thing is to have a healthy fear of Him. This does not wash away the fact that we know He loves us. But knowing that God loves us and fearing Him are not opposites. They are part of the same thing: how to be rightly related to Hashem, our Creator.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10a).
God wants you and me to fear Him, in fact, He requires it. We need to walk before Him with reverential awe. Again, not that it cripples us, not that it stops us from realizing how much He loves us, but we need to recognize how awesome, powerful and holy He is.
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Second, what does it mean to walk in the ways of the Lord? To walk in the ways of the Lord requires spiritual sensitivity. We must have a sensitivity that comes through divine intuition, revelation of the Spirit and the written Word of God. The Bible tells us that as we mature in life, as we mature in our walk with the Lord, we become able to discern the difference between good and evil (Heb. 5:14). When we acquire divine sensitivity, we gain an ability to recognize when we are in the Spirit and when we are not, and when we are abiding in Yeshua and when we are not. We get trained in righteousness, and as we are being trained in righteousness, we will walk in His ways.
As we fear God and learn to walk in His ways:, we surrender to the Spirit of God, and we absorb how to practice humility. We learn how to guard our tongue from speaking that which is displeasing to the Lord. Sometimes people do not recognize that even though they might not be cursing, their speech can still be displeasing to the Lord because it is just empty.
Jesus said: “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment” (Matt. 12:36).
To walk in His ways, we must train our tongue. James told us the tongue is like the rudder of a huge ship. The rudder is just a very small portion of a ship, and yet depending on what direction that rudder is pointed, it controls the trajectory, the direction of that entire ship (James 3:1-11).
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Our tongue must be tamed, not only in what we do not say but also in what we do say. Is what we are saying releasing life? Is our tongue being used to minister, to build life in others and to release a witness into the world? Are we walking in the ways of the Lord with what our tongue says, or are we speaking about things that have no value or, worse yet, agreeing with darkness by getting into criticism, accusation, negativity and judgment?
I have found as I discipline myself to control my words, a transformation of my soul takes place. In other words, by disciplining your tongue, you will circumcise your heart by the grace of God through the Holy Spirit.
The Lord wants us to fear Him and walk in His ways, and sometimes the one leads to the other. For example, we might not want to do something, say something or go to a certain place. But because we fear the Lord, we step out of our comfort zone and do it in spite of our feelings. Maybe it is just making a phone call to somebody. Perhaps we really do not feel like making that phone call. But when the Holy Spirit is speaking to us, we need to reach out and obey Him, because we love God and because we fear Him.
“Father, I bless everyone who is reading this teaching. Father God, we love You. We want to fear You with a holy fear, and we want to walk in Your ways. Daddy, we want to be pleasing to You. Thank You for choosing us. We love You today, Father. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
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Rabbi Kirt Schneider hosts the impactful television program “Discovering The Jewish Jesus,” which is available in more than 200 million homes in the United States and nearly 200 nations worldwide. In 2021 he began broadcasting on radio and now airs across America. Rabbi Schneider imparts revelation of Jesus’ Jewish heritage and His fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. Questions of how the Old and New Testaments tie together and how Yeshua completes the unfolding plan of The Almighty Yahweh are answered with exceptional clarity. www.discoveringthejewishjesus.com/about-2/rabbi-schneider/
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