The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life. says the Book of Proverbs in chapter 14
The whole verse gives more insight. It says this. The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, To turn one away from the snares of death. (Proverbs 14: 27 NKJV)
We know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The specific verse is Proverbs 9:10 . It goes like this. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Proverbs 9: 10 NKJV)
We also know the verse that the Kingdom of God is the first thing that we need to seek. When we seek this as the first priority, we get everything else as an add-on benefit.
The verse goes like this. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6:33 NKJV)
Thus we see the connection between the various verses. When we fear the Lord, we are on the pathway of wisdom. Whereas if we do not fear God, we would be foolish, thinking thoughts, speaking words and doing actions that lead to death. This death may or may not be sudden death, but will be such that it robs one from eternal life. A life devoid of relationship with God.
We also know that when we fear God, we seek to please God. We know that we love God, we choose to please Him in all our ways, in all our pursuits. When a person fears God, he follows God’s commandments thoroughly. The two commandments which summarize all other commandments are these. This is Jesus’s reply to the scribes when they asked him the first of all commandments. Jesus replied thus. Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31 NKJV). Thus as a person who fears God, we ought to love God with all our heart, love our fellow human beings as we love ourselves. We can see that following these we become partakers of the fountain of life. We get to be refreshed and enjoy the refreshing fountain of life.
In a more or less parallel manner, when we love our parents, we don’t want to displease them. We dislike anything which displeases them. We hate and dislike anything they have asked us to stay away from, drugs, liquor, pride, jealousy, envy, greed, violent and evil people, pron, people of loose morals. With every step in life we are aware that we could be going towards these or farther away from these. We know that it’s foolish to be self confident and even consider one step towards any of these. We may even avoid the path in which we could meet people or old friends who walk in such a path.
The same is true in our relationship with our loving spouse. Which husband or which wife would ever spend a moment in a thought or word or action which would displease her or him?
Coming back to the last verse given above given in blue font. This reminds us to seek first the kingdom of God first. Once we seek the most important matter first, all the other matters of 2nd and 3rd priority fall in place.
CS Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and many other books puts it like this. Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.
Wishing you an abundant life. Be refreshed by the fountain of life.
Note on the picture on top of the blog post: photo of Trevi Fountain, Rome, Italy. Photograph by Jeff Ackley. This picture was taken from unsplash.com
