Only - Devotion for 5/29/07

Only – Devotion for 5/29/07

Have you ever done any rock climbing? I’ve not done any real rock climbing, but I have gone to one of those climbing walls where you get all strapped up and then you get to scurry up the wall. A year or so ago I went with the youth group from the church as we went to one of those climbing walls, and I was not so sure that I wanted to actually participate, but I eventually caved in to the peer pressure and got the harness on so that I could give it a shot. One of the youth had belaying experience, and so that assured me that once I got hooked in that I would not fall. Well I looked at this teenager with a great deal of skepticism as I weighed quite a bit more than she did, but she assured me that I would not fall. So up I went, climbing from one point to the next. As I got about halfway up (which was probably something like 100 feet . . . or so it seemed), I began to get a little anxious. I looked down, which is something that I should not have done, and I called out, “Are you sure you’ve got me?” After my call finished echoing (echoing, echoing, echoing, echoing), I heard her yell (because I was so high up, we had to communicate by yelling . . . either that or she had to yell so that I could hear her over my whimpers), “I’ve got you – you’ll be just fine.” So I pressed on, continuing my journey to the top, all the time questioning whether or not she could actually keep me from falling. I got to a difficult spot where I felt I had nothing else that I could reach, and way, way, way down below she was calling out instructions telling me to go to my right and step up. I kept yelling down to her that I didn’t think I could make it without falling, and she insisted that even if I slipped that I would not fall because she had me. You could hear the frustration in the echoes of her voice that I didn’t trust that she would not let me fall. In the end, my fear of heights and my lack of trust in her being able to keep me from falling led to my failure to reach the top. If I had fully trusted that I would not fall then I could have gotten to the top. However, I didn’t trust, and my fears won out.

This morning I was reading from Deuteronomy 6:4-25, and as God is giving these commands to love God, one of the things God says really stands out to me: “You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name” (Deuteronomy 6:13). In the Bible that I was reading from, one word in particular out of that verse was in italics – only, as in “You shall fear only the Lord your God.” I got to thinking about that only this morning. If we take that only seriously, then the only thing we should fear is God, and nothing else. And then I got to thinking about how frustrated God must get when we fear something else. Our fear of the future is truly a fear that God is not going to take care of us. Our fear of what comes next is really a fear that God doesn’t know what is best for us. Our fear of anything else is getting away from the full trust in God that He expects. I remember how my sons would get scared sometimes when I would put them up on my shoulders. I would reassure them, “I’m not going to let you fall,” but they would still want to get down. Sometimes I just couldn’t believe that they actually thought I would let them fall. I wonder if that is how God feels when we fear something else and not only Him?