How do you stop caring so much what other people think of you? It is one of the quietest, heaviest weights most of us carry, and the Bible has a surprising answer for it. The answer starts with a kind of fear most of us have never actually been taught.

In this sermon, Pastor Brian opens up one of the most confusing tensions in all of scripture. On one hand, the Bible tells us over and over not to fear. On the other hand, it tells us to fear the Lord. So which is it? Does God want us to be afraid of him or not?

Pastor Brian unpacks the difference between bad fear and good fear, starting with Proverbs 29:25. The fear of man is a snare. It traps us in hypocrisy, in people pleasing, in the exhausting work of curating a version of ourselves that we hope will be liked. It leaves us with the lonely lie that the best we can hope for in life is to be loved but not known.

Then he turns the corner. There is a different kind of fear running all through scripture, a holy and healthy fear of the Lord, and it does three things our souls actually need. It protects us from evil, the way a true picture of a just God keeps us from playing with sin (Proverbs 16:6). It empowers us for holiness, because cleansing ourselves and bringing holiness to completion happens in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 7:1, Philippians 2:12). And it fuels intimacy with God, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowing him, and the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him (Proverbs 1:7, Psalm 25:14).

Along the way Pastor Brian shares the storm on a Colorado mountain that taught him what holy fear actually feels like, the Antique Roadshow teapot that finally helped it click, and the moment from his own childhood when a father's loving discipline kept him from a self destructive choice that nothing else could have stopped. He lands the message in Psalm 130, where the trembling realization that no one could survive God's record of our sin meets the staggering good news that with God there is forgiveness, so that he may be feared. And in Psalm 147, where the same God who delights in those who fear him also commands them to hope in his unfailing love that will never stop chasing them down.

The biggest reframe of this teaching is simple. The fear of the Lord is not one more thing to add to your spiritual to do list. It is the posture underneath the whole list. It is how Pastor Brian says you do every other thing God has asked of you. If your walk with God has stalled, this might be the missing link.