The power of Your anger

Some of you may remember my series at the beginning of the year on Vision. The Lord downloaded six principles that He wanted me to hold dear this year.

Today as I was praying concerning these, I decided to reacquaint myself with the accompanying Scriptures.

The very first principle I received for the year of clear vision was to fear God.

Who understands the power of Your anger and Your fury, according to the fear that is due You? Psalm 90:11

Right away, I was transfixed as I absorbed that first statement: Who understands the power of Your anger?

As I prayed and mulled it over in my mind, I thought of recent scenes of anger in the news. An officer kneeling on a defenseless man’s neck, depriving him of oxygen…of life. The ensuing anger and rage, destroying properties and burning cities. I thought of the targeted rage of man against man and of multitudes intent on destroying an individual. I imagined myself as the focus of such targeted rage; then I heard this in my spirit: That rage is nothing compared to Mine when once it is released.

The God I serve is Love (see 1 John 4:16), and yet, He who made Man and Woman in His own image feels—and He feels deeply—just like us.

When we see a wrong, it angers us. God made us that way because He is that way.

I read it again, in a different translation. Who knows the power of Your anger? Then it hit me: No one alive—north or south, east or west, left or right—KNOWS the power of our God’s anger. None of us have experienced it—if we had, we would no longer be here.

And because we have never experienced the full range of God’s anger—and because we know from Scripture that He is Love—we suppose He is devoid of anger.

He is not.

Who understands the power of Your anger and Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?

He is patient with us; He is kind toward us. He loved us so much and longed for intimate friendship with us, His creation, so greatly that He sent His Son to allow our sins to be heaped upon Him and, as a result, He took on the full wrath of God that we deserved. Once the full measure of that punishment was spent, in accordance with God’s plan, He raised Jesus from death to be our forever Advocate before God as a reminder—I paid for their sins in full.

So why fear Him if everything is already covered? It has to do with the very reason Jesus came here in the first place—to restore relationship between God and His creatures.

I know many of you are bothered by that word “fear” in relation to a loving God. Well, imagine with me for a moment my favorite animal on earth—a cat.

Let’s say a large cat—a Lion—came to live with you. This Lion loved humans—and not necessarily to eat! This Lion enjoyed companionship with humans and chose to live with you, to love you, and to be loved by you.

Imagine burrowing your face into His [hypoallergenic] golden fur, walking with him down your street with your hand on his back, unafraid of a soul due to his magnificent strength and presence.

You would learn how to care for him and what made him happy. Just as quickly, you would want to know what made him mad. In your love and desire to continue to live with your Lion in harmony, you would refrain from everything that would arouse his displeasure. Why? Because fellowship with this Lion would be too rich, too amazing, and too precious to recklessly neglect, discard, or jeopardize.

In other words, you would both love and fear your Lion. You would love him because of his great love and gentleness toward you; you would fear him because you understood that in his love for you, he restrained the unmatchable exercise of the full range of his terrifying ability to destroy. And because of his terrifying ability to inflict damage on those who hated him (and by association, you), you felt safe whenever he was near.

So it is with the Living God. He loves you and is gentle toward you. And yet, He is unmatchable in the full range of His terrifying ability to destroy—that devastating power which He has chosen to restrain for now. But because of that power, those of us who have opened our hearts and our homes to Him can feel safe.

I am grateful that I have neither known nor experienced the power of His anger. But not unlike that Lion, He is certainly worthy of all the fear, respect, and reverence that is due Him. The day is coming when His anger toward those who shun Him will no longer be restrained.

Choosing to live in the fear that is due Him,

Dorothy

© 2020, Dorothy Frick