Dear Readers: We have had many requests to revisit this 31-day series originally posted in January, 2017. We pray you develop a fresh hunger and thirst for God, a passion to pursue Him will be awakened, and a deeper revelation received. Our hope is that a profound awe and reverence for Him will be cultivated within you.

~Editor, Walk His Way

 “He who cultivates his land will be satisfied with bread, but he who follows vain things is devoid of understanding.” Proverbs 12:11

 Tilling the Soil

Cultivating Awe and Reverence for God, Day 5

Walk his Way revisited —First posted in January, 2017

I love the smell of fresh-turned dirt. My mother and I worked side-by-side in our yard and flowerbeds throughout my childhood. We pruned and weeded, fertilized and harvested year after year. Gardening became very much a part of me.

I learned that cultivating soil involves developing, improving, feeding, and turning it over and over to break up clods and spread out the worms and nutrients.

The definition of cultivate can easily be applied to our spiritual selves. When I cultivate my spirit, I develop and improve it by the education and training of God’s Word. I refine it by discipline. I promote its growth and development by careful feeding and nurturing, supplemented by obedience—doing what He says. I turn His Word over and over in my mind until I am given understanding by the Holy Spirit. And one more important component of cultivation is devoting myself to the task.

This series of devotions is dedicated to cultivating awe and reverence for God. If we are to cultivate awe and reverence for God, I can assure you it won’t “just happen.” We must prepare and tend our hearts and minds. We must feed on the right things and not allow any unwholesome food to become our sustenance. We must stay with the task day after day until, as with gardening, it becomes a part of us.

There is a great harvest in cultivating awe and reverence for God. When we properly know who He is, we will be filled with awe—speechless, breathless wonder that issues forth in praise. When we see Him as He is, we will revere Him as only a hand-chosen, well-loved mortal can respond to Deity. And we will be satisfied and full.

To abandon the cultivation of awe and reverence, to ignore or neglect it, is to stay in a sleepy, half-aware, uncertain state. If we do not cultivate awe and reverence, we will wonder what is the big deal about worship, we will be critical of those who deeply love and meditate on God’s Word, and we may privately mock those who live consecrated, set-apart lives.

Before I began to cultivate awe and reverence for God, I did not know how near He was. I did not experience the utter joy of His presence. I was living quite apart from the very Fountain of Life, the rushing River of Living Waters. These are not just metaphors—they are truth, like a Rock upon which we can confidently stand.

Let us cultivate the land that we call “life” so that we may be satisfied by the Bread of Life. May we no longer follow vain things—anything “other”—and thus be classified as devoid of understanding.

Master Gardener, till up the soil of our hearts, that we may cultivate a deep awe and reverence for You. Become a part of our inmost being so that we are continually aware of Your presence. We deeply desire to be changed. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.