Brazil Trip

Just wanted everyone to know that we are headed to Brazil on January 11 - February 10th. We are very excited about this opportunity that we have to join the Impact 360 students on their International Experience. Trent and I are taking our girls, Ashlynn and Anna Kathryn with us. Caleb will stay back with Joy's parents. We will be working in the town were Joy lived for 7 years. Please join us in praying for our time down there - for good health and for the people we will come in contact with. Please visit the link below to read stories and prayer request from the students while we are overseas. Trent and I will also try to post to our blog while we are away as well. www.impact360inbrazil.blogspot.com

Merry Christmas!

We had our 2nd Christmas in Pine Mountain. It was a lot of fun to be at home and to get woken up by two very excited girls who were anxious to wake everyone up so they could go run into the den so they could see what Santa had left them. The girls got a pink/purple Jeep, which their brother had so much fun climbing into and playing on.
Mom, Dad and David were here and we enjoyed having them. It was a wonderful day of opening gifts and remembering the real reason for the season.

The Fear of God in Mission

Greetings! We have not been active in maintaining this blog, and I'm not sure whether this will soon change! However, several of you have expressed interest in browsing the final paper I have been preparing throughout the fall. I have decided to post it here in order to take advantage of the Bible referencing tool created by Logos. I humbly submit this as a beginning attempt to articulate some thoughts on what it means to adequately fear God. My prayer is that my fear, love, and knowledge of Him will continually increase throughout the span of the years He grants me on this earth.  And that He will correspondingly enable me to articulate Truth to others so that men and women might fear and glorify Him. 
I welcome any observations or critique you might offer.

-Trent

Lion Resting by Rembrandt, 1650 (Public Domain)

Introduction 
The thesis of this paper is that the fear of God is the beginning of and enduring prerequisite for participation in the mission of God.

Definitions and Clarification 
By fear of God, I proffer that the prolific Biblical entreaties to fear God are intending a much more literal definition of fear than the common modern reduction of its meaning to merely trust or respect.[i] So, for the purposes of this paper, I define fear of God as a state of alarm or “awareness of danger” (Merriam-Webster) that is degreed in nature (Nehemiah 7:2) and is humankind’s response to revelation of, or experiential knowledge of, God and His attributes. That God is fearsome does not necessitate that He is mean or evil. However, He is indeed dangerous. (Willard 50) 

Second, for our purposes here, I will define mission using a couple of key thoughts written by John Piper regarding the work and goal of missions. Mission is “the proclamation of the gospel in Word and deed” (Piper 2003:63) in order “to reestablish the supremacy of Christ among the peoples of the world…that God might be glorified by the nations as they experience his mercy.” (196)

To clarify, I do not intend to imply that the human will can create the fear of God. Rather, it is assumed that any fear of the Creator must originate from God’s self-revelation. 

We will examine the excerpts from the accounts of Moses, an unnamed exiled priest, Daniel, Jesus, Peter and Paul as they were used to influence their cultures for God’s Kingdom purposes. In doing so, we will focus on various aspects of the fear of God, including its role, nature, purposes, catalysts and results.