Love and Fear

Fear and Love.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might...It is the Lord your God you shall fear...  Deuteronomy 6:4,13.

For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.  You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him.  Deuteronomy 13:3-4

Two examples reveal a truth that run though out the Bible.  Loving God and Fearing God go hand in hand.  They are irreversibly linked.

I know too the verses from 1 John:  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

How are the two reconciled?  How do I make sense of the relationship of love and fear?

The questions show something of my knowledge of God.  Or in reality my lack of knowledge.

God is awesome, not the light hearted "hey you got a new ipad, awesome."  No this awesome is about something that is indescribably bigger, stronger, holier, completely beyond me. 

I fear Him because He is great.  And part of that fear, the knowledge is of His fiercely, jealous love.  Jesus wants my heart alone.  If something or if I let someone or something else take the first place in my heart, Jesus is going to go after that.

I'm just in the beginning of the beginning of knowing what it means to fear the Lord. But I am convinced that as I learn the fear of the Lord, I am going to love Him more.