It's Supernatural

Sid: We want everyone everywhere to be red hot for the Messiah but the truth of the matter is there are many of you that want to be red hot for the Messiah but these little foxes that are getting in your way.  And I know the name of the major obstacle that is getting in your way from getting you healed.  From having intimacy with God; from not being judged and it’s a subject called “The Fear of the Lord.”  And that’s why I have on the telephone the pastor of Canton Christian Fellowship in Canton, Ohio Pastor Michael Cameneti.  He’s just written a brand new book and the title is “The Missing Ingredient to Success.”  Explain to us what the fear of the Lord is Michael.

Michael:  Well, the fear of the Lord is of course the Bible gives us some definitions; so I’ll tell you one.  In Proverbs chapter 8 verse 13 the Bible says “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; pride, arrogancy; the evil way, the forward mouth do I hate.”  So we can say it this way the fear of the Lord is dislike or disapprove of whatever God dislikes or whatever God disapproves of.  And so we could go through scripture after scripture the Bible talks about “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; the beginning of knowledge.”  But I found a definition Sid because the subject of the fear of the Lord or the fear of God is even found in the New Testament.  So it’s not an Old Testament thing; so I was looking the in Vines Expository dictionary of Old Testament words. And where is what the Bible says about the fear of the Lord.  I think that this is a definition that will help people. “The fear of the Lord is not a mere fear of His power and of His righteous retribution but it is a wholesome dread of displeasing Him.”  Sid if I could say anything to the people that are listening to the program; if you want to fear God.  If you want to understand what the fear of the Lord is it’s simply having a wholesome dread within all of us that I don’t want to displease God.  So at that I’m going to do everything I can within my spiritual ability to serve the Lord and to please Him in everything that I do.  That is what the fear of the Lord is.

Sid: Your book was written to get this ingrained into our heart.  How can we when we know better yet we keep gossiping; we keep doing things that the world is doing, and we know better but it just keeps going on.  How do we stop it?

Michael:  Well, I believe the only way to stop it; I mean I think we can probably say there’s 15 ways.  But I think the one thing Ecclesiastes chapter 12:13 says “The conclusion of the whole matter.”  I mean after the book of Proverbs is written Solomon writes Ecclesiastes and he says “The conclusion of the whole matter is you must fear God.”   And I don’t think Christians really understand what the fear of the Lord is nor how to do it. Really what the fear is if you break it down into a Christian’s life is it’s referencing God all day. So in other words if I’m at work because people that are listening to this today I’m sure they deal with this at work.  I worked in the world before I became a pastor so I understand this people telling dirty jokes; people cussing and doing things that I don’t really want to be associated with that but how so you get out of that.  I mean hear they are telling you a dirty joke and you can’t stop them.  So what you have to do as a Christian is you have to have a monitor in your life.  Proverb’s talks about guarding your heart. It even talks about it in the New Testament about guarding your heart or guarding your mind. What you have to do is you have to put a guard on it.  And how you do that is with the Bible with the Word of God. I think most Christians forget about the fact that the Bible says to renew your mind to the word.  And the more that we get into the word I don’t have to be a Bible quoter and tote my Bible to work every day to have the word on my mind and to have the word up in my heart.  And I don’t have to quote it to other people. I can just be thinking about it and quoting it my own heart.  This will keep us in the fear of the Lord.

Sid: You talk in your book about practicing the presence of God; of being… explain that a little bit.

Michael:  Well, practicing the presence of God I believe I got the privilege in my personal life to be around some great men and woman of God.  You know Brother Hagin was one of them and we talked about his prophecy this week.  I got to be around some other men and woman that are even still alive today I liked watching what they do in their life.  And what I’ve noticed what they do is they always are acknowledging God.  In other words if you’re sitting down and talking to them every so often they’ll say “Praise the Lord.”  They’re acknowledging God in them.  As a believer we’re spirit, soul and body. We have God living in the inside of us according to the Word.  He comes by the Holy Spirit and He dwells inside of us.  So how I practice the presence of God is I begin to always everywhere I go everything that I do I think about God.  I think about His presence; I reference Him.  And so what happens in doing that is I carry the presence of God.  I’m sure that you’ve heard of Smith Wigglesworth.

Sid: Of course.

Michael:  I’m sure people have told stories about him.  And Smith Wigglesworth was riding on a train and they have different stories I have heard different things about him.  But one of the things that I read about him that was written by his son-in-law so I think it’s pretty accurate.  Is that a man come up to him and fell to his knees and Smith was not… he was on a train and he was not preaching and the man began to confess that he was a sinner.  And he said that the presence of God on this man convicted him so much that it made him you know fall on his knees and want to repent to God. Well maybe not everything’s going to happen in that sense, and I don’t want every person to think that.  But I believe one of our challenges is keeping our thoughts fixed on God. And the Bible talks about this in Colossian’s chapter 3.  That we’re to think on things above; that we’re to put out minds on Him. Roman’s chapter 12 talks about renewing our mind and keeping our mind on Him.  I believe one of the ways that we reference God is that we have to clean our thought life up.  And I heard a minister minister one time and called it stinking thinking. And a lot of times you know we’re doing the Christian thing and we’re going to church and maybe we’re saying “Praise the Lord” when we need to and maybe even worshiping God in the church service. But our thought life Sid this is where most of us either rise up and be the Christian that God wants us to be or we fall.  It’s because of what is going on in our mind. And I believe if you just learn how to keep the word; I started practicing this years ago working in a secular job.  Where I would bring a scripture or two on a card to work and I’d look at them every so often and I’d memorize those scriptures and I’d think about them all day and it kept me in the presence of God referencing God and practicing His presence wherever I was at.

Sid: Let me ask you a question, we were talking earlier about the biggy “The fear of the Lord.”  What happens when we do not reference the Lord; when we do not fear God?

Michael: When we don’t fear God and I have this in a chapter in the book.  And what happens is according to the word.  I mean I went into scripture after scripture where it talks about dishonesty.  Where that becomes something; you know negative results of not fearing the Lord is we could be dishonest without even thinking about it.  We live in a life of flattery which I have a couple pages on that where flattery begins where you know it’s perverted praise. It’s where you’re saying things that are not true and it’s prevalent in the society today.  We get desensitized to sin.

Sid: Now that’s a biggy, because once you’re desensitized to sin you can’t repent. And if you can’t repent you’re in big trouble.

Michael:  Well, that’s where we have to believe the Lord. I believe that someone especially who’s a Christian Sid this book… not that we’re… I want to see everyone that we can be brought to the Lord that doesn’t know Him.  But to a believer and I minister mainly to believers; we have to watch out.  I don’t think people know this and I don’t think that they’ve ever equated it in the world of God. But there’s a guy by the name of Lot in the Bible and we can read about him in 2^nd Peter chapter 1.  And Lot the bible basically says that Lot was warned down because of what he saw and what he heard.  And I think that we as believer’s we have to monitor what we see and what we hear.  Because we live in a society where we’re seeing things all the time on our TV and we’re hearing things all the time in what we listen through radio or whatever it might be.  If we don’t watch and we don’t monitor those areas they will cause us to not have that conviction about sin that we once had.  And so in the book we talk about that and in the  book we talk about how our prayer are not going to be answered when we don’t fear God.  In the Bible there are some scriptures about that unanswered prayer happens when we don’t fear the Lord. So many different things happen.  I mean people can either lose their healing or not be healed because they’re not living right.  They’re not living the way that the Lord wants them.  Now He’s not talking; God is never telling us to be perfect because if we’re going to be perfect then we’re going to be exactly like Jesus was.  He came so we could be like Him; he paid the penalty for sin but He knew that we were going to have areas in our life where we missed it. That’s why the blood of Jesus is so important.  So a believer needs to understand that if I don’t fear God sin is going to be an issue in my life.  And Sid I can honestly tell you this I’ve watched believers over the years I’ve been pastoring now this church for 16 years.  I have seen Christian’s who love the Lord and are on fire and 5 years later in their life with God they’re now back into the same sin that they were in before they were saved and even worse.

Sid: Now we have people listening to us right now and they’re saying “That is me.”  If they read your book and if they do what your book teaches will they get that fire back?

Michael: I believe they will Sid. And one of the reasons and we haven’t talked a whole lot about this but we have a chapter in our book about it.  If you start to recognize that this life is more than just living on this earth. It’s more than just I got born on the earth; I go to school, I go to college.  I get married I have kids; it’s more than that.  We’re here for a purpose and it’s divine and it’s a purpose that’s God. And if we can understand that and we can understand that we begin to fear God and understand this that the judgment is for the believer.  There’s a great white throne judgment that’s for the unbeliever.  But I’m going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

Sid: And we don’t hear much about that; what we hear is “Our sins are forgiven and that we’re going to Heaven.” But what we don’t hear is the judgment seat of Messiah.

Michael:  We don’t and there’s a parable that Jesus talks about and it’s not about the judgment seat of Christ per say but it’s about a great suppers.  It’s in the Bible and I don’t believe that it’s dealing with the marriage supper of the Lamb because at the end of the parable he says go out and bring in the lame, the maim, the blind.  We don’t have those in Heaven I believer that it’s a parable about earth.  And if you remember the parable it’s in Luke’s Gospel Sid there are reasons why people couldn’t come to the supper.  The supper is the representation of the Bible; it’s a representation of the Word.  Well, most of us find that at church; we also can find that home, we can listen to programs like this.  We can listen to tapes and all that is wonderful but nothing replaces you getting into church.

Sid: Listen Michael I think that many of us need a jolt.