I became a Christian many years ago, when I was a teenager. However, in recent years I was sort of living a double life, and made a lot of major mistakes. Then I sort of came to the end of myself.

I prayed a prayer to repent of my sins, and rededicate my life to Christ. Then I felt the warmth of His presence grow in my heart again. However, later I recalled reading from Hebrews 10:26,27 and I went back to it. I read "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.", and I was afraid of losing Christ, so I prayed fervently, and with great repentance.

I then experienced the fear of the Lord in my spirit (for maybe 10 seconds), sat back up, and "ran" back out. I stopped praying, and was in awe of what I had just experienced. It felt like I had gone behind the veil, into the holy of holies, and ran back out because I wasn't ready. I grabbed a notebook and began writing several pages about many things. I told God "I can't believe you would use a vessel such as me, let me take things slow please Lord". After I was done writing, I said goodnight to the Lord, and went to bed.

Later I shared with my pastor that I believed that God was calling me to be an evangelist of some sort.

Later I talked to my wife about us taking a time and sleeping in separate bedrooms (our anniversary was a couple weeks away). One night we were each in separate rooms and I prayed fervently for her to come and get me and ask me to come in to her bedroom. Then she came running out, and called out to me, "Joseph, Joseph!", and I came running out, also. She told me how a demon came out of her mouth and went up into the lights as a dark wisp in her room, and she ran and called out to me in fear. I went into her room, and we went to sleep with me comforting her.

One night I was praying, and felt like the floodgates of heaven were opened up and pouring into my spirit, and it scared me... it was just too much. I tried to close off the "floodgate" and lock it up, but I could only do so much to hold the "rivers of living water" back. Even with it locked up, I still had a significant flow coming forth.

At work I felt like I had a new vision of what I was supposed to be doing, and who's help I was supposed to be getting to complete my vision, and I felt like I could use my spirit by humbling myself to get their help. I could use my will spiritually to get my way in certain circumstances.

When I went to bed one night, I put on Michael W. Smith's CD "Worship" (I was sleeping next to my wife at this time). I was mostly asleep when my spirit was praising along with the song, "Let it rain", and was glad. However, when it got to the part where a man speaks, Psalm 97: 1-6 "The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice. Clouds and thick darkness surround Him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. Fire goes before Him and consumes His foes on every side. His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim His righteousness and all the peoples see His glory." During this being spoken I became very afraid in my spirit, especially when he continues to cry out, "Lord we want to see Your glory, we want to see Your Power God", and then when the song continued to sing "Let it rain, open the floodgates of Heaven, Let it rain", I experienced hundreds, maybe thousands of people dying in my spirit, and I was crying out in my spirit, "No! No!" I believed it to be a terrorist attack, but as I would find out a couple of days later it was not. It was hurricane Katrina hitting Louisiana.

I had several both positive and negative experiences that led out of this, but it has impacted my life tremendously.

Thank you for your sharing, Joseph. You've had some deep and intimate moments of God and it sounds like these have made a lasting impression.

Your mentioning how fear often precedes a new surrender has strong biblical precendent. Consider the Apostles jumping into the water when they became aware of who Jesus really was. Also, how they were often fearful when encountering the risen Christ. As the Book of Hebrews notes, "it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God" -- terrible for our false selves, that is.

The fear of God was first experienced by me as a child of approx 7yrs. I was planning to do something I knew to be wrong and was thinking of all the ways to do it so I would not get caught. As I came to the perfect plan where no one would know it was me, I heard the voice right next to me say "I would know"!, that certainly brought a different consciousness level to me. After this I gave up all plans for world domination. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

World domination? What a bad little boy you were, ashomura!

Welcome to the forum.

Tell us more about what the "fear of God" means to you now, and how you experience this.