A question I ask grandchildren who I don’t get to see often is, “What do you know now that you didn’t know when we last talked.” On this last day of the year, I am asking myself the same question.

What do I know now?

This year, I took a course from The Warrior Commission called, “Earthquake-proofing Your Faith.” It didn’t take long for earthquakes to start shaking my world. I’ll spare you the details. Personal earthquakes, like temptation, are custom-made. What rattles me may not rattle you. My unsettling experiences gave me the opportunity for some on-the-job-training in peace and trust though, as lessons in faith in real time do.

Let me put it this way: Pain is like a refiner’s fire. Personal pain, vicarious pain, multiple simultaneous pains and especially potential pain all bring out the best and the worst in us. It separates silver and dross. The silver is lovely. The dross is gross.

Pain provokes us to ask hard questions because we feel out of control and even betrayed (aka entitled). I have prayed for people and seen God heal them from the same things that keep me awake all night attempting to bargain with God. If ever there was proof that healing is from the Lord and not due to our own “giftedness” or “anointing,” it’s seeing someone else healed when you are not. If I had anything to do with it, I would have fixed myself first.

Pain makes us aware of wobbly foundations in the form of unacknowledged wonky beliefs or mindsets. We want the shaking to stop. God wants us to quit whining, get off the beach and build on solid rock instead.

What have I learned? This may sound counter-intuitive, but this has led to a stronger basis for faith via a route I thought I had left behind. I have written before about coming to faith out of fear of an angry, impossible-to-please wrathful God. This is not about the impossible-to-please angry God of my childhood. He has wooed me with his goodness and kindness for many years now, and that has not been withdrawn. I have finally come to a place of acceptance (most of the time) of his grace and love and patience that I have not earned. This lesson was about a deeper understanding of what “the fear of the Lord” means.

A dear friend pointed out a detail I had overlooked in a story found in Matthew 8:23-27. Again, God is in the details. When Jesus and the disciples were on a boat and while Jesus was sleeping peacefully, a dramatic storm blew in. The men were disturbed, annoyed, upset, distracted, and believed they were in peril (and probably bailing like mad.) They accused Jesus of not taking the situation seriously. When he got up, he asked them why they were so timid and faithless. But it was after he spoke to the howling winds and the succession of rock-the-boat waves and a whole weather system listened to him and calmed down, that they felt genuine fear. It was a different kind of fear that shook them. It was the fear that comes from experiencing a previously unknown level of truth in seeing an unknown aspect of Jesus that required a life-altering response. “Who IS this man that he can just speak to chaos in nature and it obeys him?”

I had a personal encounter with the untamed Lion of Judah early one morning (and that’s as much as I am saying for now). What I felt communicated directly to my heart was that the power differential between us is huge. God is God. I am not. It’s all about His will, not mine. God is love, but at this point in our story it’s important to know that his love is not just comforting and pleasant. God’s love utterly pure and terrifyingly holy. His love requires a response. It is not indulgent toward an unsubmitted personal agenda that thinks an expensive beach house on shifting sand is a good idea. He gives me a lot of latitude to learn, but no excuse to continue to do things my own way when we’ve already been through this before and he has spoken.

What have I learned in this year of speaking less and listening more? I’ve learned I am totally unable to change myself or anyone else after encountering the Lion who I cannot charm, or placate, or use in anyway to serve my own conscious or subconscious agenda. I have learned that godly fear leads to the resting place of utter dependence and trusting response. I can choose to run from his presence or trust him and align with him on the next thing.

The faith life doesn’t get any easier, it just gets more real.

He has seen me through many tough situations. He will see me through the next one. Christmas carols have reminded me that the Creator of the Universe deigned to come and live among us. That requires an honest response. At the end of a year of counter-intuitive wisdom lessons I can say, Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless His Holy Name.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.