"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." Proverbs 1: 7 (NIV)

Most of the time when I read scripture I will just read it and get the surface meaning of the verse and go about my day hoping to achieve what I read if I can. As I read the verse today I sat for a moment and re-read it a few times.. Fear, what is fear?
When you fear something in some way you have *respect for it in a way that you step back and think about it, to consider the thing that you fear. In this case the Lord. So what this verse is saying to me is - the fear of the Lord, or the respect of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Once we sit back and start to understand the respect that He deserves we can start to sit at His feet with humbleness to learn what He is teaching us.
The 2nd part of the verse says "but fools despise wisdom and discipline." *Fool- the Hebrew meaning is someone who is morally deficient. If we take this meaning, we could say that a fool is one who is without judgment, so they wouldn't care what the Lord wanted to teach them, because they do not fear Him.
We all have our moments of wanting to learn on our own, to try it for ourselves, and I don't think that is wrong. What I believe is being said here is that we must first respect Him, so we will not be a fool and disregard His wisdom because we think we can do it all on our own.
So as today goes on, listen to what He has to say, respect Him so we won't be considered a fool in His eyes.


*Definition: Consideration; motive; interest.
*Definition: A person deficient in intellect; one who acts absurdly, or pursues a coursecontrary to the dictates of wisdom; one without judgment; a simpleton; a dolt.