Orthodoxy can exist without the fear of God. Doctrinal purity, outward religion, Church attendance, family worship, prayers, and any other thing you can name, can exist without the fear of God. But, when a person begins to see the glory of God, the fear of God grows. And when it does, joy breaks out. The dull drab life in external religion becomes a life of happiness. This is one of the marvelous fruits of the fear of God.

David made it clear that the fear of God is the way of happiness, "Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, Who delights greatly in His commandments" (Psalm 112:1).

Certainly we see the work of the fear of God in an individual's life work out especially in a believer's life in this realm where one is engaged in the church, believes the Bible, brings his family to church, he even leads his family. All the while he's living in some kind of a secret sin in his life. And the longer he lives in that season of confiding or keeping his sin a secret from other people, the fear of God I think increases upon his heart and it intensifies to the point where he then begins to live in levels of terror not not in a not in an unhealthy position of fear of God, but in a position of the reality of the sovereignty of God that a particular case, a gentleman in our church who had engaged in an adulterous relationship for most of his married life and has been able to keep it a secret from his wife and from his children from his church and in the process of the longer he lives in this kind of sin and the increasing knowledge of the reality of who God is, he continues to become more and more compelled to the glory of God, realizing his sin is a complete abomination, and increasing in his desire to want to repent of that.

Knowing all along that it's wrong and one that he even lives internally in turmoil over the life that he was in, God brings in the judgment that he brings upon that. And again out of that, his response ultimately, if he's a child of God, is that he's one of repentance and one of sorrow, not just one of tears that I got caught, but one of complete, utter ruin of what he's been doing and how it's impacted his family, even how it's had an influence upon his job or upon his church. So the response of that is one of joy, one that brings the individual to satisfaction that he's in a position now to be at complete peace with God and no longer pretending in any of his works before God. I think ultimately it's a position of joy, the result of fear, the result of realizing the holiness of God upon His life. And then in that position, the soil is now best prepared for him to walk in joy, oh Lord.