Fear of God

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, as recorded in Proverbs. Jesus teaches us that the Love of God is the fulfillment of it. And one deceives himself if he says that he loves God and yet does not practice love for every human being: even one's enemies. [Mat. 5:44]. The most important thing you will do today, and every day, will be to consciously practice love for those whom God places within your sphere of influence. And we must never deceive ourselves by believing that this is an easy or natural process. It takes prayer and sincere openness to the Holy Spirit of Christ within us. No person is easy to love all the time. And some are extremely difficult to love [You may be one of them ! ;>).]  But our Lord offers no excuses for us. He commands us to love, do good, bless and pray for those who hate, curse, despitefully use and persecute us.
If I try to proselytize people while not practicing love for them I will damage the image of Christ and His Kingdom, for it is grounded and motivated only by Love. I must never allow my ministry to outpace my love for people. I must not pretend to love people, which is hypocrisy. I must sincerely love them. None of us does this perfectly; and that is quite all right as long as we admit it. Jesus is the only perfect Lover of our souls; and He has gracefully promised to abide within those who receive Him. His Love within us is pure. Our work is to allow that pure Light to shine through us, unencumbered by our apathy, ego-centric need to impress people or our self-centered judgments and critical spirits emanating from our sinful nature. People will always hurt, betray, disrespect or wrongfully ignore us sooner or later. They're only human. Like Jesus, we must not allow this to deter us in loving them. This does not make us victims; it makes us victors! More than conquerors! Because this loving way of being in the world is what we freely choose in obedience to our Lord; it is not determined by others, especially the worst that is in them! In the likeness of Christ's love for us, we love them in spite of their sinful nature manifestations, which is a symptom of their [our] blindness. Like our Lord we pray, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." But unlike Him, we must also pray, "And forgive me, for I have not been knowing much about what I've been doing either."
We only really know what we are doing when we are practicing Christ's Love peacefully and joyfully. Then all is well in the universe. This is where the fear of God leads us--again and again and again.