The true tzaddik (a righteous person), Rabbi Nachman of Breslov teaches, is the one who looks at every detail of creation and asks: why did God make it this way?
Why does a lion have the specific strength, form, and nature that it has? Why is a gnat so different? Why is one limb of the lion shaped differently from another? The tzaddik contemplates these questions relentlessly, seeking the will of the Creator in every particular. Every variation in form, strength, and temperament exists because God willed it so. The tzaddik searches for that will.
And the key to finding it lies in the Jewish people. "In the beginning" (Bereishit) means "for the sake of Israel, who is called reishit, first" (Vayikra Rabbah 36:4). God created the world anticipating the pride and joy He would derive from Israel. So the tzaddik finds God's will in each thing by finding the connection between that thing and the purpose for which the Jewish people exist.
This is how the tzaddik reveals fear and love of God. He discovers the divine will, and that discovery ignites awe and devotion. And from this, others receive their own capacity for fear and love.
Rabbi Nachman taught that one should recite Psalms at midnight because midnight is when King David would rise and play his harp (Berakhot 3b). The Psalms, composed by David under divine inspiration, contain the fear and love that the tzaddik has revealed. Saying them at midnight, when the world is silent and the boundary between the hidden and revealed is thinnest, draws this fear and love into the heart of the person reciting them.
It is impossible to receive genuine fear and love of God, Rabbi Nachman insists, except through the tzaddikim (the righteous) of the generation. They are the ones who do the searching. They are the ones who find God's will hidden in every blade of grass. And through them, that discovery flows outward to everyone who connects to their teaching.