Awesome
Human beings desire to be amazed. We want to see incredible, beautiful, powerful and shocking things. We go to great lengths traveling thousands of miles and spending millions of dollars to behold and experience things that will leave us with some small sense of awe. Unfortunately those things are short lived, few and far between, and insufficient. We seek the awesome and find ourselves settling for the unexceptional. The word “awesome” has become a watered-down slang word that we use for anything that we find to be even mildly intriguing and interesting but when you think of the true definition of awesome (overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration produced by that which is grand, sublime, magnificent, and extremely powerful) there is very little that we know that can be described this way.
Other Things or God
I know that you know where I am going with this. The the things that we turn to for amazement, the things we attempt to find awe in will disappoint, but our God will not. He truly is awesome. He is great, powerful, magnificent, incredible. Adjectives stretched to their farthest fail to even begin to capture the glory of God or describe how much higher He is; how much we should be filled with awe that we can know and be in a relationship with Him. And I know that you know that.
So we as humans desire to be in awe, to be amazed, and we as Christians know that we can know and experience a relationship with the One so amazing and incredible that we can be filled with this awe forever, yet it seems we don’t live in that reality. Instead our reality is mundane and mediocre, monotonous and routine, day after day. And if we are not careful those days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and before we know it a lifetime has passed us by and we can’t remember the last time we stood back in awe of our creator, shocked at His power, amazed by His goodness, entirely overwhelmed by His love. We need to recover a REAL awe of God, an awe that goes beyond intellectual knowledge and understanding.
Real Belief
We come together week after week and we sing sings that boldly proclaim how great our God is. Our songs are about His power, His grace, His glory. We learn about it, we even read about it for ourselves in verses like 2 Chronicles 29:11, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all.” We are quick to talk about how awesome God is, but my concern is do we REALLY believe it? Has the reality of who God is and His awesomeness really sunk in to the core of our being? Don’t let a false familiarity with God plunder you of your awe of Him.
Why does this even matter? What difference does it make whether or not we still find any sense of awe and wonder in the Lord? It matters because our lives are either captured by the majesty of God, or they will be captured by all the cares and fears of this life. When they are captured by His majesty WE WILL live for Him and we will do it with hearts filled with joy. When our lives are captured by the cares and fears of this life we will live for ourselves and no lasting joy will be found. Obedience is easy and natural when our hearts are filled with an excitement for God, a love for Him, a fear of Him, amazement of His power, and overwhelming appreciation for His love.
What to do
Now the question, what are we to do about it? It seems hard to answer, how can we possibly regain a lost awe of God? Here are some things to help: look at ourselves, look at others, look at God’s creation, and look at God’s word.
Ourselves- Now I don’t mean to take a deep look inside at who you are and what you have done, that probably won’t lead to awe of anything. Take a step back, stop thinking about all that you have done, turn to what God has done. Think about everything that He lined up and miraculously worked into your life all the way through to get you where you are right now. Take the time to reflect on the incredible work that God has done in your life up until now and thank Him for it.
Others- Look around! I know sometimes we don’t see it, sometimes it is slow and painful, but God is doing great work all around us. It might not be the work we expect, but God is saving souls and transforming lives. We will see it if we look.
Creation- There is a reason why Romans tells us that since the beginning of creation God’s qualities, His power, and nature have been on display for all to see.
The Bible- Read passages like Isaiah Chapter 40 where you can find the glory of God displayed for all to read. Read His word again and again, and dont read it just to become more intellectually informed or to find a list of things to do, but to discover God. To behold the true and awesome nature of our Creator and Savior.
Our God is an awesome God. He is magnificent, powerful, and wonderful. Believe it, trust it, and let’s live our lives in light of that fact. Then we can say farewell to the mediocre and mundane that the rest of this world knows and embrace the awe filled life that God would have for us.