Ian White's web site » The journey of awe

I want to start our journey of prayer by getting you into seeing who it is we’re praying to.

And if prayer is a two-way experience, who we’re praying with.

Think back over the last few weeks, have there been occasions when you’ve said, either to yourself or someone else “that’s awesome” <ppt> or something similar. What was it?

Head and heart

The Christians faith is a faith that engages our minds.

It is something that worries me as I see worship leaders and hear preachers today that there is such a high emphasis on feeling and emoting that we can lose sight of the fact that our faith is founded on glorious, objective, undeniable truth! Truth that is understood with our minds!

My frequent advice to worship leaders and preachers is “use great theology!” Use words and songs that express great truth,

words and songs that stretch the mind because the mind is the gateway to the heart.

At the same time a faith that is intellectually watertight but emotionally sterile is not one that will feed my heart. Praying that says all the right things, using the right words may sound impressive but it won’t fire the soul unless something links the two together.

So how does my knowledge move that vital half metre from my head to my heart? Probably the greatest way is via a sense of awe, an awareness of wonder

admiring God, being astonished by him, holding him in respect and reverence – putting myself in a place where I let my spirit experiences a great sense of wonderment at who God is.

That’s how head and heart work in tandem in prayer so that I get through to God and He gets through to me!

I want to encourage you to take this journey into awe. Discover (or rediscover) the wonder of God and be blown away by his goodness and grace!

One man who did this in the Bible was Isaiah

Isaiah 40 unpacks what the awe of God looks like.
What makes our God awesome?

God is awesome because:

Our God isn’t made of our stuff

Isaiah is preaching to people about God and he asks them an obvious question:

18 With whom, then, will you compare God? To what image will you liken him?

And he gives them some comparisons

He’s preaching to God-following Israelites in exile in Babylon. So he takes a look around him

Go around any town in Babylon and you’ll see idols.
Go into most homes and you’ll see idols – so let’s compare these idols with the Lord and see who comes out on top.

These idols come in all shapes and sizes

There’s the glitzy idol:

19 … a metalworker casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and a silversmith fashions silver chains for it.

This is an expensive artefact! The owner has invested serious money in it.

And the same is true today – we invest serious money in objects that can easily become idols. –

It might be a television or a car or a mobile phone contract that usurps God’s place
It might be a relationship or a reputation that gets put in God’s place – an we put significant resources of time and money into these things

But anything that takes the place of worship and awe that the Lord deserves is an idol. We invest real money in our glitzy idols.

Then there’s the grotty idol

20 A person too poor to present offering like that selects wood (what sort of wood?) that will not rot;

There is something not quite right about a god who is at the mercy of woodworm!

they look for a skilled worker to set up an idol that will not topple over!

So the greatest achievement of this idol, after all the skilled craftsmanship and expertise that’s been lavished on it, is that it won’t topple over!

Would we really want to trust our destiny to a thing like that?

It is self-evident that no ‘thing’ that we can make can be greater than the personal who made it. So Isaiah’s message is ‘beware worshipping things!’ ‘beware trusting your destiny to stuff we make!’ It may look good, feel good, sound good or even taste good – but if it’s been made by us (=mankind) and becomes an object of worship it’s never going to meet your innermost needs.

All idols are like that! They are glitzy, attractive, but unstable and temporary. All too soon they will be worn out, fallen over and used as land-fill.
Don’t pray to them! Don’t lean on them as your security! Don’t be in awe of them! After all, they’re dead.

HOWEVER – when we pray we connect with our living God who has no form or substance but who lives and reigns and loves and cares.

Our God is for you, so be in awe of him! Because our God isn’t made of our stuff.

Now in our journey of awe I want to change gear a bit.

Have you ever been told that there’s something you really ought to know? It may have been a teacher, or your mum or dad “I think you really ought ot know that by now!”

That’s what Isaiah does here.

21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded?

So what is it I’m supposed to know?

Our God isn’t confined to our world

A little background about what the people of the Old Testament thought the world was – their cosmology.

Their best science told them that the sky was a huge dome. The sun ran across the dome during the day and the moon and stars at night.

Don’t run away with the idea they were unintelligent.

They were clever and observant people, in just the same way as we are today, but they simply didn’t have the analytical tools that we have to unravel the cosmos.
That was their best understanding of what they saw.

So for them the dome, the circle of the earth, was the biggest of the big. There was nothing huger than the hugeness of the circle of the earth – and therefore nothing outside it – except God!

So when we pray, to whom are we praying? Isaiah tells us …

22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,

So when we pray we enter the presence of someone greater than the entire cosmos – however well we think we understand it!

So what does our God see when he looks at the earth he’s made?

22 … and its people are like grasshoppers.

He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

This huge dome (circle of the earth) is no more that God’s gazebo!

When we pray we come into the presence of the one who is enthroned – reigning as well as ruling – and the one who brought our world into being.

One who is responsible for our very existence – that – is – awesome!

Our God isn’t limited to our authority

23 He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.

24 No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like [an empty crisp packet]!.

It’s not just that our God is …

greater than any idol we can construct or
bigger than any measurement we can make,
he is – in himself – more powerful than any authority we can impose.

When we pray we move that hand that moves the world.

Our God is not like any of us

When we pray we don’t pray to a peson, or an organisation , or a web site, or a church – we pray to the living, reigning God

He is unparalleled – There is no one like him

Isaiah helps us to see this by asking rhetorical questions (=> have the answer embedded in them)

25 ‘To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One.

He’s almost throwing out a challenge – “OK, see if you can find someone who is like me!”

26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

So – who else can do that? Answer: no-one.

When we pray we enter the presence of this mighty God and amazingly, He enters our presence.

IN the OT the presence of God was often associated with his face.

E.g. the bread of the presence (translated this way for our benefit) = literally, the bread of the face

Why might this be? – because the only way to see someone’s face was to be within sight of them – to be in their presence.

Our God isn’t hidden from us

Jacob – the twister / swindler

Saw a ladder stretching up to heaven. Angels going up and down

13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying … All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’

16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ 17 He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’

He was a changed man from that day on!

When we pray we make the place where we pray an awesome place.

So when you pray next, take a little time to remind yourself that you’re in an awesome location – awesome because of the person your taking with.

Moses – saw a bush on fire but not burning up.

He approached it and to his amazement God spoke to him from the bush

“Take off your shoes Moses, because the place where you’re standing in holy ground”

The awesome presence of God was there.

And as soon as Moses responded, God did something highly significant – he revealed who he was – he spoke his name!

Moses was unsure about what would happen “suppose I go to the people and say I’ve seen a burning bush – that won’t carry much weight. Who shall I say sent me?

and God replied “tell the people: I AM sent you” The one person who always was and who is today and always will be in the future –

My friends: that’s who we’re meeting with when we pray!

When we talk with the Lord he brings all of history with him. He had a complete knowledge of the moment, the now, as you pray and he holds all the future in his hands.

It’s no wonder that we feel in awe of him, that sometimes we feel overwhelmed by him,

So when you pray next, remind yourself that the ‘I AM’ is with you.

Job – in awe – even when everything goes wrong

Job had one of the toughest and most tragic lives recorded in the Bible.

Job was a classic demonstration of Murphy’s law – if something can go wrong – it will!

He lost his children in terrorist action, he lost his wife because she couldn’t stand his positive attitude, he lost his health

“The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away – so I will bless the Lord”

In the swirling emotions of all this tragedy some friends of his turned up to try and comfort him. Except instead of bringing comfort they brought blame. “Job” they said “it’s all your fault!”

And yet, at the end of the story Job realises, painfully, that the sovereignty of God has allowed all this to happen to him.

Job said to the Lord:

“You asked, “Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?” Lord, it was me. Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful (too awesome) for me to know.

5 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. 6 Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.’

He had been trying to work out God’s motives. Trying to work out ‘why’ God did this or did that. And it was through this deeply painful experience that Job realised the awesome, almost unknowable way God works.

“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

(that was Albert Einstein. )

It was also Job – standing in awe of the purposes and plans of God, even though they were tough

Paul – knowing the unknowable

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

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Pray

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