It had rained, and now the sun was out. Looking out our living room window, Diann saw a magnificent rainbow in the southeastern sky. At her suggestion we jumped into the van and drove to more open spaces on Erie Road. I think it was the brightest rainbow I’ve ever seen! Fortunately, I had grabbed my camera, and I captured the image so that people can enjoy it again and again. We like to look at rainbows because they give us a sense of awe.

We like to be awed. That’s why people go to see the Grand Canyon, like to watch magicians perform, listen to music and appreciate art, and go to monster truck shows! We crave “Wow!” experiences; we yearn for something more than the ordinary. C.S. Lewis wrote, “We remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy.”

We’re looking at ten core values that we need to adopt in order for life to be all it’s meant to be. One of those core values is experiencing awe. Life needs some “Wow!” to be fulfilling — and the best source for a “Wow!” experience is God. However, don’t take my word for it. Explore the logic: it makes sense that God is the ultimate source of awe.

THE BEST SOURCE OF AWE
If we believe in God — and over 90% of people do — He’s the biggest, most amazing subject we can think about. God created everything, He sustains everything that He created, and He knows everything about everything! Nothing can be more WOW-producing than God!

Just as it would be difficult to ignore an elephant in your living room, so it should be difficult to ignore God and the impact He should have on us. There was a movie a few years ago called Independence Day in which the earth is visited by aliens that appeared in huge spaceships. One spaceship was so large that it could cast a shadow across a small city. At first the people debated about whether the aliens were friends or foes. (Of course to make an exciting movie, they had to be foes.) Do you think people could go about their daily activities with any sense of normalcy with such a huge object hovering over their city?

Well, if God is really God, and if He’s real, He’s bigger than the biggest alien ship portrayed in any movie — and an awareness of His reality should make a huge difference in the way we view life. Thankfully, we have it on good report that He’s not a foe; He’s a friend.

I’m trying in these few minutes to help us get a better grasp of who God is so that we’ll become far more in awe of Him than we already are. I like the way J. I. Packer put it at the beginning of his book, Knowing God. He wrote, “As clowns have yearned to play Hamlet, so I have wanted to write a treatise on God.” (Knowing God, p.5) That concept applies to what I’m trying to do. It’s very difficult to explain who God is in such a way that we’re in greater awe of Him. That’s why I’m going to quickly defer to the biblical accounts, which are historical documents, about a few people who encountered God.

Moses had the boldness to ask God to reveal Himself. The record tells us, “Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.’ And the Lord said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, . . . But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.’ Then the Lord said, ‘There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.’” (Exodus 33:18-23) Moses had to turn away because if he saw God in all His glory it would be deadly!

We’ve been told since we were kids not to look at the sun. Even when there’s an eclipse of the sun when the moon comes in front of most of it, you’re still not supposed to look at it. There are ways, however, whereby you can see what’s happening during the eclipse. One way is to get two pieces of cardboard and poke a pinhole in one of them. If you hold the piece with the pinhole a couple of feet above the other piece, the pinhole will act like a lens, casting an image of the sun on the lower piece of cardboard. Moses would understand this, because he had to take preventive measures to keep from seeing the full brightness of God’s glory. He took God’s suggestion, turned the other way, and stuck his head into a crack in the rock.

The prophet Ezekiel had a vision of God. He wrote in his book in the Bible, “. . . and high above the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, . . .” (Ezekiel 1:26-28) Note that Ezekiel didn’t say that he saw the actual glory of God; he referred to what he saw as “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” He could barely handle a reflection of God’s glory; it was a filtered version, a shadow of God’s glory. That’s how glorious God is!

Jesus revealed His true glory while He was still on earth. Normally He looked like an ordinary person, but on one occasion that we call the transfiguration, He let His glory show. We read from the eyewitness account of one of His disciples, Matthew, “There he was transfigured before them. His face shown like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” (Matthew 17:2) His face was as bright as the sun! (It was time to get out the two pieces of cardboard!)

The apostle Paul reminded us that it won’t always be this way. When we go to be with God in His heaven we’ll be able to experience more of who He is. Paul wrote, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) One of the great miracles of heaven is that we’ll be able to handle more of the glory of God!

It’s hard to define what it means when we say that God has glory. It certainly refers to His being perfect and pure, but it also includes His infinite wisdom and unlimited power. After all, He keeps the galaxies ten billion light years away up and running — and also every subatomic particle that those galaxies consist of. No wonder the apostle Paul declared, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33)

THE BENEFITS OF BEING IN AWE OF GOD
There are tremendous practical implications in allowing yourself to be amazed by God. The apostle Paul wrote about being amazed by God, and he ended that section of his letter with the phrase, “To him be the glory forever! Amen.” (Romans 11:36) The very next word he wrote was “Therefore,” which means that what follows is a response to what he just said about how awesome God is.

Paul wrote, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1) In other words, in view of who God is you ought to be living for Him. Author Dallas Willard defined “the radical evil of the human heart” as “a heart that would make me God in place of God.” (Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice, Dallas Willard & Jan Johnson, p.38)

The greatest sin is trying to be god in our own lives when we already have a God who is to be God of everything — including our lives. We’re meant to live for Him, not for ourselves.

That’s an entirely different way of looking at life. That’s why Paul went on to write, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

When you live in awe of God, it changes how you look at everything. First, you know that you’re loved — even if other people don’t always love you the right way. John, who was one of Jesus’ disciples, wrote in amazement, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And this is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)

Living in awe of God means that we have His awesome strength and help in life, no matter how big all of our problems and challenges are. God told us through the prophet Isaiah, “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.” (Isaiah 59:1) He’s willing to listen to our troubles and is able to help us. The more in awe of God we are, the easier it is to have faith that He can help us. Let me illustrate that.

Imagine that your car is stuck in a snowbank. People in two vehicles come along and offer their help. The first is a man in a Volkswagen “bug” who says he has a tow chain and will pull you out; you probably wouldn’t have much faith that you’re going to get out of the snowbank. The next person who comes along is driving a Hummer, one of those huge truck-type vehicles. He also offers to pull you out, and your faith in getting out of the snow is suddenly really strong. What changed your level of faith? It was the object that you were putting your faith in!

We often try to have great faith in God, but find it difficult because our concept of God is too small. It’s far better to have small faith the size of a mustard seed if our small faith is in a great big God!

God is awesome and is able to help! However, we may think that He doesn’t always answer as quickly as we want Him to or in the way we’d like Him to. That’s true — and it’s all the more reason to hold Him in awe! “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8) God has His own ultimately loving, good ways of doing things — ways that we rarely can comprehend, so we must simply stand in awe, trusting Him.

We have a great and awesome God. Comprehending that fact, though it’s impossible to fully do, can make all the difference in the world to us.

BEING IN AWE TOGETHER
This message is being first presented in the context of two public Sunday morning worship services at Mayfair-Plymouth Church. What is public worship? Quite simply, it’s being amazed by God TOGETHER! It’s being WOWED by God TOGETHER!

God has chosen, in His infinite wisdom, not to show up the way He did with Moses and Ezekiel, or as Jesus did in front of three of His disciples on the mountainside in the transfiguration. If He did, we’d all be on the floor right now and we’d never forget this day as long as we live. However, God is here — and He wants us to use our openness to being wowed and amazed by Him.

Let’s pray that we get a glimpse of God when we worship that will help us worship Him better. I’m not talking about our singing, praying, standing up or sitting down. I’m talking about the focus and thinking of our minds that results in the moving of our hearts and the transforming of our minds. That’s where worship occurs.

Let’s decide that our major thoughts and comments after a time of worship will never be about the temperature of the sanctuary or the length of a prayer, song, or sermon. That would be like visiting the Grand Canyon with a tour group, gazing at that awesome sight, and then our first comment to the group being “In the restrooms at the Canyon they use single-ply toilet paper instead of double-ply.” You’d have missed the entire point of being there! Let’s not miss the entire point of being here in worship!

I know that it’s very difficult to truly comprehend how awesome God is — so let’s be in awe of how little of God we can comprehend. Let’s also to be in awe of the fact that He’s always hovering over us — and how that should make all the difference in the way we view each day! Being in awe of God should be a core value of life. Let’s experience the satisfaction of putting it into practice today — and every day!