Our God is Awesome

One of the benefits of the digital age is the ease of access platforms like YouTube provide. During my evening worship time with God, I remembered a song by Helen Baylor titled Awesome God. The first time I heard the song play was on the cassette player in my mum’s tiny Toyota. What struck me about the song were the mighty and frightful acts of God. The same God that poured out his judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19) is the same God that sent His son to die for our sins (John 3:16). Reflecting on this I thought I’d ask the AI encyclopaedia (google) for the definition of awesome. It means “causing or inducing awe; inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear”.

This implies that God is not just about grace and provision, He is also a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). As children of God, we must understand these aspects of God. The Bible gives us examples of people that have experienced His consuming fire and His grace. King David, the man after God’s own heart did. When Nathan rebuked David in II Sam. 12 (NIV), he told him about the judgment for his sins:

¹¹ “This is what the Lord says: ‘Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. ¹² You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.’” ¹³ Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. ¹⁴ But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.”

The awesomeness of God is shown by the fact that while He passed judgement on David, He also extended His mercy to him by sparing his life. Because David committed adultery and murder (II Sam. 11), not only did he lose his son, but his son Absalom also slept with his father’s concubines on the roof of the palace (II Sam. 16:22).

I’m not sharing this to make us afraid of God but for us to understand that our God is awesome and when we approach Him as the good father that He is (Is. 64:8, Luke 11:13 & 12:32), we should not forget to treat Him with reverence and fear (Ps. 112:1). That is one of the devices of the enemy, to make us get careless and forget ourselves by acting like God can be treated anyhow. David did and he paid dearly for it. Samson did, and he also paid dearly for it. Gal. 6:7-8 warns us that God cannot be mocked, and as His children, we must never forget that we will reap what we sow. God has provided us with His grace and mercy (Heb. 4:16, Ps. 136, Lam. 3:22-23, II Cor. 12:9) but we should never forget that He is also a consuming fire, and we must treat Him with reverence, admiration, and fear (Prov. 9:10). This is my charge to you. Our God is an awesome God!

Photo cred: Giles Creek Baptist Church