Volume 45   Number 3                                                                                    November 2002

What you think of when the word GOD is before you is the most essential part of you life. The most important thought to be before us is always God himself. And what we are and what we can become hinges on our mental image of who we think God to be.

When Isaiah and John were given glimpses of heaven, it was "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty" which they heard. (Isaiah 6 ; Revelation 4). That was how the heavenly hosts addressed God . With awe, with reverence and with Godly fear do the angelic hosts beckon to God. But where have those Godly traits gone today?

As a child I remember watching many of the older men in the congregation partaking of communion with bowed heads and closed eyes. I was always afraid they would miss the trays as they came their way. And occasionally their wives or one near them would have to nudge them when the communion trays neared them. I always thought their demeanor curious. I now reflect back with admiration.

Not admiration for their posture or their closed eyes, for anyone can assume a position. But admiration for what I now see as a supreme awe and reverence for their communion with God. Admiration for a time in which the power, majesty and sovereignty of God was given the awe and reverence it deserves. An awe, a reverence that seems all too often missing today. In the Gospel of Luke we find an short narrative regarding Jesus when he was 12 years old (Luke 2:42-45). And in verse 45 an interesting phrase is found "and when they found him not". They had lost God. How can one lose God? How can one misplace the Holy of Holy? Yet that's exactly what occurred here. Joseph and Mary in their focus on the trip and its activities had taken their eyes off of Jesus. And in a short moment they were separated, maybe not intentionally or even knowingly at first, but separated just the same from God. They never intended it to happen, but it did all the same.

Could that happen today? Could you or I lose God, lose the awe and reverence with which we are to hold Him? We know that the world loses God as their backs turn toward Him in their quest for self. But it is not only the world, but those thinking themselves to be His very children, who can lose the very God they claim. Claiming instead a watered down God. A God who fits better our comfort zone than His heavenly throne.

The exact way in which we lose God often happens with such subtlety that its reality is hidden until its results are complete. Some lose Him in the busy-ness of their days, some in the hardness of their hearts, others in the shallowness of their lives, still others in the arrogance of their minds. However the erosion of His presence and power in our lives occurs, the results carry the same tragic consequence: A God separated from those who need saving and a God stripped (in our minds) of the attributes that are truly His and that make Him God.

Today in churches looking more for emotion than truth, for feelings, rather than faith, and a more user-friendly deity, the true God is being lost with great regularity and tragedy. The loss of the "Awe, Reverence and Godly Fear" has often been replaced with traits we are more comfortable with. Too often we see worship as something that is to serve us (what can WE get out of it) rather than submissive service and adoration to the God Almighty. God established our worship based on and to fit our needs not our desires or emotions, because our needs are greater than our desires. And while our Christian walk should result in emotion, that emotion should be the result, not the basis, of our faith.

Programs and books today call on us to "Experience God" as if He is there for our service rather than we being there for His service. Could we all too often forget who is the Master and who is the servant, who is the potter and who is the clay. If we worship something other than God as He is, we are worshipping an idol.

Tozier was probably right when he wrote, "When the true story gets told, whether in the partial light of historical perspective or in the perfect light of eternity, it may well be revealed that the worst sin of the church at the end of the twentieth century has been the trivialization of God"

Defrocking God of the Majesty, the Awe and the Reverence befitting our Almighty God in our minds is spiritual disaster. We dare not see Him as our buddy but not as our God, as one to serve us rather than one to be served. Too often the awe and reverence we are to have for the God Almighty have been replaced by the hug of friendship and the shallowness of a romper room. Our challenge is not to simply keep the world out of the church and our lives, but to restore the Almighty God of the heavens back into our churches and our hearts. Then, and only then, will we truly know our place in creation. Then and only then will we know our proper place in His plan. Then and only then will we look up rather than within for truth and the answers to life.