Cultivating a High View of God

There is a modern chorus some churches sing that goes "Our God is an awesome God, He reigns from heaven above, with wisdom, power and love, our God is an awesome God." The words are true and it's fun to sing but it's a bouncy little ditty that manages to reduce the message to something much less than awesome by its sheer bounciness, its shallow cheerfulness.

The word "awesome" carries none of the feeling it ought to any more, but comes across more like the expressions "groovy" (that's how old I am) or "cool." Words can be cheapened and cheapen the reality they denote. The greatest truths can be trivialized, God Himself can be reduced to something less than worthy of worship simply by the words we use and the attitude we cultivate, and it seems to me this happens all too often among today's Christians.

If God is awesome we should be properly awed, even overcome with a sense of His majesty. Most of what we do in worship and devotion isn't going to lead us in that direction. We need a truly high view of God if we are going to worship Him rightly. The thought of Him should prompt deep adoration, and it should include a fear of the Lord that keeps us from profaning Him.

Our souls must "magnify the Lord." I've collected a few quotes about this.

Luke 1:46: And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord

From Brother Lawrence (1610-1691): The Practice of the Presence of God:

First Conversation: The first time I saw Brother Lawrence was on the 3rd of August, 1666. He told me that God had done him a singular favor in his conversion at the age of eighteen. During that winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves and considering that, within a little time, the leaves would be renewed and, after that, the flowers and fruit appear; Brother Lawrence received a high view of the providence and power of God which has never since been effaced from his soul. This view had perfectly set him free from the world and kindled in him such a love for God, that he could not tell whether it had increased in the forty years that he had lived since...

We should feed and nourish our soul with high notions of God which would yield us great joy in being devoted to Him.

From William Law (1686-1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, Chapter 14, where he is giving instruction in early morning devotions:

When you begin your petitions, use such various expressions of the attributes of God as may make you most sensible of the greatness and power of the divine nature ...

For these representations of the divine attributes which show us in some degree the majesty and greatness of God are an excellent means of raising our hearts into lively acts of worship and adoration.

What is the reason that most people are so much affected with this petition in the Burial Service of our church, "Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Savior, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death." It is because the joining together so many great expressions gives such a description of the greatness of the divine majesty as naturally affects every sensible mind.

Although, therefore, prayer does not consist in fine words or studied expressions, yet as words speak to the soul, as they have a certain power of raising thoughts in the soul, so those words which speak of God in the highest manner, which most fully express the power and presence of God, which raise thoughts in the soul most suitable to the greatness and providence of God, are the most useful and most edifying in our prayers.

When you direct any of your petitions to our blessed Lord, let it be in some expressions of this kind: "O Savior of the world, God of God, Light of Light, Thou that art the Brightness of Thy Father's Glory and the express Image of His person, ...Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End of all things...that has destroyed the power of the Deveil, that has overcome death... the Judge of the quick and the dead ...

For such representations, which describe so many characters of our Savior's nature and power, are not only proper acts of adoration but will, if they are repeated with any attention, fill our hearts with the highest fervors of true devotion.