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I love that song, ‘We Will Remember,’ because it takes us back to the place
of wonder, grace, gratitude, love, and forgiveness we experienced when we first
came to Christ.
And today I want to talk about not losing our sense of wonder; not
forgetting times and places where God came through for us, over and over again.
I
want us to try to come back to that sense of awe, reverence, and thanksgiving for
His sacrifice we had when we began following Him, because that sense of wonder
and awe is what leads us into worship God’s way.
Remembering who God is, His
grace, His mercy, and His love is what brings us into a place of worship where we
can say, “you are God and I’m not!
Lord You’re worthy of praise and have Your
way in me, no matter what.”
And I want to talk about this ‘wonder of His presence’ today because it’s the
natural next step after death.
We talked about death last week - if you missed it, it
has been posted online if you’d like to to listen to it.
But what I mean when I say
that “the next step after death is wonder,” is that after we have made the choice to
die to self, after we have chosen to come to the cross with Jesus and nail self-will,
self-confidence, self-pity, self-indulgence, and selfish purpose to the cross with
Christ, we start to come alive to the sheer wonder, magnitude, and greatness of
God and His glory. 2 Timothy 1:9-10 NLT “For God saved us and called us to
live a holy life.
He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his
plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ
Jesus. 10 And now he has made all of this plain to us by the appearing of Christ
Jesus, our Savior.
He broke the power of death and illuminated the way to life
and immortality through the Good News.”
God broke the power of death over us (the Bible says we were slaves to the
fear of death) and now He illuminates the way to life for us through the Gospel.
That illumination means that the light bulb above our heads has just lit up!
The
word in the greek for “illuminated” is FO-TID-ZO.
Don't Lose the Wonder | 1
We get our english word “photo” from this, and it literally means “to bring
something to light.”
Or to say that in a different way, when we see something, it’s
“brought to light.”
My point is that after we die with Christ, we are brought to the
light of God - we can start to see the glory, the awesome power, the wonder of God
Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ!
And the awareness of His magnificence, of His glory leads us into worship,
where in His presence we receive all the things we need for life and godliness.
And
it’s important to maintain our awareness of God’s glory, a sense of His wonder,
because if we lose our sense of wonder at who God is, our capacity to worship will
atrophy.1
In other words, if we don’t exercise a child-like faith in worship, a
child-like wonder and awe about God and who He is, we run the risk of slipping
into an “ism.”
There are a lot of isms to slip into.
Intellectualism, emotionalism,
sexism, racism, conservatism, liberalism, whatever.
You can figure out your own
ism.
My point is that we want to have the same sense of His wonder that we had
at the beginning of our life in Christ, marveling at the attributes of God, His
creation, and His redemption of our lives.
A lot of Christians start off with this
sense of wonder, it naturally tends to wane, or disintegrate if we don’t stoke the fire
of it within our hearts.
God’s works of righteousness, creation, and redemption can
just become religious platitudes that no longer grip our hearts or imaginations if
we’re not careful.
If this happens, our ability to worship in spirit and in truth also
disintegrates.
If we’re not gripped by God - who He is, what He does, and how He
loves - we will be gripped by something else.
And whatever else does grip us will
start to supplant God as our object of worship.2
1
2
Boa, Kenneth.
“Modern Pensees.”
Reflections Newsletter, November 2021.
Boa, Kenneth.
“Modern Pensees.”
Reflections Newsletter, November 2021.
Don't Lose the Wonder | 2
And so today I want to look at Psalm 139.
In this Psalm we’ll see that God is
exalted as omnipotent (He’s all powerful), omniscient (He knows everything about
everything), and omnipresent (He’s everywhere), and He has known each of us in
intimate detail since before we were born.
But let’s pray before we get started.
Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your Name.
We honor You, Lord Jesus.
We
give you weight, authority, and clout in this place and in our hearts.
Holy Spirit we
invite You here to move in whatever way You want to.
We come together to say that
You are the One True God, worthy of our praise and adoration.
We ask that Your
kingdom would come and Your will would be done in this place, and in our areas
of influence, just as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread - provide for us
exactly what we need when we need it, not what we think we want in our flesh.
thank you that You are the God who provides, You’re Jehovah Jireh, our Provider.
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