My email to leaders in our local church highlighting a chapter from Paul Tripp’s Dangerous Calling book went like this on 3/6/13:
So far as we’ve moved through recommended reading out of sessions 1 and 2 of the DVDs, we’ve been working through Dangerous Calling chapters 1-5 consecutively. Now, we fast forward to Chapter 8, Familiarity. Tripp’s big point here is that there’s a great danger for those of us in church leadership when it comes to God. “What is the danger? It is that familiarity with the things of God will cause you to lose your awe.” “Awe of God must dominate my ministry, because one of the central missional gifts of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to give people back their awe of God.” One part of this that was especially relevant and convicting for me was the relationship between our awe of God and theology. Here’s Tripp: “Awe of God is one of the things that will keep a church from running off its rails and being diverted by the many agendas that can sidetrack any congregation. Awe of God puts theology in its place. Theology is vitally important, but whatever awe of theology we have is dangerous if it doesn’t produce in us a practical awe of God.”
Now, there’s probably much more that could be said about this, but, gentlemen, have you lost your awe of God? Have you slowly began to confuse awing Him with activity? Today, as Tripp concludes, “I don’t have a set of strategies for you here. My counsel is to run now, run quickly, to your Father of awesome glory. Confess the offense of your boredom. Plead for eyes that are open to the 360-degree, 24/7 display of glory to which you have been blind. Determine to spend a certain portion of every day in meditating on his glory. Cry out for the help of others. And remind yourself to be thankful for Jesus, who offers you his grace even at those moments when that grace isn’t nearly as valuable to you as it should be.”
With you in the all too familiar, longing for more of Him…