Hebrews 12 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It starts off with such a beautiful picture of those who have gone before us and points everything to Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith.” But then the passage goes on to talk about entering in to the presence of God and ends by saying, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” This fire brings to my mind a couple occurrences of fire in the Old Testament. First, a fire that led the people of Israel through the wilderness (Exodus 13:21), and secondly a fire that consumed a very wet offering that Elijah gave to God on the top of Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). How often do we view God as a consuming fire? Perfectly holy and just and apart from a perfect sacrifice unable to have anything to do with sin.

Many people I’ve talked to do not want anything to do with God’s holiness. They insist that God’s love covers over any other attribute he may have, and while it’s true that God is love (1 John 4:8), if that’s the only characteristic we have of God, we have an incomplete and false perception of him. One of the books I’d recommend on this article is ‘The Hole in Our Holiness‘ by Kevin DeYoung. We, generally, are awful at being in awe of God. We too often turn the glory in on ourselves instead of marveling at the incredible creator who cares about the intricacies of our lives. As I once heard Matt Chandler say, you never hear anyone stand in the Grand Canyon and talk about how much they can bench. That would be ridiculous! But we will look at the God who created the universe and try to tell him how much he owes us.

How can you work at being more in awe of God this week? How can you encourage your church to be more in awe of God?