That...was AWESOME!

This classic Quaker painting, A Presence in the Midst, captures what it is like to worship in the expectation that the Holy Spirit will be present.  What an awesome thing...

There is a scene in the Chris Farley/David Spade comedy Tommy Boy where our two heroes hit a deer with Spade's car and think they have killed it.  Feeling terrible about the accident, they load the body of the deer in the backseat of the car and continue driving, only to have the deer come back to life and totally destroy the classic convertible.  As the deer finishes his work and runs off into the woods, Tommy (Farley) looks at the scene and says "that....was AWESOME!" 

Marilyn, Will and I were at EPCOT one afternoon a number of years ago after a Florida thunderstorm, and a glorious rainbow appeared out over the World Lagoon.  As we were standing there admiring God's handy work, we heard a young lady ask her mom if Disney World had made the rainbow... 

Noah and the Ark, Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, Samson and his feats of strength, David and the slaying of Goliath- all of these awesome acts of God are now often treated as Old Testament "parables."  People don't believe they really happened, they were just stories told to illustrate truths.  We live in a world that often doesn't believe in the awesome and the miraculous.  Even those of us who claim Christ as our savior don't really expect God to "show up" in amazing ways.  We go to church on Sunday morning hoping the choir or the band will excite us, or that the preacher will keep us awake.  Where is our sense of expectation?  Why aren't we experiencing the Holy Spirit in our midst, making us sit up and exclaim "THAT...was AWESOME!"  Why do we not look at every newborn baby, at every mountain and every star-filled sky and scream "You are AMAZING, God!"  How is it that we can experience the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ in our lives and not be amazed that the Creator of the Universe loves us?  We have come to believe that we are in control.  We have come to believe that our own power and wisdom can save the world.  Too many times, in too many ways, we underestimate and under appreciate the power of God.  We live our lives in fear of terrorists with bombs and meteors crashing into earth, when in fact only God controls the future.  The late Rich Mullins got it right:

Our God, is an awesome God

He reigns from Heaven above,

With wisdom, power and love

Our God is an awesome God!

We need to live our lives in Holy Expectation that the Holy Spirit will move in our mundane lives every day in ways that can only be described as awesome.  Rich told me once that the most important line in the entire Awesome God song is "I hope that we have not too quickly forgotten that our God is an awesome God."  Remember- and expect God to amaze you, so that every night when your head hits the pillow you can look back at the day and say "THAT...was AWESOME!"

Because of Jesus,