When my daughter, Madison, was a little baby, I could not tell you how many people would tell me how beautiful she was. I lost count really. I remember taking her to the grocery store, and more times than I could tell you, someone would stop in their tracks, gasp, and say how beautiful she was. Numerous people encouraged me to get her into child modeling. Other people stated she could be the Gerber baby.
Of course, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She was my daughter, and I was her mommy. I knew it was not just the bias and love of a mother when other people would tell me the same thing that I thought myself. The truth was this. People were in awe of her beauty. They were stricken by it so much that they would stop in their tracks, come up to us in restaurants, or let out an audible gasp when they would see her.
I wonder how many of us approach our God in the same way. Are we able to see the beauty of God? How many of us are in such awe of our God to the point where we would be struck by it, stop in our tracks, or literally gasp at the beauty that we see in Jesus Christ?
I was reminded of this on Friday as I was leading a Beth Moore bible study class. She quoted Abraham Joshua Heschel who says, “Awe precedes faith”. Being a Christian is more than just believing the facts about God and Christ. Satan as well as his demons know the truth about God and about Christ being the Son of God, but they are not His followers. They are not so in awe of His beauty that they worship Him.
In our world, it is easy to lose sight of the beauty of Christ and to be in awe of who his is, isn’t it? The absolute beauty of Christ. It is hard to be in awe of Him as we are so busy going about our lives by making dinner, doing laundry and carpooling kids. We lose sight of how great and beautiful God really is partly because of what we are focusing on. 2 Corinthians 4:18 (ESV) says, “as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
John Piper talks about the beauty of God in this video below. I would encourage you, if you have the time, to watch the whole thing or listen to it in your car. If you cannot, listen from minute 28:30 up until about 36:50. I think it will be a blessing to you either way. Piper says, “There is a kind of news, the best gift of which was God’s beauty for your everlasting enjoyment so that your faith is not at root your decision about God’s truth. Faith at root is your seeing God as beautiful.” I hope you are able to see the beauty of God if it is for the first time or for the thousandth. Be blessed.