There is something that many preachers are afraid to admit - myself included. It’s something that is deeply personal and at times embarrassing. But it’s also something that I believe many Christian’s deal with - not just preachers. What I’m talking about is losing our “awe” of God. Have you ever found yourself bored with Bible study? Have you ever found yourself stale towards God? Have you ever found yourself “going through the motions” with no real passion, excitement, or zeal? Yeah... me too...
Paul David Tripp in his book Dangerous Calling calls this issue “Familiarity.” He says that people who spend a lot of time looking at, reading about, and encountering divine things - like God, Jesus, the Bible, grace, forgiveness, mercy, etc. - are in danger of letting those divine things become customary. What he’s talking about in these ideas is the fact that we can spend so much time up close to Scripture seeing a vivid picture of God that we eventually stop appreciating His beauty. We spend so much time talking about Jesus that we grow cold towards His tender heart for sinners like us. We spend so much time speaking of grace, mercy, and forgiveness that we forget it’s power. This happens when week after week, month after month, and year after year we come to church, sit in a pew, and listen to sermons and study in classes and pray the same prayers until eventually we say “I’m bored of this.” And we just go through the motions because “thats what christians are supposed to do.”
I’ll never forget the first time I drove up 285 to Conifer and saw the beauty of that canyon, and the. fog as it rests on the snow capped mountains. It was awe-inspiring. But after driving it for 2 years, it’s just a drive to church. In the same way, i’ll never forget when I learned of the beautiful grace of Jesus Christ. Yet here I am, 6 years later battling boredom with it. It is so easy to lose our awe for God. It is so easy to let the beauty of our God become mundane. It is so easy to go through the motions of reading scripture without ever realizing the beauty of the message being shared with us. It is so easy to pray to God and never realize the glory of that relationship. It is so easy to sing in worship to God and never realize the magnificence of who we bow down to.
If you find yourself battling boredom in your faith, or going through the motions of your worship, or feeling stale towards your savior, I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to confess to God the offense of your boredom. I want to challenge you to open your eyes to the beauty of the glory of Him who loves you more than anything else in the creation. I want to challenge you to stand in awe of an awesome, glorious, and beautiful God.
