God’s Glory Must Enchant Us
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:00:07.560 | This week we welcome author and speaker,
00:00:09.960 | Dr. Paul David Tripp.
00:00:11.620 | Paul will be filling in this week.
00:00:13.400 | And most recently, Paul is the author of the book,
00:00:16.840 | "Awe, Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do."
00:00:21.840 | A book that easily made my top 10 list
00:00:24.120 | for the best books of 2015.
00:00:26.700 | And this week we're gonna be talking about
00:00:28.120 | awe in the awesome glory of God.
00:00:31.780 | And how this awe in God really does relate
00:00:34.500 | to everything in life,
00:00:35.660 | specifically to our spiritual growth, our Bible intake,
00:00:39.860 | our ministry aims, and even to our news consumption,
00:00:43.160 | our anxieties, our weight loss attempts,
00:00:45.600 | our parenting methods,
00:00:46.900 | and our expectations of marriage and romantic love.
00:00:51.500 | All of those are topics for us this week,
00:00:54.180 | and it'll be a full week, so let's dive in.
00:00:56.260 | Paul, in the book you wrote this,
00:00:59.060 | "Spiritual growth is about recapturing your awe."
00:01:04.060 | I wanna read that again.
00:01:04.980 | "Spiritual growth is about recapturing your awe."
00:01:09.980 | That is a great line.
00:01:13.180 | Envision us here, how does spiritual growth
00:01:16.540 | in the Christian life work dynamically?
00:01:19.780 | - Well, I think the first thing that you need to understand
00:01:23.020 | is that God hardwired all human beings for awe.
00:01:28.020 | There is a quest inside of us to be amazed,
00:01:33.160 | to wonder, to have something that is so great
00:01:39.300 | and so awesome and so compelling that we want to live for,
00:01:44.980 | that we're willing to make sacrifices for,
00:01:48.420 | that it will be the thing that will get us up in the morning.
00:01:52.580 | That's all of humanity.
00:01:55.620 | So being connected to God through Jesus Christ
00:02:00.620 | is essentially being given back my awe again,
00:02:06.300 | because what happens in sin is that awe of God
00:02:10.380 | is replaced by awe of other things.
00:02:15.220 | Most centrally, awe of myself.
00:02:19.380 | So that's what's captured in Corinthians 5.15,
00:02:23.420 | that says, "Jesus came so that those who live,"
00:02:26.100 | very interesting terminology,
00:02:27.740 | "would no longer live for themselves."
00:02:31.560 | So you could argue that Christian growth
00:02:35.660 | is a growth in my awe of God,
00:02:40.340 | that the thing that dominates me more and more
00:02:45.100 | is the wonder of God
00:02:49.180 | and the wonder of my attachment to God by grace.
00:02:53.380 | So you could ask me,
00:02:54.860 | "Why do you treat your wife the way you do?"
00:02:56.460 | I could say, "Because of my awe of God."
00:02:57.900 | "Why do you parent your children the way you do?"
00:02:59.420 | "Because of my awe of God."
00:03:00.740 | "Why do you spend your money the way you do?"
00:03:02.220 | "Because of my awe of God."
00:03:04.100 | - Yeah, this is all-encompassing.
00:03:06.060 | So this is really fundamental to what it means
00:03:09.860 | to be a creature made in God's image.
00:03:13.340 | - That's right.
00:03:14.180 | - And that's why I think that it's sad
00:03:17.180 | that this kind of language has been lost by the church.
00:03:21.660 | People almost, with a bit of wonderment, say,
00:03:25.740 | "Why would you ever want to write a book on awe?"
00:03:29.940 | And it's because it's not familiar, intuitive language,
00:03:34.020 | even to believers.
00:03:36.340 | And the heart of spirituality
00:03:40.220 | is living in wonder of the divine.
00:03:44.220 | - Okay, so let's get practical.
00:03:46.100 | What should a Christian be looking for
00:03:48.180 | in the pages of their Bible?
00:03:50.420 | - Glory.
00:03:51.260 | Glory.
00:03:53.100 | You know, if every day I'm not beckoned, wooed,
00:03:59.260 | if I could use this term in a positive sense,
00:04:06.620 | seduced by the glory of God,
00:04:09.340 | I will be wooed and tempted and seduced
00:04:13.140 | by something else.
00:04:14.900 | And literally, the thing that splashes
00:04:19.620 | across every page of the Word of God
00:04:22.580 | is the magnificent glory of God.
00:04:24.980 | The scriptures are meant not just to be
00:04:29.940 | a sort of logistical wisdom book
00:04:31.980 | that helps us to live a better life.
00:04:34.340 | The scriptures are meant to finally point us
00:04:39.340 | to that one place where our hearts can rest
00:04:42.580 | and be satisfied because we're exposed to wonder
00:04:47.180 | that's unlike any wonder we've ever known before.
00:04:50.060 | - Yes, so our lives are either captured
00:04:53.220 | by the majesty of God,
00:04:54.820 | or they will be captured by the fears of life, really.
00:04:59.140 | Fears of failure, fears of inadequacy,
00:05:03.020 | fears of the future.
00:05:04.500 | How does awe in God confront our fears?
00:05:07.820 | - I've actually felt that this book
00:05:11.740 | that's come out at this time
00:05:13.940 | where we're all shocked by Paris
00:05:16.900 | and shocked by San Bernardino
00:05:19.780 | and shocked by millions of Syrian refugees
00:05:24.180 | that have no place to live
00:05:25.780 | and are risking death to find a new home,
00:05:29.900 | when it seems like the world's at fire,
00:05:32.880 | that this book has come out.
00:05:34.280 | And here's why I think that.
00:05:37.580 | It's that, it's an understanding that fear,
00:05:42.580 | horizontal fear, whether that's fear of acceptance
00:05:47.460 | or fear of my physical health
00:05:50.580 | or fear of a loss of a job or fear of terrorism,
00:05:54.740 | fear is only ever disarmed by fear.
00:05:59.220 | It's only the fear of something greater
00:06:02.620 | that disarms the fear of something lesser.
00:06:06.140 | You know where you see that?
00:06:07.180 | You see that in that great moment
00:06:09.740 | when Israel is in the Valley of Elah
00:06:12.620 | and they're facing the Philistine army
00:06:16.420 | and out that first day comes the great warrior Goliath
00:06:20.420 | and says, "Send me your best."
00:06:22.460 | And what the army of Israel does
00:06:24.460 | is they retreat back in their tents
00:06:27.100 | for 40 days and commiserate.
00:06:29.440 | Now there's an army that doesn't have a military problem.
00:06:33.300 | They're in fear because they have an awe problem.
00:06:36.500 | They're in the tents fearing because they're all amnesiacs
00:06:41.500 | because the God who delivered that promised land to them
00:06:45.340 | said, "I will deliver these nations into your hands.
00:06:48.340 | I am the Lord Almighty."
00:06:51.460 | David shows up and David doesn't have that awe problem
00:06:56.060 | because David says he delivered the lion
00:06:59.940 | and he delivered the bear
00:07:01.380 | and he will deliver this Philistine this day.
00:07:05.420 | And so David is willing to march into that valley
00:07:09.820 | with a silly shepherd's sling and five stones
00:07:14.580 | because it's the fear of God
00:07:18.300 | that disarms his fear of this giant warrior.
00:07:22.820 | That's how it operates.
00:07:24.460 | It's when my heart is so filled and satisfied
00:07:28.780 | with that reverential fear of God
00:07:33.580 | that I am not then able to be captured
00:07:36.900 | by all the horizontal fears of life in a fallen world.
00:07:40.560 | - Yeah, that's so good.
00:07:42.160 | So our awe in God, which includes a fear of God,
00:07:45.860 | must dwarf the loudest news cycle.
00:07:50.180 | - Absolutely.
00:07:51.020 | And I wanna just express this concern.
00:07:54.900 | I think more than ever before,
00:07:57.380 | Christians are news junkies more than ever before
00:08:00.700 | through social media and websites and 24-hour news cycle,
00:08:05.700 | we are aware of what's happening around us.
00:08:08.900 | And I think for many of us, that has been the rise of fear.
00:08:13.660 | And maybe more than ever before,
00:08:16.140 | we need to quietly meditate,
00:08:19.780 | gaze upon the glory of the Lord
00:08:23.100 | so that we do not give way to fear.
00:08:27.020 | - Yeah, we must be seduced by God, to use your phrase.
00:08:30.740 | That is so good.
00:08:31.580 | Thank you, Paul.
00:08:32.660 | We are gonna return tomorrow
00:08:34.620 | and transition to talking about awe
00:08:36.860 | and the spiritual battle of weight loss,
00:08:39.140 | something you have faced squarely, I know.
00:08:41.700 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:43.660 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:08:45.780 | with guest Paul Tripp.
00:08:47.300 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:08:48.420 | (upbeat music)
00:08:51.000 | (upbeat music)
00:08:53.580 | [BLANK_AUDIO]