I finished my Father’s Day message for this year today. I selected Psalm 112 for my text. The writer commands us to praise God for the extraordinary blessing of a man who fears the Lord. I call that kind of man an awestruck man. The man who fears the Lord lives moment-by-moment in a reverent awe of God that shapes everything he does.

As we prepare to interview on Saturday four men from our body for the assistant pastor of administration post opening this summer at OGC, we should concern ourselves with numerous issues related to character and skill, but none more than this one. Paul Tripp, in his book Dangerous Calling, explains:

Awe of God must dominate my ministry, because one of the central missional gifts of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to give people back their awe of God. A human being who is not living in a functional awe of God is a profoundly disadvantaged human being. He is off the rails, trying to propel the train of his life in a meadow, and he may not even know it. The spiritual danger here is that when awe of God is absent, it is quickly replaced by our awe of ourselves. If you are not living for God, the only alternative is to live for yourself. So a central ministry of the church must be to do anything it can to be used of God to turn people back to the one thing for which they were created: to live in a sturdy, joyful, faithful awe of God.

Would you pray for the interviewer team that we ask the right questions and probe the right issues in our time with these men? Pray especially that we get to the bottom of all-important issues like their degree of awestruckness (yes, I made up a word) before the God of the universe. While you are at it, pray this pastor knows something more of the same virtue for the glory of God and the joy of our people.

By the way, how’s your awestruckness quotient these days? Praying it gets bigger and bigger for us all.