This weeks devo brought to you by Pastor Jeff...

Have you ever been around someone that you admired or someone famous? There have been two times where I was around ultra celebrities. First, when I was in about 6th or 7th grade my family and I went to a baseball game at Ranger Stadium (now the ballpark in Arlington) to watch the Rangers get blasted again. We went to dinner the night before, stayed in a hotel (to make it kind of fun) and then went to the game. That night at dinner, we saw Reggie Jackson. Mr. October was about 30 feet away from me. I asked my dad if I could go get his autograph. My dad said we didn’t want to bother him at dinner. When I walked by him later as we left, I couldn’t even look at him. If you have ever seen Wayne ’s world, you will know the line, “We’re not worthy, we’re not worthy!” This was kind of my reaction. I mean, Mr. October! In the flesh! In front of my. I didn’t talk to him. But for some reason I have all kinds of respect for him. The second was in 8th grade (and what really got me hooked on the cowboys) I was playing basketball for Greenville High school and we played in the Dallas area. After my team played, the younger guys played and we were watching from the stands. All of a sudden a little rumble broke out as we noticed that Tom Landry was sitting not too far away. We ended up to go over and have him sign whatever we could find. He was a really, really nice guy. When I talked to him, I kept my head and didn’t really talk except I whispered thank you…

I don’t know why I was so embarrassed and so humbled. I mean, these guys were just men. And actually, neither of them even had a job at the time. However, their status, who I knew them to be, humbled me. As I read Psalm 114, I thought of those stories…

Psalm 114:1-8 “When Israel came out of Egypt , the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God's sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea looked and fled, the Jordan turned back; the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. Why was it, O sea, that you fled, O Jordan, that you turned back, you mountains, that you skipped like rams, you hills, like lambs? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.”

I love this psalm because it tells a story…the mountains fled, the sea ran away…why? Because of How God is. They stood in awe. Now, did the mountains run away, probably not. Could they have? YES! As the psalmist says, he turned the rock into a pool and rock into streams of water.

When the psalmist looks back at what God has done in his life, the only response is verse 7, “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.”.

Here is the question I ask us…Do we have the same awe of God? If Reggie Jackson had asked me to do something for him, what would my response had been? I can guarantee you that if Tom Landry asked me to come to the side lines and help him as an 8th grader, I would have passed out and done everything possible to make it happen. I would have left everything else and hung on every word he said.

Is the same thing true about God? Do I have the same Awe for him that I have for those other people. The funny part of that is that Jesus lives inside of us as Christians, especially as Christian leaders. Do we stand in awe of Christ? Is there a awe, or worship of Him in our lives? Or have we lost that awe, that respect? This week, let’s make our prayer about trying to find that love and respect and that awe. I am reminded of the lyrics of the song, Stand in Awe by Mark Altrogge.

And I stand, I stand, in awe of you.
I stand, I stand in awe of you.
Holy God, to whom all praise is due,
I stand In awe of you.

May this be our prayer this week…Amen.

Jeff