Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do Hardcover – 31 Oct 2015

Living with right awe of God corrects our wrong thinking in many areas.

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Brilliant

I don't think that I have enjoyed, written in and underlined a book as much as I have this one.A great read!

According to Paul Tripp, we have an awe problem. C. S. Lewis would call it a ‘joy’ problem, but at root it’s largely the same idea. ‘Every person is created with a capacity for awe…[which] was meant to drive us to God in wonder and worship, but since sin separates us from him, our capacity for awe gets kidnapped by things other than God’. That’s the reason why people who have all that this world can give them can feel so empty. So adultery is an awe problem, and grumbling happens when awe of self replaces awe of God.Alongside the redemption story, Scripture depicts the results of living with what Tripp calls ‘awe wrongedness’ which he shortens to ‘AWN’. While I don’t think these rather strange terms will stick, the concept does provide a good question to ask when reading Biblical narratives – where were these people looking for awe? To help diagnose where our own sense of awe is, Tripp provides five diagnostic questions: ‘Is God good?’ ‘Will God do what he promised?’ ‘Is God in control?’ ‘Does God have the needed power?’ ‘Does God care about me?’For Tripp, Ps 145v4 is crucial: ‘one generation shall commend your works to another’. That is the goal of ministry – and of parenting. In fact, the strongest section of the book is where Tripp applies the idea of awe to parenting, noting that ‘it’s very hard to give away something you don’t have’. He writes: ‘I fear that many of us parent without a big picture, without a grand agenda in mind … We do various things with the hope that our children will behave, be polite, and will believe, but our parenting tends to be piecemeal and reactive rather than unified round a central vision or an overarching goal’. Children don’t just have a behaviour problem, they have a heart problem. Parenting must be tied to the gospel: ‘If all your children needed was a tight system of law to be what they’re supposed to be and to do what they’re supposed to do, Jesus would never have had to come’. Parents represent the authority of God on earth in the lives of their children, and when they do ‘it must be a beautiful picture of the patient, firm, gracious, wise, loving, tender, merciful, forgiving and faithful authority of God’. This section certainly holds out promise for Tripp’s forthcoming parenting book, due out in October.Overall I found it a rather piecemeal book. The concept of ‘Awe’ is nothing new, and has been written about more eloquently by the likes of Lewis. However his real life examples are helpful, and the book provides a good opportunity to stop and to ask yourself – ‘What is it that’s motivating me?’Thanks to Crossway for a complimentary copy of this book through their Beyond the Page review programme.