Holy Fear

This week was challenging.  Tuesday, during Seminary chapel, David Epstein preached out of Isaiah 6:  "The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.  And I said, 'Woe is me!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!'"  His main point was this:  Without a holy awe for God, the kind that moves us to obedience, we should not go into ministry.  Period.  He said, "You can't define holy awe.  It's like love - you know it when you see it."  Do we see it?  Have we ever seen it?  And if so, has it changed us?

In short, I have started to see that my awe of God is almost nothing - at least compared to what it should be.  Many times my service and worship is "because I know I should" instead of "because my awe of God and love for him drives me."  Burroughs has just reinforced this.  "They are the greatest things that concern you here in this world, for they are homage that you tender up to the high God.... Oh, that we were but apprehensive and sensible of the unfitness of our hearts to come into God's presence!" (71-72)

I have two questions:  How can we kindle a holy awe of God in a culture that is so caught up in the moment and so busy with other things?  And second, what should we do if we come to worship unprepared?