Recently a friend of mine used these words to describe our God. Explosively Majestic! I love those words. Our language is too limited to begin to describe God – but if words could do it, these would be the words. From the amazingly beautiful, complicated, scientifically perfect world He created – to the unbelievable, undeserved grace He gives us every day – and He gives us through a sacrifice unmatchable in this imperfect human world we live in.

I asked another friend what explosively majestic brought to mind – her immediate thought… Fireworks. That got me thinking of my July 4ths as a child. Most years I was at summer camp in Gnaw Bone (yes, real city name) Indiana. We would go to town (Nashville Indiana) – a whole camp of girls loaded onto a flatbed truck. We got to terrorize the town – pretty much for us being the candy store and the ice cream parlor. Then we would all go together and watch the fireworks. These massive bursts of fiery lights in all colors that exploded in the dark night sky seemingly from nowhere. It would be calm and quiet and dark – and suddenly – amazement dancing in the dark. The night lit up brightly like it was day – and these awesome designs filled all my senses. I would literally sit there completely in awe. And I never left a night of fireworks with anything less than happiness in my heart.

That is the God I love – more importantly the God who loves me. Even when it seems the world is dark as night, He explodes into my situation with light. Leaving me totally in awe and absolutely happy in my heart.

Just look around you and actually see this amazing world we live in. A daily changing gift; every breath, breeze, birdsong – all creation – shouting the praise of our God. Someone once said to me, I don’t know how you can look around and see the trees and flowers and such and believe that there is a God. My simple response, I don’t know how you can look around and not believe there is a God. The whole earth cries out His glory. His explosively majestic existence.

 Psalm 8 “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Psalm 42:7-8 “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs His love, at night His song is with me – a prayer to the God of my life.”

 Hebrews 12:29 “For our God is a consuming fire.”

 In the book The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, he explains how scientifically perfect this world is – and my mind can’t help but know only an explosively majestic God could create such a delicate balance. The world is no accident.

     “The slant of the earth, for example, tilted at an angle of twenty-three degrees, produces our seasons. Scientists tell us that if the earth had not been tilted exactly as it is, vapors from the oceans would move both north and south, piling up vast continents of ice.

     If the moon were only 50,000 miles away from the earth, instead of 250,000, the tides might be so enormous that all the continents would be submerged in water – even the mountains would be eroded.

      If the crust of the earth had been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen, and without it all animal life would die.

      Had the oceans been a few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed, and no vegetable life would exist.

      The earth’s weight has been estimated at six-sextillion tons (that is a six with twenty-one zeros). Yet it rotates perfectly at the rate of more than a thousand miles per hour, or 25,000 miles per day. This adds up to nine million miles a year. Considering the tremendous weight of six-sextillion tons rolling at this fantastic speed around an invisible axis, held in place by unseen bands of gravitation, the words of Job 26:7 take on an unparalleled significance: He posed the earth on nothingness”

                                (Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning; pp 33-34)

The whole earth screams of an explosively majestic God. Only god could have created this masterpiece – and He created it for you and me. He created it as our home – a place where His glory could shine, and where His name could be praised.

Fireworks!

Awe!

And in that state of awe, I wonder at the even more explosively majestic nature of God. That this God who created everything, loves me. Loves me as through I were the only one – and loves you just the same. That God gave up His majesty and came to the earth He created just for me.

 Hebrews 1:3 “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited as superior to theirs.”

1 Peter 3:18 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the spirit.”

Romans 4: 24-25 “but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness — for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”

And He did that to save me. He did that because He knew I would fail at being everything He called me to be and that only by providing a sacrifice greater than anyone could even fathom could I have the most amazing gift. Grace! Life eternal with this amazing, awesome, explosively majestic God. He knows every minute detail about me, and yet He loves me still.

 Psalm 139:1-18 “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down, you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there, if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me”, even the darkness will not be dark to you, the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – when I awake, I am still with you.”

 He knows me. And He has given me a way to overcome the punishment I deserve for constantly falling short of the glory of His name.

 Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.”

 John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”

 Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

My words will never quite be good enough to capture just how truly explosively majestic God is. His glory shines bright in this world – and His love shines light, hope and peace in my life. My imperfect, failing, life – overcome by His perfect, unfailing love. His totally undeserved, unmerited free gift to me and to anyone who believes in Him.

God is Explosively Majestic!

And I will strive daily to make my life a living sacrifice to Him – a constant praise to just how explosively majestic He is!