And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father…
My daughter and I were trying to get out of the parking lot at Tysons Corner the other day. We had one of the Christian radio stations on and a familiar song came on the radio. Even at 14, she still did all the hand motions that she had learned as a littler girl during the chorus:
Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, power and love
Our God is an awesome God
Recently, I defended this song on another blog when the author and several of the commentors were poking fun at the simplistic nature of this particular Rich Mullins song. I said then that this song is a wonderful way to teach small children three of the most important attributes of our God…His wisdom, power and love…in a way that they do not soon forget. When I heard the song the other day on the radio, it made me think of our current discussion of the description of God found in Isaiah 9:6. The titles given to the promised Messiah mesh beautifully with these attributes: Wonderful Counselor speaks to His divine wisdom, Mighty God reminds us of His unmatched power, and Everlasting Father is the perfect picture of His eternal, personal love for each of us.
Our youngest daughter sometimes poses “what if” questions to her dad and me. If she did _______, would we still love her? We tell her over and over that there is nothing that she could do that would ever cause us to stop loving her; we might feel angry or disappointed, but we would never stop loving her. Our love for her is not dependent on how well she does in school, whether she is nice to her sister or any other aspect of her behavior. We love her because she is ours to love forever.
Paul reminds us of how God’s love is even bigger than the love of an earthly parent in his letter to the Romans. In Chapter 8, he says the following:
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God…and that is a pretty tough looking list of potential obstacles. God loves us because He chooses to love us. God loves us because He IS love. I love the verse in 1John that says “How great is the love that the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!” Lavishing love! Lavish means “characterized by or produced with extravagance and profusion” and “immoderate in giving or bestowing; unstinting.” Our Everlasting Father chooses to bestow His love on us in an extravagant, profuse, immoderate and unstinting manner! One of the things that makes it so extravagant is that we can’t earn it and we can’t lose it. It is a gift from Him….a neverending, everlasting gift.
Kelly,I can’t believe you tried to defend this song… it’s horrible! Rich Mullins has some great songs but this isn’t one of them. There are surely better ways to teach our kids about God’s wisdom, power and love that talking about “puttin’ on the ritz”!! Please, you have way too much musical ability to praise this song… unless you’d like to sing it in worship some Sunday 😉
What is it with you and this song? As I have said before, there is nothing more precious than a bunch of little kids singing those words at the top of their lungs “our God is an AWESOME God.” I dare you to teach Kendall to sing it and not fall in love with it 🙂
Maybe we could agree to call the chorus a nice chant, instead of a song? I agree, the verses are pretty goofy, but we never taught the verses to the kids…just the chorus. I will continue to defend the chorus…especially when little ones are singing it!