Rich Mullins - Our God Is an Awesome God Lyrics

Video

Awesome God - Rich Mullins w/ Lyrics

Meaning & Inspiration

I sit here tonight with the house quiet, the kind of quiet that lets the joints ache a little louder. My Bible is open, but my eyes are tired, so I put on some Rich Mullins. I’ve known these songs since they were fresh, back when I had more hair and less sense of how fragile a breath actually is.

There’s a line in this one that used to make me nervous when I was younger: "When He rolls up His sleeves / He ain't just putting on the ritz."

Back then, I think I wanted a God who was a bit more refined, a bit more like the soft, leather-bound books on my shelf. But forty years of watching prayers go unanswered, watching bodies fail, and watching the world tilt on its axis has changed what I need from those sleeves. When you’ve been through the wringer—when the bank account is empty or the diagnosis comes back heavy—you don't want a God who is sitting on a throne wearing robes. You want a God who is ready to get His hands dirty.

It brings to mind Exodus 15:6: "Your right hand, O Lord, is magnificent in power." We talk about power like it’s a concept, but real power is muscular. It’s work. There is something terrifying but necessary about the idea of the Creator of the stars rolling up His sleeves. It means He’s moving into the mess. It means He’s not a spectator.

But then, Mullins pivots to the cross: "Mercy and grace / He gave us at the cross."

That’s where I get stuck these days. I’ve lived enough to know that mercy is a strange, jarring thing. It doesn't follow our rules of fairness. I look at my own weathered hands—these hands that have failed, grasped for things they shouldn't have, and faltered in love—and I wonder how mercy finds a place to land. We like to sing about an awesome God because it feels grand, but when the lights go out and the shadows in the corner of the room get long, "awesome" can feel distant, like a storm cloud you’re watching from a porch.

Does it still offer comfort? I’m not sure. Sometimes it offers a holy fear, which is a different kind of comfort—the kind that reminds you that you aren't the one holding the world together.

I think about the "starless void" line. Sometimes my internal landscape feels exactly like that—a blank, hollow space where faith feels more like memory than presence. And yet, the song claims He spoke into that. Not because I earned it, not because I was looking for Him, but because He is who He is.

I’m left with the weight of it. The thunder in His footsteps is the same force that offers the grace I’m leaning on tonight. It doesn't all fit together neatly. It shouldn't, I suppose. If I could explain it all, He wouldn't be much of a God, would He? Just another idea I’ve outgrown. Instead, I’ll sit here a while longer and listen to the man play. It isn't noise; it’s a reminder that even when I’m too weak to stand, there is someone who isn't.