I shall be going back to 10 hour workdays starting today which makes one a tad grouchy, especially as the week goes on. I was going to write on some positive thing about God, being a Christian or whatever but I'm not in the mood...lol
God is a God of love, as we all know, but there are other attributes as well. God can also get really ticked off! In Numbers 13-14 God was really torqued at the Israelites because of their unbelief and even threatened to destroy them. Then an amazing thing happened as God "changed His mind" after listening to an appeal of mercy from Moses. This is interesting as does God need mortals like Moses to reason with Him and hold Him to His promises? God obviously CAN be hurt by the people He loves.
What I get from this and other parts of the Bible, especially the Psalms and the Prophets, that He wants to engage our minds AND emotions. He wants us to feel fear, alarm at whats around us, the tension of our will against His. He wants us to sense when things are wrong, and wants us to ask and ask again until we find out where that wrong is. Much of God does seems to have the goal of shocking us to our senses. To get to that awareness where we become eventually contrite and humble before Him (repentance) and with others. This is where mercy is found. Grace received does enable grace to be given...
It doesn't seem to be a matter of being nice to a God who could fry you in an instant but being very real with Him. Its not appeasement per say but struggle that gets us to the place of intimacy... (Kinda reminds me of the story of Jacob.) Our God is also the God of Thunder ... and not just this cheesy, wishy washy, always positive wimp type of god...
Just some thoughts ...
4 comments:
very good article. we should never just focus on God being lovable but on God being just as well. Two afces of a coin. 1 must go with the other. God Bless you!
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Yes, sometimes this business about God changing His mind is confusing for me. But I like what you say about how He wants to engage us fully, and encourage us think about what we ask.
Very good post.
Thanks so much for your comments!
Yes, we serve a God that has the ability to fry us in an instant, yet is patient and loving enough that He doesn't. He also allows us to appeal to Him for mercy. Good thing, otherwise we all would have been fried a long, long time ago!
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