Getting ready for the Day

As I sit here preparing myself for the day, I wonder what things God has in store for me. I have somethings planned already; buying make up (Mary Kay products) is one of them. Well, I don't know how God honoring that will be but I do get to see my grandbabies this morning. I love getting hugs from my 4 year old grandson. (Little Jack) My little granddaughter (I call her Jenna Benna) is almost as loving with me as Jack. Josh will be at school but I did stop by their house on Sunday evening and I got to see him.

I have been only posting in my journal if I do my devotional along with my post or if I do my devotional in the morning. After I get my quiet time with the Lord in I can journal the rest of the day, if I wish too. This way I am in the Word daily and don't sacrifice reading the Word to post and read blogs. (I do love reading blogs) I just think being in the God's Word needs to be moved to number one in my life.

Today my devotional won't be long, just short and sweet hopefully. I always think this and then it ends up being really long.

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

“Some might say I would be wise to swallow my misgivings about such stuff [like God’s sovereignty, wrath, hell, etc.], remain orthodox, and thereby secure my place with God in eternity. But that is precisely my point: If those things are true, then God might as well send me to Hell. For better or worse, I simply am not interested in any God but a completely good, entirely loving, and perfectly forgiving One who is powerful enough to utterly triumph over evil. Such a God may not exist, but I will die seeking such a God, and I will pledge my allegiance to no other possibility because, quite frankly, anything less is not worthy of my worship.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I am well aware that I don’t get to decide who God is. What I do get to decide, however, is to whom I pledge allegiance. I am a free agent, after all, and I have standards for my God, the first of which is this: I will not worship any God who is not at least as compassionate as I am. (Quote by Bart Campolo)

Wow.

The saddest part of this article is that he seems to be the voice of my generation. We have created for ourselves a God who we will worship no matter the costs--even if the cost is hell. The word "idolatry" comes to mind. "Scripture is not a picnic where the authors bring the words and the readers bring the meaning".

Thanks to technological advances that would make our great grandparents heads explode, we can now instantly see across the world and read just about any newspaper we desire in any language.

What we see and what we read are ugly. And we are "compassionate" people, aren't we?

My generation seems to have built their house on sand. We have looked at the world, seen its pain and decided who we want God to be. Bart and the majority of my generation will only worship a God who is worthy of their worship. And what makes a God worthy of their worship? Human justice, human compassion, human, human, human.

"All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away." (Isaiah 64:6)

Are we serious?

Imagine for just a moment, as hard as it is, being before the throne of God, being in the presence of his holiness, and rather than falling on our faces in humility, we are sizing him up to ensure he fits the bill. Does anyone else cringe when they read the words "...anything less is not worthy of my worship"? Can you imagine Isaiah saying that? Can you imagine Job saying that? Can you imagine Paul saying that?

Paul: "Who are you, oh man, to question God!"

Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. Eph 4:17-18 ESV

Could it be that our humanly "compassionate" hearts are actually hard?

As they inevitably will, the rains have come and the wind has blown, and waves are beating this generation's beach house to impotency. The Rock the historical church rested on no longer seems to exist for my generation. What's worse, it is now deemed as "irrelevant."

We see the ugliness, and we are angry. We have decided who our God should be, and damn the contradicting evidence.

Jesus refers to himself as that Rock (Mat. 7). He also refers to himself as the logos--knowledge (John 1:1). God tells us to build ourselves upon him, upon knowledge. God also tells us that his people die from lack of knowledge (Hos. 6).

I fear that we are creating for ourselves a God who fits our agenda. A God who hates social injustice; but who cares little about the "trivial" issues of theology. "God is love." How many times have I heard that? "If we all just lived that love, it would all be ok." But, I ask, how do you live love if you know not what it is?

Our emotions need information to validate them. Our emotions need knowledge--they need the knowledge of God. Until my generation combines it's desire to help, with God's desire for us to know Him, we will be yet another form of Marxism. We will worship an idol, we will not worship God.