As a doctor evaluates all aspects of your body during a physical, we help you evaluate all aspects of your walk with Christ. The Christian faith requires a certain amount of knowledge in order love God and love others. If we are to love God, then we have to know who he is; we have to know his message (the Gospel); and we have to know something about how he brings us from an unbeliever to be with him eternally.
This may be the sweetest of God’s characteristics. Bringing comfort, warmth, and assurance, God through his love connects to us in ways that his others attributes aren’t able.
He has an everlasting affection for us that will never be broken. No matter what we do or think; whether we try to run from God as Jonah did or stay under his wing, he always pursues us with his love.
Created before the foundations of the earth, his love adopted us - even though were still estranged from him - as his children. (Ephesians 1:4-5)
Disagreements tend to separate people from one another. The conflict sometimes is so deep that permanent separations occur.
“Irreconcilable differences” describes separations in marriages.
“Difference in philosophy” often describes business partnerships breaking apart.
“Lack of results or personality conflicts” describes people leaving their jobs.
Do you think this sort of thing can happen with God? That the differences between humans and God are so great that it would cause a separation? Some would argue no. They base their answer on the knowledge that God is loving God; so to separate himself from those He created is not possible.
Certainly, God is loving. The Bible tells us that He is love (1 John 4:8). But to leave it at that misses the point. God demands that we should be perfect just as he is perfect. “For you shall be holy. For I the LORD your God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) We are not. This is what separates us from God.
In the previous post, “God’s Anger, Melting Mountains, and Us,” you got to see why God has a beef with the human race and how he responds to those who continue to defy him. That is certainly a wake-up call to many and also very bad news for those who continue to defy him.
However, God provides a solution for man to get out of this predicament that he finds himself in and this is the Good News. Miraculously, God sends his Spirit into a person’s life and his Spirit turns a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26) This means that God turns a person who has opposed him into making that person receptive to hearing and receiving the Good News.
Just what is the Good News? It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In a nutshell, the Gospel message is found in John 3:16-17 ESV, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Have you ever been wronged? I mean really wronged? Knowing that you had not done anything wrong, yet receiving all the blame? Like the scapegoat of the ancient Jews forced to carry the sins of the people into the desert?
Or a business partnership that goes south in a hurry and you find yourself on the short end of the stick? You have invested a ton a time, resources and emotional energy into the venture, yet you have been shown the door.
How about coming home and finding your car or home has been rifled through and stuff has been taken? Wouldn't you feel violated?
Think back to what emotions you were feeling. If you are like most people, you felt justifiably angry and you wanted vengeance … you wanted justice to be served because you didn’t deserve this. Someone violated your decency and sense of honor.
Examine Your Knowledge
Disagreements tend to separate people from one another. The conflict sometimes is so deep that permanent separations occur.
y God has a beef with the human race and how he responds to those who continue to defy him. That is certainly a wake-up call to many and also very bad news for those who continue to defy him.